ethical interpretation Quotes

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.

I'm a fan of Hugh Kenner, Richard Ellman, Lionel Trilling and Frank Kermode. All these people have taught me how to read - but perhaps, above all literary critics, I'm indebted to Wayne Booth (several people have suggested to me that I'm trying to reinvent "ethical criticism").

The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.

Maybe right and wrong did not move, but understanding of them did. The wrenching pain of walking the same path, even for a short space, tore away the willingness to judge.

While there is such a thing as correctness in ethics, in interpretation, in mathematics, the way to understand that is not by trying to model it on the ways in which we get things right in physics.

Rhetoric takes no real account of the art in literature and morality takes no account of the art in life.

There's nothing "wrong" with anything. "Wrong" is a relative term, indicating the opposite of that which you call "right." Yet, what is "right"? Can you be truly objective in these matters? Or are "right" and "wrong" simply descriptions overlaid on events and circumstances by you, out of your decision about them?

If a context and a goal is defined I could say if it's good or bad. But overall I don't view things as good or bad. So I'm like a robot or computer in that sense. So maybe that's why people don't think they know me when they read my writing.

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

Far more often [than asking the question 'Is it true?'] they [children] have asked me: 'Was he good? Was he wicked?' That is, they were far more concerned to get the Right side and the Wrong side clear. For that is a question equally important in History and in Faerie.

The common people, on the whole, are still living in the world of absolute good and evil from which the intellectuals have long since escaped.

I'm really shocked when critics get morally outraged at my fiction because they think I'm condoning what's going on. I never come in as the author and say, "Hey, okay. I'm interrupting the narrator here. I'm Bret Easton Ellis, and I'm the author."

So our virtues lie in the interpretation of the time

Things aren't good or bad in and of themselves. It's what we do with them that makes them so.

If you come at movies with your own sense of morality and not your own sense of aesthetics, I think you're screwed. I think that's not a way to look at movies.

I think there are three types of actors. There are the ones that do the ego thing, which is "I'm never going to look bad in a movie, ever." This is mostly the action film dudes, like, "Nah, hell no. He ain't punchin' me! I'd whoop his ass!" Then you've got the activist type who bases their decisions in the development of a character on what it symbolizes to society - what the ethical code is. And then the third type is a true thespian who doesn't give a flying rat's ass what it is as long as it's deep, powerful, and painful, and they will dive in headfirst. I really respect those people.

Perhaps, indeed, there are no truly universal ethics: or to put it more precisely, the ways in which ethical principles are interpreted will inevitably differ across cultures and eras. Yet, these differences arise chiefly at the margins. All known societies embrace the virtues of truthfulness, integrity, loyalty, fairness; none explicitly endorse falsehood, dishonesty, disloyalty, gross inequity. (Five Minds for the Future, p136)