Acknowledgements x Introduction xi 1 Art, Emotion, and Morality 1 Introduction 1 Plato and the Theory of Identification 3 On Identification as a General Account of Audience/Character Emotive Engagement 13 Emotions, Art, and Criterial Prefocusing 17 An Objection: What About Moral Change? 23 2 Further Criticisms of the Effects of Emotional Engagement with Art 27 Introduction 27 Plato Redux 28 The Imitation Argument 29 Questioning the Imitation Argument 32 The Illusion Argument 34 The Economic Argument 44 Descendants of Plato 48 Saint Augustine 48 The Response Argument 49 The Pleasure Argument 51 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 53 Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) 56 3 Alternative Positive Views of the Nexus of Art, Emotion, and Morality 60 Introduction 60 Empathy 61 On the Very Many Meanings of "Empathy" 62 Empathy and Sympathy 63 "What Is Empathy?" 65 On the Strong Version of the Common View of Empathy 65 Revisiting the Common View of Empathy 67 Empathy and Morality 69 Is Empathy Ethically Reliable? 72 Art, Empathy, and Moral Cultivation 75 Simulation 78 Explaining Mind-Reading 78 What Is Simulation? 79 Questioning Simulation 83 Appendix: Empathy Revisited 89 Admiration 90 4 Art, Cognition, and Morality 97 Introduction 97 Part I: For and Against: Specific Skeptical Arguments Regarding Moral Cognitivism 98 Arguments Against Moral Cognitivism 98 Skeptical Arguments Against Art as a Source of Knowledge 98 Challenging the Skeptic's Arguments Against Moral Cognitivism 104 The No-Evidence Argument 105 The Tainted-Representation Argument 109 The No-Argument Argument 110 The As-Art Argument 117 The No-Expertise Argument 121 The No-Artistic-Truths Argument 124 The Banality Argument 124 The No-Originality Argument 126 The No-Critical-Argument Argument 126 The Skeptic's Error Theory 127 Part II: Recurring Skeptical Presuppositions Reviewed and Challenged 129 Cognitively Valuable? 130 5 Autonomism 137 Introduction 137 The Emergence of Autonomism 137 Formalism 144 Aesthetic Art Theory 149 Summary 156 6 Moralism Versus Autonomism 157 Introduction 157 Extreme Moralism 157 Autonomism Redux 159 Moderate Moralism Versus Moderate Autonomism 161 Objections to Moderate Moralism and Rejoinders 167 Index 000.