Sell your Death

A dear friend, an artist herself, made me realise that television is far more extreme than art is, with regard to crossing moral limitations.
She pointed me to the case of Jade Goody who, terminally ill, sold her dying to network stations and journals, spending the money earned on her two surviving sons.

I have always thought that dying is the most intimate affair of human life, and that it should be shared with one’s loved ones. This case really shatters a moral intuition of mine, a profound feeling about what it means to be human.

We must think this through thoroughly. Yet my first thought remains that this is plain immoral, and that, for that reason, it cannot be art.

(Thanks to Irene Janze)

– Gerwen, Rob van. 2004. “Ethical Autonomism. The Work of Art as a Moral Agent.” Contemporary Aesthetics, vol. 2.
____________. 2010. “How the Present Rise of Immoral Art Helps Clarify Both the Definition and the Moral Autonomy of Art. A Post-Script to Ethical Autonomism.” ms.
– More on this on my weblog.