Where Ethics and Aesthetics Diverge: Reconsidering the Objection from Creepiness

Abstract In ‘Where Ethics and Aesthetics Meet: Titian’s Rape of Europa’ (2003), A.W. Eaton conducts an in-depth analysis of Titian’s Rape of Europa, presenting the painting as an example of a work that is ethically defective and whose ethical defect diminishes the work aesthetically. In this paper, I argue that while Eaton convincingly pinpoints an ethical defect in the work, she fails to show that it is thereby aesthetically defective. My argument revives what she calls the ‘Objection from Creepiness’ (OfC), which appeals to the existence of ‘creeps’, for whom the ethical defect in a work does not block the prescribed response. I argue that Eaton’s dismissal of the objection is too quick, and that a reconsideration of the OfC shows it to be particularly powerful in cases where (1) creeps are the target audience of a work, and (2) the ethical defects of the work concern the erotic.