The Vivès Affair and Chameleon Totalitarianism

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EDITORIAL. Appealing to morality – in this case, group power – in the face of an individual is nothing less than democratic backsliding.

Through Peggy Sastre

Dyears an interview at World published on January 27 in the context of the now famous “Vivès affair”, Carole Talon-Hugon, teacher and researcher in aesthetics and philosophy of art, tells us to consider “that the moral value of a work is part of its artistic value; that a positive moral value increases the artistic value, whereas a negative moral value decreases it”. A sentence so “shock” that the daily made it its title. And the effect is successful, we are amazed. Frightened, even, that the attack on one of the most fundamental principles of our liberal democracies could spread out so easily: the defense of the individual against the tyranny of the group.

Because while it might not be immediately obvious, the fact is that linking the…