ABSTRACT
The “ethics of imagination” or the “ethics of fantasy” encompasses the various ways in which we can morally evaluate the imagination. For instance, many people think that it is wrong to fantasize about torturing and raping children. Others have found far less disturbing fantasies problematic. Augustine, for instance, felt guilty for merely having sexual dreams (Confessions 10.xxx). And many critics have complained about artworks that ask audiences to pleasurably imagine violent and prurient narratives. As these examples make clear, this topic covers a range of different kinds of imagination:
(1) fantasizing, (2) engaging with fictions, and (3) dreaming. Some clarification: By “fantasizing” I have in mind conscious, pleasurable imagining. This kind of imaginative activity can be willful or spontaneous. As with dreaming, typically fantasizing involves imagining doing something. The second kind of imaginative activity, engaging with fictions, is a kind of guided suppositional imagination via representations. In contrast to fantasy and dreams, it seldom involves imagining doing something. Here I adopt a common, unrefined notion of the imagination. Theoretical considerations
may give us good reason to select different labels; the hallucinatory character of dreaming makes it a peculiar inclusion.1 But dreams are commonly thought to be the product of the imagination, even though we are typically unaware of this fact while dreaming. Putting aside these controversies, for present purposes all three fall under the everyday notion imaginative activity. For each of these kinds of imaginings, we can ask questions involving at least three interrelated,
but different kinds of moral evaluation: (1) the right, (2) the good, and (3) the attribution of moral responsibility. We can ask if it is right or wrong to engage in certain kinds of imagining. Alternatively, we can ask if it is good or bad. Plausibly, it is morally undesirable to dream about raping and torturing children. But it might not be wrong to do so. Right and wrong pertain to actions; goodness and badness pertain to states of affairs. We can also ask whether we can be blameworthy for our fantasies, reactions to fiction, and dreams. I will elaborate in the following sections. As will become clear, most of the live ethical questions do not concern the mere content
of imaginings. Imagining terrible things is not morally problematic in itself. It’s not content
that concerns us; instead, we are mainly concerned with our reactions to imagined content. When I talk of imagining something I mean to include our responses to the imagined content, not the mere content. I’m referring to the imaginative experience. The clearest, live ethical question concerns the moral value of taking pleasure in undeserved suffering, whether willfully imagined, represented, or dreamed. Fantasizing about raping and torturing innocent children is a striking example of morally dubious imaginative experience. Much of this entry concerns general theoretical considerations and how they relate to the
ethics of fantasy. In the final sections I walk through the three types of imagination and point out some of the open questions concerning each type.
