ABSTRACT

Many of the moral problems of artists are not problems of artistic morality at all. Yet while artists' responsibilities to society are in some respects common to those of every person and in other respects peculiar to their art, these modes of social responsibility do not complete the range of moral possibilities. There are two forms this obligation takes: one that comes from the artist's singular ability to reveal and shape reality, and another that derives from the integrity of artists and of their art. The first implies metaphysics of art and the second an ethics of art, the development of which is clearly beyond the scope of a prolegomenon such as this. As an artist one is not privileged but stands bound by the same claims that hold on all, in whatever way an ethics enables us to determine and a code to guide.