The Aesthetics of Violence

“A man who robs would always be an object to be rejected by the poet who wishes to present serious pictures. But suppose this man is at the same time a murderer, he is even more to be condemned than before by the moral law. But in the aesthetic judgment he is raised one degree higher and made better adapted to figure in a work of art. Continuing to judge him from an aesthetic point of view, it may be added that he who abased himself by a vile action can to a certain extent be raised by a crime, and can be thus reinstated in our aesthetic estimation.” – Friedrich Schiller

"If any human act evokes the aesthetic experience of the sublime, certainly it is the act of murder.” – Joel Black

Humans are, in their own estimation, fundamentally moral beings shaped in the image of sublime values. Any deviation from this established norm, the grotesque, the sadistic, the violent, we deem as “inhuman,” as if to distance our own natures from the atrocities committed by others.

“Before I begin, let me say a word or two to certain prigs, who affect to speak of our society as if it were in some degree immoral in its tendency. Immoral! God bless my soul, gentlemen! what is it that people mean? I am for morality, and always shall be, and for virtue, and all that; and I do affirm, and always shall (let what will come of it), that murder is an improper line of conduct, highly improper; and I do not stick to assert that any man who deals in murder must have very incorrect ways of thinking, and truly inaccurate principles; and, so far from aiding and abetting him by pointing out his victim's hiding-place, as a great moralist of Germany declared it to be every good man's duty to do, I would subscribe one shilling and sixpence to have him apprehended — which is more by eighteen-pence than the most eminent moralists have hitherto subscribed for that purpose. But what then? Everything in this world has two handles. Murder, for instance, may be laid hold of by its moral handle (as it generally is in the pulpit and at the Old Bailey), and that, I confess, is its weak side; or it may also be treated aesthetically, as the Germans call it — that is, in relation to good taste.” – Thomas De Quincey

But no amount of wishful thinking can delude us from the fact that those who commit atrocities, do belong among us. Our villains, even our heroes, our great figures of myth whom we admire, are often responsible for a number of “inhumane” acts of violence. We build monuments to their cruelties, their achievements; we immortalize them in our culture as paragons of virtue or sin. Regardless of whatever moral lens one chooses to interpret their actions by, the inevitability arises that we are drawn to them, drawn to violence, drawn to the brutality that lies in the darkness of the human soul. It is foolish to think that humans are wholly good, for what does it mean to be good without an understanding of what it means to be truly evil? The concept of humanity can only exist, can only possess meaning, if there is an “inhumanity” to oppose it. Violence, in all its grotesqueness, is an inspiration, one that possesses its own sort of beauty. Is it any surprise that during the 19^h century, an interest in the sublime emerged in the wake of deadly revolutions, wars and heinous atrocities? If there is good, then so there must be evil; we cannot ignore this duality, and it would be a great disservice to pretend that the avenues of art should only express a singular side of humanity.