Do the ethical features of an artwork bear on its aesthetic value? This movie endorses misogyny, that song is a civil rights anthem, the clay constituting this statue was extracted with underpaid labor—are facts like these the proper bases for aesthetic evaluation? I argue that this debate has suffered from a false presupposition: that if the answer is “yes” (for at least some such ethical features), such considerations feature as pro tanto contributions to an artwork’s overall aesthetic value, i.e., as merits or flaws which make something have more or less overall aesthetic value. As the case of ethically laden aesthetic evaluation makes clear, however, good aesthetic judgement is irreducibly multi-dimensional, e.g., “the movie has an engaging soundtrack, tasteful camera work, and takes a misogynistically purient perspective on its female lead.” Such a “non-summative” judgement refuses to reduce those various dimensions of aesthetic value to a single aggregate aesthetic evaluation, like “it’s a 6/10” or “it’s a pretty good movie!” I defend both the modest claim that such non-summative evaluations are not mistaken and the extremist claim that summative (i.e., unidimensional) aesthetic evaluation is defective by considering other domains of normative assessment in which summing seems inappropriate, notably including evaluations of people’s character.

艺术品的道德特征是否与其审美价值有关？这部电影支持厌女症，那首歌是一首民权赞歌，构成这座雕像的粘土是用低薪劳动提取的——像这样的事实是审美评估的适当基础吗？我认为，这场辩论受到了一个错误的假设：如果答案是“是”（至少对于一些这样的道德特征），那么这些考虑就意味着对艺术品的整体审美价值有亲切的贡献，即作为使某物或多或少具有整体审美价值的优点或缺陷。然而，正如充满道德的审美评估所表明的那样，好的审美判断是不可简化的多维的，例如，“这部电影有引人入胜的配乐，有品位的摄影工作，并对其女性主角采取了厌恶女性的纯粹视角。这种“非总结性”的判断拒绝将审美价值的不同维度简化为单一的总体审美评价，比如“这是一部 6/10”或“这是一部相当不错的电影！我通过考虑总结性评估似乎不合适的规范性评估的其他领域，特别是包括对人性格的评估，为总结性（即单维）审美评估是有缺陷的极端主张辩护，特别是包括对人性格的评估。