Quote:
Originally Posted by Inuzuka Skysword
I don't quite understand this question. Why does art need to have an ethical responsibility in order to have a point, (I am assuming, by point, that you mean the purpose)?
You are arguing whether it is good for art to have an ethical responsibility, not whether it actually has one in reality. Those are completely different questions, and one does have supremacy over the other, namely the latter.
How is this a "responsibility" though? If anything, the standard you give has absolutely nothing to do with "responsibility" and everything to do with what the outcome will do to you. Look at your reason for not talking all the time.
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It's not that I don't talk for the sake of talking all the time because I would feel bad, but because I would be bringing suffering to others. Because of the person I am, bringing suffering to others would also bring suffering to me, which is not to say that not bringing suffering to others is automatically going to make me feel good.
I believe art needs to have an ethical responsibility to have a point because art presents its audience with some portion of reality. Why? Even if the reason is "because it's pretty," for me at least, that pretiness has to do with presenting a standard of harmony and order, or tension and the course to its resolution. Or even, in some cases, a sustained tension that leads us gradually to stop perceiving it as tension, which is a way of finding inner peace. But if we're considering something like literature I think the main point of describing situations and narratives would be to show how they can be resolved or avoided or at least to point them out so that people can understand and learn to deal with their gravity. Anything that neglects all these ideals strikes me as masturbatory, or, worse, pointlessly provocative.