Overview
Aesthetic Ethics: Towards A Moral Imagination seeks to challenge and expand the boundaries of how we conceive ethics and morality, proposing that beauty, sublimity and emotional resonances found in the realm of the arts are essential for re-imagining a more just and compassionate world. This volume delves into how aesthetic experiences cultivate ethical sensibilities and a deepened responsibility towards others and the world around us. Through a blend of philosophical inquiry, psychoanalytic theory and humanities scholarship, the contributors examine the transformative power of the aesthetic on ethical wisdom and practices. The volume asserts that aesthetic experiences are not merely for hedonic pleasure nor detached contemplation, but are vital to developing a moral imagination capable of confronting the complexities of human existence and social engagement. The chapters in this volume propose that engaging with art, literature, music and culture opens capacities and re-imagines possibilities. Contributors utilise case studies, theoretical explorations and analysis of artistic expressions to argue for the aesthetic as a fundamental component in the cultivation of deepened ethical relations and, ultimately, societal change. Aesthetic Ethics hosts the voices and scholarship of significant figures across disciplines, addressing questions at the intersections of aesthetic theory, ethical psychotherapy, and the social order. Practitioners, as well as students and researchers of the humanities, the arts, politics, philosophy, psychology, psychosocial studies, sociology and social work alike will find this an illuminating and revivifying read.
Full Product Details
Author: M. Mookie C. Manalili ,
David M. Goodman (Woods College of Advancing Studies, Boston College; Director, Psychology and the Other Institute; Harvard Medical School) ,
Diana Boros
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint: Routledge
Weight: 0.680kg
ISBN: 9781032983288
ISBN 10: 1032983280
Pages: 282
Publication Date: 25 February 2026
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
‘This volume arrives at a moment when psychology has grown increasingly estranged from the very experiences it once claimed to illuminate. Across its chapters, we are reminded that moral life cannot be reduced to compliance, calibration, or codified procedures. What emerges instead is a textured account of ethics as a matter of attention, relation, and aesthetic encounter. The authors take seriously the idea that beauty can unsettle us, that it can disrupt the sterile logics of self-optimization and invite us into forms of perception that resist abstraction. Rather than treating the aesthetic as decorative or indulgent, the book positions it as a condition for ethical responsiveness, for seeing the world and one another with care. In doing so, it gestures toward a psychology that has not forgotten how to wonder and that has room for what lingers unresolved.’ Justin M. Karter, Ph.D., Boston College ‘For more than a hundred years, there has been an intense debate over which branch of philosophy could replace metaphysics as the first and most foundational way of knowing. Some have argued that ethics ought to take the place of primacy and be enshrined as our ""first philosophy."" Others, myself included, have championed the supremacy of aesthetics. With deftness and insight, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the proximity and reciprocity of the Good and the Beautiful in ways that their intellectual forerunners would no doubt have envied.’ Matthew Clemente, Ph.D., author of Bacchus Agonistes: Metarealism and the Future of Art ‘Aesthetic Ethics is poised to become a landmark text, reminding us that being moved by beauty, form, and the sublime is no luxury but the very pulse of our personhood. The contributing authors reclaim the aesthetic as an inroad to moral imagination by illustrating how embracing our discarded, inferiorized aspects can ignite the exaltation and urgent vision needed to forge new possibilities for humanity.’ Zenobia Morrill, Ph.D., William James College
'This volume arrives at a moment when psychology has grown increasingly estranged from the very experiences it once claimed to illuminate. Across its chapters, we are reminded that moral life cannot be reduced to compliance, calibration, or codified procedures. What emerges instead is a textured account of ethics as a matter of attention, relation, and aesthetic encounter. The authors take seriously the idea that beauty can unsettle us, that it can disrupt the sterile logics of self-optimization and invite us into forms of perception that resist abstraction. Rather than treating the aesthetic as decorative or indulgent, the book positions it as a condition for ethical responsiveness, for seeing the world and one another with care. In doing so, it gestures toward a psychology that has not forgotten how to wonder and that has room for what lingers unresolved.' Justin M. Karter, Ph.D., Boston College 'For more than a hundred years, there has been an intense debate over which branch of philosophy could replace metaphysics as the first and most foundational way of knowing. Some have argued that ethics ought to take the place of primacy and be enshrined as our ""first philosophy."" Others, myself included, have championed the supremacy of aesthetics. With deftness and insight, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the proximity and reciprocity of the Good and the Beautiful in ways that their intellectual forerunners would no doubt have envied.' Matthew Clemente, Ph.D., author of Bacchus Agonistes: Metarealism and the Future of Art 'Aesthetic Ethics is poised to become a landmark text, reminding us that being moved by beauty, form, and the sublime is no luxury but the very pulse of our personhood. The contributing authors reclaim the aesthetic as an inroad to moral imagination by illustrating how embracing our discarded, inferiorized aspects can ignite the exaltation and urgent vision needed to forge new possibilities for humanity.' Zenobia Morrill, Ph.D., William James College
Author Information
M. Mookie C. Manalili is Licensed Independent Certified Social Worker (LICSW) Psychotherapist, Professor and Researcher based in Boston, USA. He is completing his PhD in Pastoral Counseling and Psychology at Boston University. He is faculty at School of Social Work and Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College, and is co-leader of the Psychological Humanities Lab. He is also in a private group practice in Boston, MA. David M. Goodman is Clinical Psychologist and Dean of the Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College, USA, where he also serves as Executive Director for the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics. Dr. Goodman is on the faculty in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development and in the Philosophy department at Boston College’s Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences. He also has a private practice in Boston, MA. Diana Boros is Professor of Political Theory in the Political Science Department at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the National Honors College. She is also affiliated faculty in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at SMCM. She has published books on the topics of art, public art, politics, and public space and is creator of the video podcast series ""Hosting Art"".
