Admiring the Immoral

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Alfred Archer, Department of Philosophy, Tilburg University

a.t.m.archer@tilburguniversity.edu

 

 I am currently working on a project on the nature and value of admiration, funded by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. This project investigates the nature, ethics and value of admiration. Information about this project can be found here:

https://alfredarcher.weebly.com/research-projects.html 

This piece is based on a paper co-authored with Benjamin Matheson entitled ‘When Artists Fall: On Admiring the Immoral’. A draft of the paper is available here: https://www.academia.edu/35377684/When_Artists_Fall_On_Admiring_the_Immoral

 

Roman Polanski is one of the world’s most admired filmmakers. He has received more than 80 international film awards including, in 2003, an Oscar for best director for his film The Pianist. In 2010, a poll of film critics for The Guardian and The Observer declared his film Chinatown to be the greatest film of all time. Actors who work with him regularly praise his talent as a director.

Polanski is also a self-confessed rapist. In 1977, Polanski was arrested for the sexual assault of 13-year-old Samantha Gailey. Polanski was indicted of six counts of criminal behaviour, including rape. Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse but fled the country. Four more women have subsequently accused Polanski of sexual assault. Of course, Polanski is far from the only high-profile celebrity to have acted immorally. The recent #metoo campaign has led to a number of high profile artists – including Louis CK and Kevin Spacey – being accused of immoral behaviour. Is it appropriate to admire these artists for their artistic talents despite their immoral behaviour?

This issue was at the centre of a recent dispute about the decision to name Polanski the president of the César Awards. Claire Serre-Combe of Osez le féminisme (Dare to be feminists), said that, “We cannot let this pass. Making Polanski president is a snub to rape and sexual assault victims.” On the face of it, this claim may strike some people as odd. After all, Polanski is being celebrated for his artistic talent, not for his immoral behaviour. In what way then, is it a snub to victims of sexual assault to admire his artistic achievements?

I will investigate two different ways of defending the claim that admiring immoral artists can be morally problematic. First, I will investigate an argument based on the view that admiration involves an evaluation of a whole person. I will argue that this kind of argument is unconvincing. I will then propose an alternative argument that is able to explain why admiring immoral artists can constitute a snub to their victims.

The Nature of Admiration

What is involved in the emotion of admiration? While emotions are notoriously difficult to provide precise characterisations for (Ben-Ze’ev, 2000: 6), there are a number of features emotions are thought to possess that can be used to distinguish different emotional categories. According to Deonna, Rodogno and Teroni (2012: 10), we can differentiate different emotions according to the following seven dimensions: phenomenology, intentional object, evaluative component, the developmental path of acquisition, typical eliciting situations, manifestation and associated action tendencies. For the purposes of my discussion, I am interested in the intentional object and the evaluative component.

The intentional object of an emotion is the object that the emotion is directed towards. For example, if I feel fear because I see a grizzly bear approaching me then the bear is the intentional object of my fear. The evaluative component, meanwhile, is the positive or negative judgement the emotion contains towards that emotional object. My fear of the bear, for example, involves the judgement that the bear poses a threat to things I value, such as my life.

In the case of the bear, my emotion fits its target. By this, I mean that it represents its object properly. My fear represents the bear properly, as the bear is a danger to me. There are also times where an emotion does not fit its target. Koumpounophobia is a fear of buttons. People who possess this phobia are afraid of buttons on clothing. But this fear is not fitting, as buttons are not dangerous and so are not fitting targets of fear. An emotion can also be fitting but not be on balance an appropriate emotion to feel. For example, when confronted by the bear, fear may not be the most useful emotion to feel. This could lead me to scream or run away which will increase my chances of being attacked. This shows that an emotion can fit its target (represent it accurately), without it being the emotion that we have most reason to feel.

What kind of evaluation does admiration involve? It is widely accepted that admiration involves a positive judgement of its object. According to Adam Smith, admiration just is “Approbation heightened by wonder and surprise,” (1759/ 2007: I.i.4.3). Similarly, Ben-Ze’ev claims that admiration involves, “a highly positive evaluation of someone,” (2000: 56). Finally, William Lyons claims that admiration involves, “an evaluation of [its] object which can be classed as a pro-evaluation or approval,” (1980: 90). It should not be surprising that this claim is so widely endorsed. Unless someone is judging an object positively then she cannot be admiring the object. Given that admiration involves a positive evaluation of its intentional object, it will only be fitting when the object warrants that positive evaluation.

What kind of positive evaluation does admiration involve? According to Macalester Bell (2011; 2013) admiration always involves a global evaluation of a person. In order to evaluate this claim we must first reach an understanding of what exactly it means. A globalist emotion is one that targets a whole person rather than an individual action or trait. Some philosophers claim, for example, that shame is a globalist emotion, as it targets a whole person (Nussbaum, 2009: 207; Williams, 1993: 89). Guilt, on the other hand, only targets particular actions a person has performed. Similarly, some philosophers claim that while contempt is globalist, resentment is not (Bell, 2011; 2013; Mason, 2003). In both cases, the globalist emotion is said to target the whole person, where this refers to a person’s various psychological elements – for example, her emotions, dispositions, values, cares, and commitments.

There are though at least two different ways of understanding globalist emotions. According to Doris (2003) global emotions target global traits. These are traits that fit with her other traits. Someone can only be worthy of shame on this account if she possesses some character trait that is worthy of shame and all of her traits cohere with this shame-worthy trait. This means that if someone possesses any traits that are fitting targets of pride, then that person cannot be a fitting target of shame. To apply this view to admiration, someone could only be worthy of admiration if they possessed some admirable trait and all of their other traits cohered with this trait. According to this view, someone who possesses a trait for which they are worthy of contempt could not be admirable. This view has important implications for the question of whether we can admire immoral artists. If we accept this view then the claim that admiring Polanski is a snub to victims of sexual assault makes sense. After all, this admiration could only be fitting if Polanski were not a fitting target of indignation and claiming this involves not taking his crimes seriously.

Bell (2011; 2013) defends a weaker account of globalist emotions according to which they involve an evaluative prioritization. On this account, a globalist emotion still responds to a whole person. However, a globalist emotion need not cohere with all of a person’s traits. It is enough that the traits the globalist emotion targets are prioritized over any incompatible traits. This means that someone can be admirable even if they possess some traits that are worthy of contempt, providing the admirer deems the admirable traits more important than the contempt-worthy traits. If we accept this view then immoral artists can only be fitting targets of admiration for those for whom the artistic virtues they possess are more important than their moral vices. Again, if we accept this view of admiration then it is easy to see why admiration for Polanski may constitute a snub to victims of sexual assault, as on this view this amounts to saying that his filmmaking abilities are more important to the admirer than the crime he has committed.

If either were true then both the stronger and the weaker version of globalism about admiration would explain why admiring immoral artists could constitute a snub to their victims. So far, though, we have seen no reason to think that either offers a plausible picture of admiration. We can find out whether this is a plausible view of admiration by looking at the arguments offered in support of the claim that contempt and shame are globalist and seeing whether similar arguments would work for admiration.

One argument offered in support of the claim that shame (Lewis, 1971: 30) and contempt (Bell, 2013: 40; Mason, 2003) are globalist is that these emotions attach to whole persons, both linguistically and in how they are experienced. I have my doubts about these claims with regards to shame and contempt but for now I simply wish to show that this kind of argument will not work for admiration. While admiration can attach to whole people, it can also attach to actions or local traits (Schindler et al., 2013: 99). We can admire someone’s dress sense without admiring his whole person. Likewise, we can admire a footballer’s spectacular goal without admiring her whole person. This form of argument then gives us no reason to think admiration is globalist.

Another way in which people defend globalism about shame and contempt is by appealing to action tendencies. Shame is claimed to involve a desire to improve one’s character, while guilt involves a desire to make amends for a particular act (Williams, 1993: 89-90). To see whether this applies to admiration let us consider the action tendency commonly associated with it, namely emulation. If admiration targets the whole person then it ought to be the whole person who is emulated rather than some trait or action. While it is possible for admiration to motivate someone to emulate a whole person, it seems more common for admiration to motivate someone to emulate a particular trait or action. This is why both philosophers (e.g. Zagzebski, 2017: 33) and psychologists (e.g. Algoe & Haidt, 2009) connect admiration with a motivation to emulate another person for her admired trait or action.

Neither of these arguments provides support for the claim that admiration is globalist. Rather, both suggest that admiration may target actions, local traits or whole people. This means that we cannot appeal to a globalist view of admiration to vindicate the claim that admiring immoral artists can constitute a snub to their victims.

The Ethics of Admiration

We might think that the failure of the argument examined in the previous section shows that admiring immoral artists does not constitute a snub to their victims. However, in this section I will propose an alternative way to defend this claim.

To begin let us consider a very public form of admiration, such as the offering of awards such as an Oscar or an honour such as the presidency of the César Awards. What do these public expressions of admiration for Polanski communicate? It is tempting to think that this simply communicates admiration for the recipient’s admirable qualities, in this case his filmmaking talents. However, choosing to express admiration for an immoral artist involves choosing to express it over other emotions that are also fitting. While they may be a fitting target of admiration, they are also fitting targets of indignation. By expressing admiration in these cases, we are prioritising this emotional reaction over indignation. Doing so effectively condones the action. When we condone a piece of behaviour we are communicating that while we don’t think the behaviour is morally good, we are willing to accept or tolerate it (Hughes & Warmke, 2017). Those who prioritise the expression of admiration over the expression of contempt communicate that they can accept or at least tolerate this behaviour.

The decision to prioritise the admiration for the artist for their art over indignation for their moral failings can be problematic in itself, as it may signal a lack of respect for the immoral artist’s victims. The problem with this prioritisation becomes more pressing when we consider that, alongside their own emotional prioritisation, admirers often also communicate that this is the right way to prioritise these emotional expressions. Sometimes this message is explicit. Take for example, Whoopi Goldberg’s claim that Polanski’s sexual assault of Gailey “wasn’t rape-rape,” (Kennedy, 2009). While Goldberg does not claim that Polanski’s behaviour was morally permissible, she does suggest that it is behaviour that can be tolerated.

Many who have publicly admired Polanski have not condoned his behaviour so explicitly. However, these public expressions of admiration may still communicate that the immoral behaviour should be condoned. This is particularly the case when we consider the background in which these awards take place. The film industry, for example, has been accused by many of having a particular problem with sexism, both in the way it represents women on screen (Cummings & Glessing, 2017) and in the way it treats women working in the industry (Jones & Pringle, 2015). According to Sophie Hennekam and Dawn Bennett (2017) sexual harassment is a particular problem in this industry. In this patriarchal context, expressions of admiration for an the aesthetic talents of an artist who has committed sexual assault or sexual harassment are likely to be understood as condoning their immoral behaviour. This is problematic, as it sends the message that immoral behaviour can be ignored when the person performing it is a sufficiently gifted artist.

A further problem with public expressions of admiration for immoral artists is that it risks making its target unduly credible. This can lead to an indirect form of injustice when a victim contradicts an admired figure. Consider how celebrities are often taken to be authorities in areas for which they possess no expertise. Kyrie Irving, a basketball player, claimed the Earth is flat (Shanahan, 2017). This has apparently led to some schoolchildren believing that the Earth is flat, leaving their teachers baffled. In this case, the schoolchildren give Irving’s testimony greater credibility than it merits. Note that it is not just children who give undue weight to the testimony of those they admire, many adults do so as well. This is likely one reason why politicians seek to recruit celebrities to endorse their campaigns and why celebrities “use their platform” to advocate for moral causes.

This tendency to give the testimony of those we admire greater weight than is merited can be problematic. Suppose the testimony of a celebrity conflicts with the testimony of someone who lacks this status. In this case, the celebrity’s testimony is likely to be given greater weight. Our admiration for a celebrity leads those who challenge the celebrity’s assertions to be seen as less credible in comparison. This is a form of what Miranda Fricker (2007) calls an epistemic injustice (an injustice committed against someone in her capacity as a knower). By inflating the credibility of an immoral artist then, we in turn deflate the credibility of those who accuse them of wrongdoing. Admiration, then, gives its target a kind of power. By itself, this power need not be morally bad. However, it becomes problematic when an immoral person wields it, as this may increase their credibility at the expense of that of their victims.

The final problem with admiring immoral artists is that it can serve to silence the artist’s victims and the victims of similar crimes. It does so in two ways. First, the greater weight given to the testimony of those we admire discourages victims from speaking out because they suspect that they will not be believed. Second, the message that the immoral behaviour is condoned discourages victims from speaking out because victims think that even if they will be believed, people will not treat the issue as a serious wrongdoing.

Public expressions of admiration can therefore constitute a snub and indeed a harm to their victims in three ways. First, by prioritizing the expression of admiration over indignation this can send the message that the immoral behaviour should be condoned. Second, these expressions of admiration can inflate the credibility of the immoral artist at the expense of the victim. Finally, these expressions of admiration can serve to silence the immoral artist’s victims.

Conclusion

To sum up, I have explored two ways of vindicating Claire Serre-Combe’s claim that honouring Polanski constitutes a snub to victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault. I argued that the argument based on the view that admiration involves an evaluation of a whole person will not succeed. Instead, this claim can be supported by looking at public expressions of admiration. In particular, we need to examine what messages such public expressions communicate and the harmful effects of these messages.

 

References

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