On Beauty and Virtue
Striving for a virtuous life, I am concerned that the successful life as an artist is a conflicting desire. I propose that the framework Velleman uses regarding required minimums and optional maximums in terms of love can be applied more broadly to help articulate this concern. Just as respect can be understood as an approximation of love (a required minimum qua virtue), so too can critical engagement be recognized as an approximation of beauty, which I understand to be synonymous with ideal response. Further, White claims that love for all is an ideal to strive for, but falling short is not only to be accepted but even to be embraced, as reaching a “love for all” requires a lack of appropriate care for those particular loves that are necessary to a life of substance. I believe he is getting something right: that the exchange outlined in “Love First” is evident in love and beyond. Similarly, I suggest that to see absolute beauty–and even more radically, to depict and project it as an artist may desire to–one must necessarily be unable to earnestly observe or even earnestly care for the object or the artist, making the desire for beauty morally unjustified. Considering Quinn White’s “Love First” in conversation with Agnes Martin’s “On Beauty”, I argue that beauty and virtue can be understood as a dialectic both as an observer of artwork and objects and as a creator of these things, and that the character of observation and response defines the virtue of the Beautiful.
Under these circumstances, is pure beauty in opposition to virtue? If virtuous beauty is possible, is it our duty to achieve it just as “agape is an ideal we have pro tanto reason to manifest”?
§1 White is discussing our moral obligations as 1. people with particular loves (interpersonal relationships) and also as 2. people in a society or part of a species (human). I am interested in our moral obligations as 1a. observers of objects and artworks 1b. creators of objects and artworks (broadly, our relationships with the material world), and 2. people in a society or part of a species (human). Between these categories is the relationship between humans and the material world where materials act as mediators to interpersonal relationships. To understand the deontic constraints I believe we must hold dear, I will first define how the two halves of this former relationship, the one we have with the material world, can be understood.
§2 In analyzing the ethics of an observer’s relationship with the material world, I’d like to borrow the general nature of a great quip from a friend: “Date someone whose work you care about—you don’t need to love it, you don’t even need to like it, but you do need to care about it.” While here, my friend is commenting on dating in the art world, the note that to care about a beloved’s art means more than liking it is very exciting. Taken more seriously, to earnestly engage with a work of art (or any object, at that) is much more important than to find it beautiful. Here, care can be understood as earnest engagement and also can be posed as a necessarily virtuous or moral engagement, as it is honest as well as appreciative. In contrast, finding something beautiful does not, of course, necessarily mean one’s position is dishonest, but finding everything that a beloved creates to be beautiful carries more suspicion. Moreover, to find something beautiful carries value–that it is “liked”–but doesn’t necessarily denote adoration or sustained intentional engagement with the maker.
I understand observation (this earnest engagement) to be a prerequisite for response (at least for now, we will only consider abstract responses such as value, but we will come back to this in §3).
To investigate further, suppose your partner, Nathan, is a painter. He is an abstract artist a la Joseph Albers, even (as what we are discussing is not the ethics of “unethical” art such as exploitative nudes of women by perverts). When he asks you what you think about a particular painting, perhaps you say it is beautiful. I assert that this would be accepted happily! Nathan would likely not only be overjoyed that his beloved finds his painting beautiful, but would likely also feel cared for, as you saying his piece is beautiful is likely honest and therefore suggests an earnest engagement with it. However, Nathan is prolific. He paints day and night, and after a year of dating, you have seen hundreds of color fields. When he asks you what you think about his body of work, all this time later, you may reply that it is all beautiful. Here, Nathan might not only feel unsuccessful but also uncared for. Where he read care into your former statement, this new value may seem incredibly surface-level and unbelievable. More than that, the flatness of the statement suggests a lack of care–of earnest engagement. While I hesitate to suggest that time is never a factor, that if you claimed “beautiful” after five seconds, it is not more damning than claiming “beautiful” after five days, I don’t believe temporality to be crucial to my argument. Simply put, regardless of the time it took you to come to a valued conclusion, Nathan may find it hard to believe that the prerequisite observation was present before the valued response was asserted, given that “beauty” is an impersonal surface response.
Nathan, here, furthers my claim that beauty cannot be an absolute good in any sense. At least in this scenario, to find everything beautiful is not the same as finding anything (a singular or small subset of things). Even more excitingly, to claim to find everything beautiful is to neglect to appropriately engage with or care for the object(s) observed, therefore making one a necessarily unvirtuous observer! Of course, there may be a minute chance that the value of “beautiful” rings true for you, meaning you have carefully observed and reached this “beautiful” conclusion; I am prone to believing this to be almost impossible, but even so, I propose that even in that case, this surface-based value judgment would be less generous a response to Nathan when contrasted against a more critical and less universal view.
§3 Now, what of the maker? Accepting the notion that to find everything absolutely beautiful is uncaring as an observer, what then of the maker who strives for beauty? I’d put forward the words of Agnes Martin: “All art work is about beauty; all positive work represents it and celebrates it. All negative art protests the lack of beauty in our lives.” This description certainly centers beauty in artwork, a stance I agree with in terms of the depiction within the frame (the subject, broadly). However, Martin continues to say that “The goal of life is happiness and to respond to life as though it were perfect is the way to happiness. It is also the way to positive art work. It is not in the role of an artist to worry about life– to feel responsible for creating a better world. This is a very serious distraction.” I will take this statement in two parts. Firstly, the responsiveness crucial to an artistic life is fitting; we see this in the act of drawing from a live figure model, for example, as we respond to minute movements and must be deeply engaged in active observation. While connected, the distinction between response and observation is of utmost importance. Response necessarily derives from observation and is the action that separates one from being an observer to being an artist. Given that one observes and responds, Martin continues to claim that, for an artist, the work of active engagement ends here (or even must end here) as further action– responsibility for “better” change– is a distraction. Here, I feel almost repulsed, not because I disagree, but perhaps because I deeply understand and am troubled that I agree!
Beauty, in Martin’s terms, is an ideal to be celebrated. To find beauty in everything (“respond to life as though it were perfect”) is the (only) way to make positive art work; I argue, though, that it is also a denial of humanity! I want to be clear that, as discussed in §2, observation is a necessary step before response. Here, the difference is that the response has become material-based. Objects or artworks are being produced rather than valued judgements or abstractions. For now, we can use the terms of observation and response separately.
Accepting that we (humans) must observe earnestly in order to live virtuously, the real question is whether we can or should respond ideally. Agnes Martin would say, as an artist, we must respond ideally, that is to say, respond beautifully. I would say, as a human, we must respond earnestly. But is it as simple as that? That one should observe, but then respond earnestly if one values their humanity, and ideally if one values their studio practice? How grim! Of course, my worry, then, is what of the artist who wants to live virtuously?
§4 Here, perhaps, we can find resolution by returning to Velleman’s framing. What if, instead of the absolutes we used before (that one can be either artist or human, either earnest or ideal), we operate within required minimums and optional maximums? To use this framing, earnest observation and ideal response must be considered together rather than dealt with separately, as we discussed previously. However, this is not to say that they cannot be, at least sometimes, mutually exclusive maxims! This is challenging to hold, as, taking Nathan’s paintings again, wouldn’t striving to find the beauty in Nathan’s color fields (striving to respond ideally) inherently imply a lack of earnest engagement? With Nathan himself as a painter, would striving to make a beautiful painting (striving to respond ideally) suggest a lack of earnest engagement with his subject matter? My answer is yes! And I think that Quinn White may agree! When discussing love and respect, love for all cannot be practiced while also having room for particular love, a tension I see as similar to the mutual exclusivity of some kind. Respect, therefore, is the minimum requirement of the virtuous person, as it approximates love for all while leaving room for particular love. In terms of beauty, I argue that the ideal response, the optional maximum, doesn’t leave room for earnest engagement, so, following this model, one must approximate the ideal response such that there is room for earnest observation. I suggest that the closest approximation, the required minimum, is critical response.
I’d like us to consider Nathan again. This time, suppose that Frances and Nathan are friends. Frances has a particular taste in art and generally gravitates toward hyperrealistic charcoal work. When Nathan asks her opinion on his body of work, it is easy to assert that the virtuous response is not to immediately write it off. She should certainly give it a chance! As an observer, she also must give value (respond)–whether that is a good value or bad is unimportant. Further, if Nathan forays into figure drawing, using Frances as his subject, to strive to depict her “beautifully” would be to deny a certain Frances-ness. This is not to suggest that she is not beautiful, but to say that any preconceived image or desire for ideal response must necessarily shroud the observation from total earnestness. Nathan’s observations may please Frances or create a nice image, but his observation of her would be rose-tinted to say the least. The drawing would not be fair (that is, Nathan’s relationship to the object would not be one of earnestness), but more importantly, his relationship to Frances, even if (and possibly especially if) she is pleased by the image, would be similarly dishonest. I believe that if Frances knew that Nathan, asking her to model for him, was drawing her not as he sees her, but as he wants his drawing to look, would feel slighted in some regard. While Nathan may respond that he is an artist and need not concern himself with accuracy so much as a great work, Frances may even have reason to be more upset! Would observing her in earnest mean he wouldn’t see beauty?
Now, what would it mean for Frances and Nathan to instead respond critically? As an observer, perhaps this means that Frances, finally having room to engage earnestly by not being confined by preconceived negativity or idealization, can be appropriately pleased by Nathan’s skill and also appropriately dissatisfied with the roundness of the shapes he depicts. As an artist, perhaps Nathan is able to engage earnestly with Frances as a subject, understanding her form more than he initially was able to when striving for beauty was of utmost importance. To be clear, I don’t mean to argue against creativity–drawing Frances’ eyes larger because he is drawn to them–as I would categorize that into deeply earnest observation and engagement with Frances! Realism is not to be conflated with earnest observation. I believe these subconscious things we find beautiful in a subject may only come about when they are earnestly observed. Nathan may find Frances’ dress unappealing and choose to shroud it in shadow, but appreciate the highlight of her nosebridge and accentuate that feature. Under these circumstances, he can respond critically, appropriately depicting what he earnestly finds most beautiful about Frances, and I’d argue, in the process, capture a certain Frances-ness that may have escaped him before!
I have been thinking of creating good artwork or living as a successful artist, as opposed to a virtuous life. Agnes Martin, again, gives this speech in her assertion that “You can’t think, “My life is more important than the work” and get the work. You have to think the work is paramount in your life.” And again, I unfortunately think she is quite astute in this observation. But where I differ is that where Martin is entirely convinced that “perceiving is the same as receiving and it is the same as responding”, and doing these things makes the artist’s life a good one, I believe that the “response” must not be the same as the observation in that it must necessarily be active as well as perceptive.
Nathan, to be a virtuous actor in his relationship both to his work and his friend, Frances, must be generous and earnest in his perception and observation of her, but also in the act of depicting her, he is playing an active role in affirming their relationship; Frances will likely take being asked to model for his drawing as an act of care! Let’s take a more drastic example. Suppose Nathan begins painting beach-scapes. Day after day, he sits on Lucy Vincent Beach in Martha’s Vineyard, plein-air setup, and all. While, of course, he has the creative license to paint the beach at its most peaceful (as, again, I don’t take issue with abstraction or imagination in this regard), he may also see trash littering the shoreline if he is a virtuous observer in the way I have outlined. As such, I argue that it is especially the duty of an artist to “feel responsible for creating a better world.” Nathan, by earnestly observing his environment, must be aware of what could make it better (picking up some trash), which is to say that this is part of a critical response–part of the minimum deontological requirement. In this scenario, the optional maximum of seeing absolute beauty in the space is likely impossible, at least by the standard that this trash is not ideal. Say, however, that Frances, ever the observer, sees Nathan’s painting and, observing it openly, finds it deeply beautiful. Perhaps in this case, the maker and observer, together, can bridge the divide between critical response (and responsibility) and ideal response, without forgetting about earnest observation. In fact, you could imagine that upon hearing that Nathan cleaned up the beach after painting it, Frances could feel even more fondly of Nathan as a virtuous actor in her life. Even more interestingly, you could even think that she could feel his painting is more beautiful, knowing that he, in making it, engaged critically with the subject: her relationship to the material world is in this sense improved, made more beautiful, even, by Nathan’s critical response.
I put forth this scenario to assert that perhaps the virtuous life and the artistically resonant one are not in opposition, but rather can feed into each other, especially when considering the role of the observer and the maker as in conversation rather than separate. While I am prone to agree with Velleman and White that an exchange must be made–that absolute ideal response sacrifices earnest observation–I return to the notion of action and wonder if the virtuous artist must necessarily be the active individual, moving between observer and creator constantly. In Nathan and Frances’ situation with the beach painting, we see that it is possible for the observer and the creator to earnestly observe a subject and, in the former’s case, respond virtuously and critically, and in the latter’s case, respond virtuously as ideally. Virtuosity cannot, therefore, always escape us, even in scenarios where critical response is necessary, and ideal response would be reductive. Nathan and Frances prove here that between the observer, creator, and subject (material), earnest observation can yield critical and ideal responses, while allowing for all actors to act virtuously.
If Nathan and Frances can achieve this feat of virtuosity, why couldn’t one individual? By this, I mean that the earnest observation I am preoccupied with is not a one-time action. In the chain of Nathan making artwork for Frances to perceive, there is actually constant observation; to think that Nathan observing the beach or Frances observing the painting are the only moments of earnest observation would be a mistake. Instead, consider that Nathan perceives the beach, trash and all, and, actively observing, paints the image. Then, this is where it gets interesting: Frances observes the painting as the material itself, but also observes it as Nathan’s response to his own observations, and she may even observe the painting as descriptive of the relationship Nathan has to the world, the painting, and even to her as his audience! If earnest observation must be constant and active, then maybe the way to meet it, is to also be constant and active in our response. Perhaps we should strive to fall short of ideal response as, as an absolute maxim, it is harmful. Even more powerfully, however, perhaps the minimum requirement of critical response can be practiced actively, which, I claim, will allow for the optional maximum of ideal response–that is, beauty–to often (or at least sometimes) be achieved incidentally, given that the actors are constantly engaged earnestly.
Earnest observation
Critical response 一一一一一一一一一一 Ideal response (beauty)
Sources
https://philarchive.org/archive/VELLAA
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phpr.13135
https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2025/01/08/dating-art-world-guide,/
Agnes Martin, On Beauty
Striving for a virtuous life, I am concerned that the successful life as an artist is a conflicting desire. I propose that the framework Velleman uses regarding required minimums and optional maximums in terms of love can be applied more broadly to help articulate this concern. Just as respect can be understood as an approximation of love (a required minimum qua virtue), so too can critical engagement be recognized as an approximation of beauty, which I understand to be synonymous with ideal response. Further, White claims that love for all is an ideal to strive for, but falling short is not only to be accepted but even to be embraced, as reaching a “love for all” requires a lack of appropriate care for those particular loves that are necessary to a life of substance. I believe he is getting something right: that the exchange outlined in “Love First” is evident in love and beyond. Similarly, I suggest that to see absolute beauty–and even more radically, to depict and project it as an artist may desire to–one must necessarily be unable to earnestly observe or even earnestly care for the object or the artist, making the desire for beauty morally unjustified. Considering Quinn White’s “Love First” in conversation with Agnes Martin’s “On Beauty”, I argue that beauty and virtue can be understood as a dialectic both as an observer of artwork and objects and as a creator of these things, and that the character of observation and response defines the virtue of the Beautiful.
Under these circumstances, is pure beauty in opposition to virtue? If virtuous beauty is possible, is it our duty to achieve it just as “agape is an ideal we have pro tanto reason to manifest”?
§1 White is discussing our moral obligations as 1. people with particular loves (interpersonal relationships) and also as 2. people in a society or part of a species (human). I am interested in our moral obligations as 1a. observers of objects and artworks 1b. creators of objects and artworks (broadly, our relationships with the material world), and 2. people in a society or part of a species (human). Between these categories is the relationship between humans and the material world where materials act as mediators to interpersonal relationships. To understand the deontic constraints I believe we must hold dear, I will first define how the two halves of this former relationship, the one we have with the material world, can be understood.
§2 In analyzing the ethics of an observer’s relationship with the material world, I’d like to borrow the general nature of a great quip from a friend: “Date someone whose work you care about—you don’t need to love it, you don’t even need to like it, but you do need to care about it.” While here, my friend is commenting on dating in the art world, the note that to care about a beloved’s art means more than liking it is very exciting. Taken more seriously, to earnestly engage with a work of art (or any object, at that) is much more important than to find it beautiful. Here, care can be understood as earnest engagement and also can be posed as a necessarily virtuous or moral engagement, as it is honest as well as appreciative. In contrast, finding something beautiful does not, of course, necessarily mean one’s position is dishonest, but finding everything that a beloved creates to be beautiful carries more suspicion. Moreover, to find something beautiful carries value–that it is “liked”–but doesn’t necessarily denote adoration or sustained intentional engagement with the maker.
I understand observation (this earnest engagement) to be a prerequisite for response (at least for now, we will only consider abstract responses such as value, but we will come back to this in §3).
To investigate further, suppose your partner, Nathan, is a painter. He is an abstract artist a la Joseph Albers, even (as what we are discussing is not the ethics of “unethical” art such as exploitative nudes of women by perverts). When he asks you what you think about a particular painting, perhaps you say it is beautiful. I assert that this would be accepted happily! Nathan would likely not only be overjoyed that his beloved finds his painting beautiful, but would likely also feel cared for, as you saying his piece is beautiful is likely honest and therefore suggests an earnest engagement with it. However, Nathan is prolific. He paints day and night, and after a year of dating, you have seen hundreds of color fields. When he asks you what you think about his body of work, all this time later, you may reply that it is all beautiful. Here, Nathan might not only feel unsuccessful but also uncared for. Where he read care into your former statement, this new value may seem incredibly surface-level and unbelievable. More than that, the flatness of the statement suggests a lack of care–of earnest engagement. While I hesitate to suggest that time is never a factor, that if you claimed “beautiful” after five seconds, it is not more damning than claiming “beautiful” after five days, I don’t believe temporality to be crucial to my argument. Simply put, regardless of the time it took you to come to a valued conclusion, Nathan may find it hard to believe that the prerequisite observation was present before the valued response was asserted, given that “beauty” is an impersonal surface response.
Nathan, here, furthers my claim that beauty cannot be an absolute good in any sense. At least in this scenario, to find everything beautiful is not the same as finding anything (a singular or small subset of things). Even more excitingly, to claim to find everything beautiful is to neglect to appropriately engage with or care for the object(s) observed, therefore making one a necessarily unvirtuous observer! Of course, there may be a minute chance that the value of “beautiful” rings true for you, meaning you have carefully observed and reached this “beautiful” conclusion; I am prone to believing this to be almost impossible, but even so, I propose that even in that case, this surface-based value judgment would be less generous a response to Nathan when contrasted against a more critical and less universal view.
§3 Now, what of the maker? Accepting the notion that to find everything absolutely beautiful is uncaring as an observer, what then of the maker who strives for beauty? I’d put forward the words of Agnes Martin: “All art work is about beauty; all positive work represents it and celebrates it. All negative art protests the lack of beauty in our lives.” This description certainly centers beauty in artwork, a stance I agree with in terms of the depiction within the frame (the subject, broadly). However, Martin continues to say that “The goal of life is happiness and to respond to life as though it were perfect is the way to happiness. It is also the way to positive art work. It is not in the role of an artist to worry about life– to feel responsible for creating a better world. This is a very serious distraction.” I will take this statement in two parts. Firstly, the responsiveness crucial to an artistic life is fitting; we see this in the act of drawing from a live figure model, for example, as we respond to minute movements and must be deeply engaged in active observation. While connected, the distinction between response and observation is of utmost importance. Response necessarily derives from observation and is the action that separates one from being an observer to being an artist. Given that one observes and responds, Martin continues to claim that, for an artist, the work of active engagement ends here (or even must end here) as further action– responsibility for “better” change– is a distraction. Here, I feel almost repulsed, not because I disagree, but perhaps because I deeply understand and am troubled that I agree!
Beauty, in Martin’s terms, is an ideal to be celebrated. To find beauty in everything (“respond to life as though it were perfect”) is the (only) way to make positive art work; I argue, though, that it is also a denial of humanity! I want to be clear that, as discussed in §2, observation is a necessary step before response. Here, the difference is that the response has become material-based. Objects or artworks are being produced rather than valued judgements or abstractions. For now, we can use the terms of observation and response separately.
Accepting that we (humans) must observe earnestly in order to live virtuously, the real question is whether we can or should respond ideally. Agnes Martin would say, as an artist, we must respond ideally, that is to say, respond beautifully. I would say, as a human, we must respond earnestly. But is it as simple as that? That one should observe, but then respond earnestly if one values their humanity, and ideally if one values their studio practice? How grim! Of course, my worry, then, is what of the artist who wants to live virtuously?
§4 Here, perhaps, we can find resolution by returning to Velleman’s framing. What if, instead of the absolutes we used before (that one can be either artist or human, either earnest or ideal), we operate within required minimums and optional maximums? To use this framing, earnest observation and ideal response must be considered together rather than dealt with separately, as we discussed previously. However, this is not to say that they cannot be, at least sometimes, mutually exclusive maxims! This is challenging to hold, as, taking Nathan’s paintings again, wouldn’t striving to find the beauty in Nathan’s color fields (striving to respond ideally) inherently imply a lack of earnest engagement? With Nathan himself as a painter, would striving to make a beautiful painting (striving to respond ideally) suggest a lack of earnest engagement with his subject matter? My answer is yes! And I think that Quinn White may agree! When discussing love and respect, love for all cannot be practiced while also having room for particular love, a tension I see as similar to the mutual exclusivity of some kind. Respect, therefore, is the minimum requirement of the virtuous person, as it approximates love for all while leaving room for particular love. In terms of beauty, I argue that the ideal response, the optional maximum, doesn’t leave room for earnest engagement, so, following this model, one must approximate the ideal response such that there is room for earnest observation. I suggest that the closest approximation, the required minimum, is critical response.
I’d like us to consider Nathan again. This time, suppose that Frances and Nathan are friends. Frances has a particular taste in art and generally gravitates toward hyperrealistic charcoal work. When Nathan asks her opinion on his body of work, it is easy to assert that the virtuous response is not to immediately write it off. She should certainly give it a chance! As an observer, she also must give value (respond)–whether that is a good value or bad is unimportant. Further, if Nathan forays into figure drawing, using Frances as his subject, to strive to depict her “beautifully” would be to deny a certain Frances-ness. This is not to suggest that she is not beautiful, but to say that any preconceived image or desire for ideal response must necessarily shroud the observation from total earnestness. Nathan’s observations may please Frances or create a nice image, but his observation of her would be rose-tinted to say the least. The drawing would not be fair (that is, Nathan’s relationship to the object would not be one of earnestness), but more importantly, his relationship to Frances, even if (and possibly especially if) she is pleased by the image, would be similarly dishonest. I believe that if Frances knew that Nathan, asking her to model for him, was drawing her not as he sees her, but as he wants his drawing to look, would feel slighted in some regard. While Nathan may respond that he is an artist and need not concern himself with accuracy so much as a great work, Frances may even have reason to be more upset! Would observing her in earnest mean he wouldn’t see beauty?
Now, what would it mean for Frances and Nathan to instead respond critically? As an observer, perhaps this means that Frances, finally having room to engage earnestly by not being confined by preconceived negativity or idealization, can be appropriately pleased by Nathan’s skill and also appropriately dissatisfied with the roundness of the shapes he depicts. As an artist, perhaps Nathan is able to engage earnestly with Frances as a subject, understanding her form more than he initially was able to when striving for beauty was of utmost importance. To be clear, I don’t mean to argue against creativity–drawing Frances’ eyes larger because he is drawn to them–as I would categorize that into deeply earnest observation and engagement with Frances! Realism is not to be conflated with earnest observation. I believe these subconscious things we find beautiful in a subject may only come about when they are earnestly observed. Nathan may find Frances’ dress unappealing and choose to shroud it in shadow, but appreciate the highlight of her nosebridge and accentuate that feature. Under these circumstances, he can respond critically, appropriately depicting what he earnestly finds most beautiful about Frances, and I’d argue, in the process, capture a certain Frances-ness that may have escaped him before!
I have been thinking of creating good artwork or living as a successful artist, as opposed to a virtuous life. Agnes Martin, again, gives this speech in her assertion that “You can’t think, “My life is more important than the work” and get the work. You have to think the work is paramount in your life.” And again, I unfortunately think she is quite astute in this observation. But where I differ is that where Martin is entirely convinced that “perceiving is the same as receiving and it is the same as responding”, and doing these things makes the artist’s life a good one, I believe that the “response” must not be the same as the observation in that it must necessarily be active as well as perceptive.
Nathan, to be a virtuous actor in his relationship both to his work and his friend, Frances, must be generous and earnest in his perception and observation of her, but also in the act of depicting her, he is playing an active role in affirming their relationship; Frances will likely take being asked to model for his drawing as an act of care! Let’s take a more drastic example. Suppose Nathan begins painting beach-scapes. Day after day, he sits on Lucy Vincent Beach in Martha’s Vineyard, plein-air setup, and all. While, of course, he has the creative license to paint the beach at its most peaceful (as, again, I don’t take issue with abstraction or imagination in this regard), he may also see trash littering the shoreline if he is a virtuous observer in the way I have outlined. As such, I argue that it is especially the duty of an artist to “feel responsible for creating a better world.” Nathan, by earnestly observing his environment, must be aware of what could make it better (picking up some trash), which is to say that this is part of a critical response–part of the minimum deontological requirement. In this scenario, the optional maximum of seeing absolute beauty in the space is likely impossible, at least by the standard that this trash is not ideal. Say, however, that Frances, ever the observer, sees Nathan’s painting and, observing it openly, finds it deeply beautiful. Perhaps in this case, the maker and observer, together, can bridge the divide between critical response (and responsibility) and ideal response, without forgetting about earnest observation. In fact, you could imagine that upon hearing that Nathan cleaned up the beach after painting it, Frances could feel even more fondly of Nathan as a virtuous actor in her life. Even more interestingly, you could even think that she could feel his painting is more beautiful, knowing that he, in making it, engaged critically with the subject: her relationship to the material world is in this sense improved, made more beautiful, even, by Nathan’s critical response.
I put forth this scenario to assert that perhaps the virtuous life and the artistically resonant one are not in opposition, but rather can feed into each other, especially when considering the role of the observer and the maker as in conversation rather than separate. While I am prone to agree with Velleman and White that an exchange must be made–that absolute ideal response sacrifices earnest observation–I return to the notion of action and wonder if the virtuous artist must necessarily be the active individual, moving between observer and creator constantly. In Nathan and Frances’ situation with the beach painting, we see that it is possible for the observer and the creator to earnestly observe a subject and, in the former’s case, respond virtuously and critically, and in the latter’s case, respond virtuously as ideally. Virtuosity cannot, therefore, always escape us, even in scenarios where critical response is necessary, and ideal response would be reductive. Nathan and Frances prove here that between the observer, creator, and subject (material), earnest observation can yield critical and ideal responses, while allowing for all actors to act virtuously.
If Nathan and Frances can achieve this feat of virtuosity, why couldn’t one individual? By this, I mean that the earnest observation I am preoccupied with is not a one-time action. In the chain of Nathan making artwork for Frances to perceive, there is actually constant observation; to think that Nathan observing the beach or Frances observing the painting are the only moments of earnest observation would be a mistake. Instead, consider that Nathan perceives the beach, trash and all, and, actively observing, paints the image. Then, this is where it gets interesting: Frances observes the painting as the material itself, but also observes it as Nathan’s response to his own observations, and she may even observe the painting as descriptive of the relationship Nathan has to the world, the painting, and even to her as his audience! If earnest observation must be constant and active, then maybe the way to meet it, is to also be constant and active in our response. Perhaps we should strive to fall short of ideal response as, as an absolute maxim, it is harmful. Even more powerfully, however, perhaps the minimum requirement of critical response can be practiced actively, which, I claim, will allow for the optional maximum of ideal response–that is, beauty–to often (or at least sometimes) be achieved incidentally, given that the actors are constantly engaged earnestly.
Earnest observation
Critical response 一一一一一一一一一一 Ideal response (beauty)
Sources
https://philarchive.org/archive/VELLAA
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phpr.13135
https://www.culturedmag.com/article/2025/01/08/dating-art-world-guide,/
Agnes Martin, On Beauty