According to Thomas Shanks, S.J., executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics: “Ethics is intimately bound up with art because, at its heart, are human relationships.”
Tom Rockmore, leading professor of philosophy at Duquesne University and widely published author on ethics, agrees, adding that art is ‘not ethically irrelevant, since it can serve to call attention to existential problems and stimulate kinds of reflection.’ This is a popular contention, that art – its creation, display and distribution – are by their very nature at service to the common good of mankind, therefore ethically ‘correct’.
