Art and Ethics : The Frontal Cortex

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Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired. He's also written for The New Yorker, Seed, Nature, the Boston Globe and is a contributor to Radio Lab. He's the author of Proust Was A Neuroscientist. His new book is How We Decide.

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Art and Ethics

Posted on: June 4, 2008 3:55 PM, by Jonah Lehrer

Last year, some drunken teens decided to trash the house of Robert Frost. The teens are now being required by a judge to take poetry classes focusing on the verse of Frost:

Using "The Road Not Taken" and another poem as jumping-off points, Frost biographer Jay Parini hopes to show the vandals the error of their ways -- and the redemptive power of poetry.
"I guess I was thinking that if these teens had a better understanding of who Robert Frost was and his contribution to our society, that they would be more respectful of other people's property in the future and would also learn something from the experience," said prosecutor John Quinn.

I think art can do many magnificent things. It can, for instance, teach you a little something about your brain. But I'm not sure great art makes for great ethics. Robert Frost, after all, wasn't the nicest guy. He often neglected his wife for his mistress, had a violent temper, and was a distant father. (His life was also marked by a series of tragedies: one of his sons committed suicide and two of his daughters suffered from severe nervous breakdowns.) Auden was right: poetry makes nothing happen.

Besides, we don't ask science to be an ethical instructor. We don't assume that knowing about the vagaries of the amygdala will make a person more sensitive, or that learning about synaptic proteins will save your soul, or that knowing about Joshua Greene's research will keep you from committing personal moral violations. Rather, we assume, quite rightly, that science is an investigation, a search, a way of grappling with the world. Poetry is no different. (Why, by the way, do we assume that great art must inspire virtue? Is this another one of Plato's legacies?) The sad truth is that reading a magnificent Frost poem won't prevent you from vandalizing private property. It will, however, teach you a thing or two about beauty. And maybe, just maybe, you'll learn something about yourself.

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Comments (3)

... and here I was thinking you were about to launch into a review of a book I read recently... ;)

'An Arsonist's Guide To Writers' Homes In New England' - http://www.amazon.com/Arsonists-Guide-Writers-Homes-England/dp/1565125517

Posted by: podblack | June 5, 2008 10:36 AM

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen ground swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the Sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

Before I build a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out;
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't like a wall,
That wants it down."

excerpt from "Mending Wall" by RF

Posted by: jb | June 5, 2008 1:05 PM

It seems to me that great art tells the truth and this is how I judge movies of which I've watched a number, being the parent of a film-maker. One of the truths that movies or other art forms can depict is that unskillful thoughts, speech and actions have unpleasant consequences. In my experience this is the way the world works and the best art can and does reflect this. Does one come away from a Shakespeare tragedy feeling that crime pays for example?
Of course we don't know much about Shakespeare's life and whether he occasionally stole to pay the rent or beat his wife. Artists may be able to get back to square one mentally (the right hemisphere) and have ideas for great art but they probably don't live there and are subject to the same engrained excesses as the rest of us and suffer the same consequences.

Posted by: jb | June 6, 2008 12:30 AM