The Ethical Imagination of Art

Why, when we see acts of apparent selflessness, do we often swell with emotion?

Why, to put an even finer point on this, when we observe even fictional gestures of sincere compassion, do we pause, tear up, reach for a tissue or a nearby loved one, and become seized with something that transcends admiration -- something that feels like melting?

Art, in its various forms, uniquely taps into the human imagination, grips our emotions, and, if we listen, instructs.  Take, for example, the following short video clip, which of late, and deservedly, has been making the social media rounds.

(The YouTube link for the video is here.

The brief article about the video from Gawker is here.)

Freud and Woolf on Art

In Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Sigmund Freud argues that “[l]ife as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments, and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures” (CD 23). Art is one such “palliative,” one that features prominently in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927). Whereas for Freud art is merely one means of substituting pleasure for the pain of reality by escaping reality, in Woolf’s novel art also has a palliative function, but it intersects with and merges with reality to induce pleasure, satisfaction, and intimacy within it.