An/Aesth/Ethics: the ethical potential of design
- Submitting institution
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Edinburgh Napier University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 1111715
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.14434/artifact.v3i3.3960
- Title of journal
- Artifact
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 4
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 3
- ISSN
- 1749-3471
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- November
- Year of publication
- 2015
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
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-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This peer-reviewed journal paper advances a novel combination of ideas within the context of design by drawing in and synthesising an array of concepts from various philosophical and theoretical sources to present the core argument that design’s aesthetic interventions in the world can both sensitise and numb us to ethical awareness. Design is often thought of as an activity seeking to change existing situations into preferred ones. But how are designers to discern what the nature of this “preferred” change should be? In seeking to improve situations through design, it is possible to end up bypassing the ethical altogether. Synthesising concepts drawn from multi-disciplinary literature, the paper discusses and analyses the possibility that design can aesthetically provide the appearance and sensation of ethicality without the inconvenience of actually having to be ethical. The argument presented is that ethical discomfort can be anaesthetised through the process of aestheticizing ethics (an/aesth/ethics). Beginning with visual communication design, but maintaining a view to the applicability and importance of the argument for broader fields of design, this research presents the case that there is hope for genuinely ethical design in an increasingly aestheticized world by drawing on German philosopher of aesthetics Wolfgang Welsch’s suggestion that the root of ethics can be found to emerge from within the aesthetic itself. Design, which for so long has been a principal contributor to an/aestheticization, contains within itself - precisely due its aesthetic nature - the potential to return feeling to a society which finds itself constantly numbed to true ethical being.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -