Immoral Art: Hume’s “Rough Heroes” Problem

Exploring how we judge art without bias or prejudices, Hume’s essay “Of the Standard of Taste” delves into why we like what we like. In doing so, Hume questions if an artwork’s immoral depictions also cause it to have aesthetic flaws. By looking at characters like Humbert Humbert from Nabokov’s Lolita and works like The Turner Diaries, this article explores where these lines might be drawn, if they ought to be drawn at all.

In his article “Of the Standard of Taste” included in Four Dissertations, David Hume addresses the differences in taste between different people—some will be moved more by works of tragedy, others by comedy, and others still only by Will Farrell movies.

That being said, some work ought to be held as better than others, and so he argues that “it is natural for us to seek a standard of taste—a rule by which the sentiments of men can be reconciled, or at least a decision can reached that confirms one sentiment and condemns another” (8).

In doing so, we must not allow the customs and preferences of our time and place to have a say in the quality of the work. Hume goes on to say that the critic must:

… keep his mind free from all prejudice, allowing nothing to enter into his consideration but the one particular work that he is examining. Every work of art, in order to produce its proper effect on the mind, must be surveyed from a certain point of view, and won’t be fully appreciated by people whose situation—real or imaginary—doesn’t fit with the one that the work requires (14).

Each work deserves to be judged with a clean slate so that its beauty may be appreciated outside of changes in times. If a work is deemed aesthetically bad, it’s because it is inherently displeasing, not due to the whims of society. Depictions of acts or characters that are distasteful in some way, therefore, should not automatically give rise to that fiction being considered aesthetically bad.

However, in the quest for the “Standard of Taste,” we are made aware of another problem: are there works of art with moral flaws so prominent, regardless of custom, that they give rise to aesthetic flaws in the work?

Rough Heroes and Imaginative Resistance

If you were put in a room with all of the most beloved works of art ever created, it would be uninteresting to tell you that many depict immoral acts and an abundance of vices. The interesting question is if these depictions of moral flaws give rise to aesthetic ones.

According to Hume:

But… where vicious manners are described, without being marked with the proper characters of blame and disapprobation, this must be allowed to disfigure the poem, and to be a real deformity. I cannot, nor is it proper I should, enter into such sentiments; and however I may excuse the poet, on account of the manners of his age, I never can relish the composition… We are not interested in the fortunes and sentiments of such rough heroes; We are displeased to find the limits of vice and virtue so much confounded; and whatever indulgence we may give to the writer on account of his prejudices, we cannot prevail on ourselves to enter into his sentiments, or bear an affection to characters, which we plainly discover to be blameable (14).

Hume is not saying “we ought not to enjoy works of fiction that have depictions of folk doing immoral acts.” It is not enough for immoral acts to be depicted for the work to be morally flawed; the immoral act needs to be endorsed as moral. If a character commits some act that is endorsed as morally permissible, but I cannot conceive of that act as morally permissible, it is only then that the moral flaw would cause me to have imaginative resistance to the work. Put another way, imaginative resistance is the intuition that the scenario within the work is not logically possible.

Now that we better understand the problem, let’s find an example of a “rough hero.” A good place to start is characters with irredeemable qualities, to see if those qualities give rise to imaginative resistance.

Consider Humbert Humbert from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita. Some have claimed that this is a book that normalizes and even glamorizes pedophilia. Humbert becomes obsessed with a young girl named Dolores, whom he dubs a “nymphette” and renames in his mind as Lolita.

We read on as he begins grooming both Delores and her mother—marrying and moving with Delores’s mother in order to be closer to her. Eventually, he murders the mother so that he can abuse Delores without interference. This abuse continues for several years before she manages to escape his “guardianship.”

Humbert is a tricky case in the context of “rough heroes.” Still, upon inspection, it should become apparent that Lolita does not contain an aesthetic flaw, regardless of whether it may depict moral ones. For starters, anyone who reads Lolita and finds themselves sympathetic to Humbert Humbert has a serious issue of misreading the book. Humbert is despicable, and it is intended that he be read as such. The problem many have while reading Lolita is not inconceivability but the horror of knowing just how conceivable it is that men such as Humbert exist.

Of course, there are predators out in the world with seedy mustaches and lazy eyes, but most are closer to Humbert—some combination of intelligent, well-spoken, and capable of charm. These qualities do not redeem Humbert, but they are important parts of his character. Due to this combination of good and irredeemable traits, we imagine all too well that Humbert would succeed—that is the horror and beauty of Lolita.

It is likely the following novel would contain what Hume meant by “rough hero” and, thus, is an aesthetically flawed work of art—the Turner Diaries. Published in 1999 by a man named William Pierce, this book led to terrible consequences, as it was a direct inspiration for the Oklahoma City Bombing. However, bad consequences do not necessarily make a work inherently flawed.

The setting of this novel is stated to be the same as the actual world, with a protagonist named Earl Turner. The given setting of a fiction is crucial for the “rough heroes” discussion, so the fact that it is said to be the exact world that we live in is a critical detail. This means that the origins of the United States are the same: America had the civil rights movement, and Martin Luther King Jr. still had a dream.

Only, instead of a source of pride, this is conveyed as a broken and immoral America. Turner and his militia overthrew the government, destroyed all non-white persons, and publicly hung “race traitors.”

This sounds like a horrific scene perpetrated by violent criminals. However, these actions are endorsed as heroic; Turner and his allies are doing good work. His death by suicide mission is the death of a hero, like Gandalf or Jesus. He is the sort of character Hume meant when he talked of a “rough hero”; someone who does unspeakable evil endorsed as the greatest of goods.

So, Do Immoral Depictions Cause Aesthetic Flaws?

When reading the Turner Diaries, there should be a moment when you are forcibly disengaged from the story. It isn’t whether you want to engage—the aesthetic defect arises because you can’t. Sure, you can literally read the words. But you can’t immerse yourself in the story without feeling your brow furrowing. While there may be moral qualms, this is not the friction we are concerned with. Rather, we are concerned with the intuition that this is an impossible scenario causing friction—or, imaginative resistance—which is similar to how one should be shaken upon hearing that someone’s favorite shape is a squared circle.

The aesthetic flaws of the Turner Diaries we have been discussing are inherent, meaning that the world sets the terms but then fails on those very same terms. The diaries set out to tell a tale of a heroic, morally good man. Instead, they told a tale of a degenerate committing evil acts.

Of course, this novel fails aesthetically for a myriad of other reasons—it is poorly written and badly structured and lacks any draw except for those with a worldview skewed by narcissism and hate.

This needs to be distinct from those works of fiction that may prove to have morally problematic consequences. Those who misread Lolita may think that Humbert sounds like a great guy and may even prey on children themselves. However, this does not mar the work aesthetically. For Lolita to be aesthetically flawed, Humbert would need to be presented as a caring man and a wonderful stepfather.

Thus, a work depicting the horrors and ugly facets of humanity may also be something of magnificence and beauty. These fictions can deepen our empathy and widen our worldview. However, the most beautiful prose in the world could never redeem a work like The Turner Diaries.