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10 J. Value Inquiry 1 (1976)

handle is hein.journals/jrnlvi10 and id is 1 raw text is: ART AND ETHICS JAMES OGILVY Didactic art is bad art if it represents opinions which could as well be stated without the external addition of aesthetic form. I take the term di- dactic art to refer only to works of art whose message can be clearly dis- sociated from the form of expression. Artistic endeavor may, however, pro- duce a unity of form and content that resists a dissociation of message from aesthetic form. The distinction between truth and beauty seems to hold true for didactic art, where neither truth nor beauty may be present, and the message is clearly distinguishable from aesthetic form. But the distinction is not strictly between truth and beauty; didactic art shows a distinction between the sub- jects or bearers of truth and beauty, namely, propositional content and aesthetic form. Propositional content and aesthetic form may be distinguish- able, but that does not entail the necessary separateness of truth and beauty; nor does the separateness of propositional content from aesthetic form in didactic art entail the separateness of propositional content from aesthetic form in all art. To claim a necessary distinction between truth and beauty is to support positivism; it is to claim that whatever can be said can be said clearly, that is, in a purely propositional form with no aesthetic embellishments. But what are the grounds for such a claim? The claim is a claim about the world. It states that the world is such that it can be clearly pictured by an unambiguous language of declarative propositions. But what if that is not the case? What if the claim is either false, or, on its own implicit criteria of meaningfulness, meaningless? Without presuming to categorically affirm a counter-claim of the same proportions, I shall entertain the hypothesis that language may function successfully in ways whose success is not measured by propositional clarity. The hypothesis should be no surprise to readers of Wittgenstein's Philosophi- cal Investigations. The import of the hypothesis may be less familiar: the distinction between truth and beauty is a contingent distinction, contingent upon the way in which language is being used. If language is used to re- present some state of affairs in which beauty plays no part, then the distinc- tion seems to hold. The broom is in the corner, might be spoken in a deep voice or a high voice, with a nasal accent or with clear tones; it might be sung; but the truth of the statement will depend on whether the broom is in the corner, not on beauty of expression. If language is used to some other end, however, the clear distinction be- tween truth and beauty becomes obscure or non-existent. Clarity of repre-

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