The aesthetic expression of moral character. Moral beauty in the eighteenth century

Moral beauty is the beauty of a person’s character. Generosity, for instance, is morally
beautiful. Since antiquity and especially during the eighteenth century the notion of
moral beauty was commonplace in aesthetic and moral theory. Today we tend to think
that talk of moral beauty is merely metaphorical. A literal meaning of moral beauty
involves the danger that the attractiveness of beauty leads us to make moral judgments
that are biased by the mere physical appearance of a person that is not necessarily
morally relevant. In this thesis I assess the most influential eighteenth century
conceptions of moral beauty. I recognize that the unqualified use of the term ‘beauty’ in
these theories might support the cautionary dismissal of moral beauty as a mere
metaphor. Yet, I argue that by meeting two conditions it is possible to defend a literal
conception of moral beauty that can be taken seriously by current research on the
interaction between aesthetic and moral values. First, we need an account of why moral
beauty and non-moral physical beauty are distinct kinds of beauty. Second, we need an
account of how moral beauty can be expressive of moral virtue without identifying one
with the other. Meeting these conditions avoids conflating moral beauty with non-moral
beauty and/or with moral virtue. The morally relevant kind of beauty is thereby
distinguished from the morally irrelevant kind of beauty. This allows for a safe literal
conception of moral beauty that helps justify many of our moral judgments based on
aesthetic value. I argue that while Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Reid meet the
first condition, only Kant and Schiller meet both conditions. I also argue that these
philosophers’ literal conception of moral beauty reveals that judgments of beauty and
moral judgments are, according to their theories, based on the same normative
principles.