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ANTHONY FISHER and HAYDEN RAMSAY
ABSTRACT. What
does philosophy have to say about the argument that blasphemous
art ought not
to be publicly displayed? We examine four concepts of blasphemy:
as offence, attack on attack on the sacred, attack on the blasphemer
blasphemy religion,
himself. We argue all four are needed to grasp this complex concept. We also argue
for blasphemy as primarily a moral, not a religious concept. We then criticise four
arguments for the public display of blasphemous art: itmay be beautiful, provocative,
devoutly intended, and is autonomous of religious concerns. Finally, we discuss the
notions of blasphemy and blasphemous art as public offences. We conclude that the
of blasphemous art is a public, and not merely a private moral offence, and
display
that there are respectable philosophical arguments for this conclusion.
1. On 'Pissing on a Crucifix'
'The exhibition extended to photos of a woman urinating in a man's mouth, the geni
tals and other parts of dead children, the decomposing victim of a fire, a woman squat
ting naked before a horse as she masturbates it, a clergyman gagged with a black studded
dog's collar, and so on. But it was Piss Christ that received the most attention.
2Lawton (1993 p. 202), for instance, asserts that blasphemy is the misunderstanding
of innovation, the privileging of one (authoritative) discourse above another: "Blasphemy
is orthodoxy's way of demonizing difference in order to perpetrate violence against it."
Likewise Levy (1993, p. 568): "Historically, the word 'blasphemy' has functioned as an
goods' from 'lower order' interests or mere 'wants', and so on. On this
more sophisticated utilitarian account blasphemy might be amore serious
harm than some others, but in some situations itmight be judged a good
thing or at least a necessary evil, because itmight help the believers to
confront and banish superstition, thereby serving them by extending their
range of rational participations in human goods. However, it is still
blasphemy, and utilitariaism's attempt to capture the meaning of this is
no more successful than its attempts to explain justice, cruelty, integrity
etc. (Smart and Williams, 1973; Grisez, 1978; Scheffler, 1982).
A stronger case might be made for the wrong of blasphemy by
characterising such acts as a 'profound offence': an attack on something
important enough to produce distress in serious-minded people at the
bare idea, a distress that is more than merely sensory, and that is not
felt merely on one's own behalf.6 These criteria take us further towards
the core of the offensiveness of blasphemy, and help to explain why
the response 'if it offends you, you need not attend' only trivialised
and exacerbated the offence taken by believers during the Serrano affair.
What would we say about someone who complained that a portrait of
a dying young man, covered in excrement by an artist, was being
displayed in the City Hall, or a classy 'snuff movie' was being played
in Parliament House? That she need not view the offensive matter and
should 'go and play tennis' instead? Believers did not only want to
avoid feeling squeamish: they wanted their God respected, their funds
withdrawn from what they believed to be shameful and corrupting, and
an end to their unwilling collaboration in public invitations to see what
is holy reviled. Their complaint was of an offence which goes to the
heart of their very identities and membership of the community, which
demeans those very things they hold most precious and which nourish
their souls.
In 'The Wisdom of Repugnance' Leon Kass (1997) wrote that
"revulsion is not an argument; and some of yesterday's repugnances
are today calmly accepted ? though, one must add, not always for the
better. In crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression
of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate." Popular
repugnance at sacrilege and blasphemy would seem to be an example
of this. As with incest, bestiality, cannibalism, and the desecration of
corpses, we are repelled "because we intuit and feel, immediately
and without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold
dear".
On another account,
blasphemy is not harm or offence to believers,
though these compound a
it: it is deliberate attack on (the human good
7Cf. Aquinas, Summa, Ha Ilse 10, 8. Many people, believers included, will not feel
offended by the photograph. The question is: should they feel offended? The seriousness
of blasphemy is normative for offensiveness, not vice versa.
OF ART AND BLASPHEMY 145
8We here follow the general outlines of the natural law theory developed by Germain
Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, Robert George and others over many years. Of the
various presentati ons of the theory a good representa tive is: Grisez et al. (1987, pp. 99
151). Other theorists proposing very different but rich and complex accounts of the good
which might include religion include: Alan Donagan, Alasdair Maclntyre, Onora O'Neill,
Joseph Raz, Michael Sandel, Nancy Sherman and Charles Taylor.
9For an explor?t ion of these various goods see Finnis (1980, pp. 59-99).
10This is not to deny that those who make items of devotion or of art may not have
even primary) reasons ? a profit ? but
other (additional, for doing so such as making
even these are ultimately instrumental to participation in one or more of the basic goods
(such as feeding oneself and one's family, i.e. life, health, friendship). Nor is it to deny
that there might be irrational motivations mixed in with rational intentions.
146 ANTHONY FISHERAND HAYDEN RAMSAY
11
We here prescind from considering those actions in the pursuit of one religion which
are regarded by adherents of another religion as blasphemies against their God. It is also
no doubt true that churches have in the past roused members to what would now be
Thus, ironically, the act of hanging Piss Christ and the act of
vandalising it had rather more in common than critics at the time
appreciated. Self-righteously slashing a photograph and committing
sacrilege upon a crucifix, while not the same kind of act, share the same
formal structure. Just as vandalism of art is not a positive moral stance
that happens to offend some artists but an act directly aimed against
the good of aesthetic experience, so art-by-sacrilege is not an exercise
in creativity that happens to offend the faithful but a direct attack upon
religion. Other things being equal, we should respond to barbaric,
sacrilegious, lethal, dishonest, violent, and unjust intentions with
equivalent outrage, whether committed by individuals or institutions,
galleries or churches.
This, of course, does not imply that such acts are all identical:
different goods can be attacked, undermined, impeded or trivialized
in different ways, some of which will deny self or others any
participation in that good at all, others of which will only diminish such
participation. Whereas murder destroys the participation of another
person in the good of life (and indeed all other goods), blasphemies
and lies usually only impoverish people's participation in religion and
truth; whereas some attacks on religion and truth radically undermine
people's and understanding,
faith others amount merely to missed
opportunities or passing disturbances.
What, precisely, is the 'spiritual experience' against which an 'anti
religious' act is directed? Religious symbols and reverence for them
have a part to play in the common good even of a modern 'secular'
society and so may serve even those who do not share the faith tradition
from which they emerge. Sprigge observes: "The need for preserving
certain objects of beauty and symbols of ethical and spiritual
aspiration uncontaminated from trivial, or even degrading,
associations, so that they can serve as food for the spirit, should be
admitted quite apart from belief in any particular supernatural
revelation." (Sprigge, 1990, p. 386). As John Finnis has argued, "the
value of what, since Cicero, we summarily and lamely call religion"
need not be restricted to 'God' in the classical theist or Judeo-Christian
conceptions: it refers, rather, to the goal of all actions seeking harmony
between the human person and some transcendent source of being and
meaning, freedom and reason (Finnis, 1980, pp. 89?90, 371-413).
Thus the category might be extended to include all those non-human
things which are commonly regarded as 'sacred' or worthy of
'reverence', such as of animals, nature or the
species ecosystems,
cosmos more generally, objects of beauty such as great buildings and
148 ANTHONY FISHER AND HAYDEN RAMSAY
12While weagree with broad claim of Dworkin (1993) about the sacred, we concur
with his many critics regarding the many shortcomings in his argument and conclusions.
See, e.g., Stith (1997).
13Mannison et al. (1980) imply such an extension of the sacred when they talk of
respect for nature: "The believer in intrinsic values may avoid making unnecessary and
excessive noise in the forest, out of respect for the forest and its non-human inhabitants.
She will do this even when it is certain that there is no other human around to know the
difference. For one to whom the forest and its inhabitants are merely another conven
tional utility, however, there will be no such constraint." Or see Taylor (1996).
14Cf Levy (1981, p. 6) on blasphemy as mere taboo.
OF ART AND BLASPHEMY 149
crossed. The demands of reason have been unmet." And as Kass (1997,
p. 20) concludes, "shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to
shudder."15
15This is, of course, to assume that emotional sensibilities can themselves be morally
informative. Some contemporary rationalists would deny this. Let it suffice here to point
to the very different approaches of Nussbaum (1990), Gaita (1991) and, most recently,
Sherman (1997) as recent persuasive arguments for the importance of repugnance, shame,
grief, remorse and the like in moral cognition and judgment.
16Cf.Aqui nas, Summa, Ha Ilse, 13, 3 ad 1.
150 ANTHONY FISHERAND HAYDEN RAMSAY
17St. Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, concluded that "the very suggestion that God
could be passible was too absurd to merit serious consideration and too blasphemous to
bear Christian repetition". Of course, if one accepts an account of God according to
which God is vulnerable, passible and mutable, them blasphemy might be seen as a
direct attack upon God himself: See, e.g. Cobb and Griffin, 1976; McWilliams, 1985.
18e.g. Pss 22:23; 34:3; 69:30; 86:9,12; Isa 24:15; Lk 1:46; Rom 15:16.
19Cf. Sullivan (1989, p. 134): "Since the moral law is the law of our own reason, the
virtuous person is one who acts out of self-respect."
OF ART AND BLASPHEMY 151
Many modern philosophers see evil only as 'evil suffered', thus the
temptation to explain morally wrong acts wholly in terms of natural
evils suffered by victims of those acts. This may help to explain the
incomprehension of some regarding the great outrage expressed about
blasphemy: for, as we have argued, the 'blasphemy as offence'
explanation is clearly too weak to ground such broad and deep
repugnance. The classical picture of what it is to do and to suffer evil
might well assist here. On this account 'natural' evils are to be
distinguished from 'moral' evils: the victim often suffers the former,
whereas the agent is commonly the locus of the latter.20 Here the
2'Cf. St. Augustine's exegesis of Jesus' curse upon those who blaspheme the Holy
22Smith's (1994, pp 4?11) 'moral problem' is this: moral practice implies both the
objectivity of moral judgements (we believe certain acts are right, and this presupposes
moral facts) and the practicality of moral judgements (to believe an act is right is thereby
to desire to do it). On the one hand, moral objectivity entails only that we have a true
moral belief: whether or not we have a desire to act on it is a further fact about us,
immune from rational criticism; moral practicality, on the other hand, entails a necessary
connection between a moral belief and a desire to act; the two are therefore in contradic
tion.
23With this concept Smith (1994, p. 151) is able to defend moral objectivity (in terms
of the normative requirements of morality), and moral practicality (our moral beliefs are
necessarily connected to our motivations by the concept of valuing), and show that these
are not contradictory (for anyone not fully rational the motivating desire need not ac
company their moral beliefs). Thus he claims to solve his puzzle without sacrificing the
standard account of motivation.
154 ANTHONY FISHER AND HAYDEN RAMSAY
I, you know, I just find that, and I started that work as an attempt to reduce and
simplify a lot of the ideas and images that I had been doing up until that time. I
didn't do it to be provocative, I did it because damn, the colours would look good,
you know, [clapping and cheering] Imean, sometimes I just feel like, you know,
what I do has the simplest answers, but they're not good enough. People want more
of a story and I realise I try to give them a story, but sometimes I have to say:
look, you're reading too much into this shit really, you know (ABC Radio National,
1997).
OF ART AND BLASPHEMY 155
As the Serrano affair developed, the artist repudiated his earlier lines
? ?
that his art is simply colourful and that it is deliberately shocking
and asserted instead that, far from intending to scandalise, his goal all
along had been to increase the devotion of his fellow Christians by
helping them identify better with Christ in his pain, suffering and
humiliation. Whether this revisionism was entirely candid on Serrano's
part might be doubted but, as some of the artist's defenders observed,
Jesus himself very likely lost control of his bladder in the crucifixion
and was probably 'pissed on' by the Roman soldiers. Thus the
photograph might be said merely to allude to this and to invite our
compassionate engagement with the real man.
OF ART AND BLASPHEMY 157
But do the sacred and the venerated really work in this way? It is
not uncommon today for people to say that symbols and ceremonies
are only appropriate where they are 'relevant' or 'accessible', i.e. where
they express or confirm things we already well understand or have
already judged as specially important to us independently of those
symbols and ceremonies (indeed often independently of the very
religion they express). But it is a radical misunderstanding of the
anthropology of symbols and sacrament?is to imagine that by adding
'grime' to them the artist will help make them more relevant and so
devotional. Ironically, reinventing the image according to a pattern less
'sanitised' (if also less sanitary) than that received in the tradition may
do the exact opposite. A crucifix certainly expresses muck, and will
not do so if worn as costume jewellery; but neither will it do so if
smeared with muck.
This is not the place to explore at length the implications of works
such as that of Rudolf Otto (1980) on the numinous, Mircea Eliade
(1969) on the sacred and the profane, Victor Turner (1969) on the
liminal, Mary Douglas (1973) on sacred symbols, or Gadamer (1986)
on mimesis and anamnesis in art. But what can be said briefly is that
none of these classic studies of the anthropology of religious symbols
would lend credence to the notion of 'enhancement' as was proposed
by Serrano and his defenders. Objects symbolising mysteries both
reveal and conceal, inform and cloak; they do not pretend to
photographic realism (or Serranoesque photographic surrealism); they
are necessarily stylised in certain ways, made and displayed for certain
devotional purposes, and venerated in certain ways; they can only be
understood in the context of the religious culture and history of practice
from which they emerge. To think a religious object can be extracted
from such a context and 'improved' by doing to it something
unthinkable among adherents ofthat tradition is condescension of the
kind we rightly abhor in white Australians, Canadians or Americans
who seek to 'improve' on Aboriginal artefacts.
What we do with a crucifix is thus very different to how we might
go about depicting 'The Crucifixion'. The former is necessarily bound
by rigid norms of reverence; the latter allows much more latitude for
the artist to create a modern Christ, a terrified Christ, a humiliated
Christ, an exultant Christ. . . While
. a Crucifixion scene in
making
which Jesus had lost control of his bodily functions might not be
sacrilege, immersing a crucifix in urine can only be a profanation
according to the standards of the culture and religion of which it is an
artefact, and photographing and displaying such a deed can only be a
158 ANTHONY FISHER AND HAYDEN RAMSAY
24Ramsay (1997, ch. 6) argues that certain postures, and even a certain physical ap
pearance, are required for genuine reverence, virtue, sincerity etc.
OF ART AND BLASPHEMY 159
4. Public Offence
25Clearly, the charge of blasphemy was often misapplied to the giving of offence. For
an indication of just how many sorts of offence were prosecuted as blasphemy in the
18th and 19th centuries, see Smith (1990, ch. 3).
26R v Taylor 1Vent 298.
21R v Williams 26 St Tr 653.
OF ART AND BLASPHEMY 161
34Sadly the discussion in the New South Wales Law Reform Commission Report (1994)
was ? or re
philosophically very weak and its conclusions that retention, codification
placement of the offence is unjustified and contrary to free speech and multiculturalism
?
therefore lacked credibility. Indeed the principal argument offered by the New South
Wales commission for abolition of the offence was that there had been virtually no pros
ecutions or interest in blasphemy for the past fifty years: but only three years later the
Serrano affair erupted and Australians and others were galvanized.
OF ART AND BLASPHEMY 163
the contribution of such cults to the wider community is usually and often
deliberately negligible. Unlike traditional religions which offer figures
who have become important symbols even to those who do not
acknowledge their supernatural existence (Buddha, Abraham, Christ,
Mohammed ...), such cults offer no icons of significance to outsiders.
Nevertheless, the concern that laws which limit freedom of
expression might be abused is a common one: it is raised against libel
laws, censorship laws, racial vilification laws, national security laws...
The fear, not without foundation in historical experience, is that such
laws might be used to suppress the public discussion of views
inconvenient to the majority or to powerful elites. On the other hand,
Richard Webster (1990), in his Brief History of Blasphemy, notes that
"participants in the debate have again and again talked as though the
tradition of free speech is an abstract principle, formulated primarily
for the benefit of a small elite of intellectuals and artists. . .There is
reluctance to discriminate between the freedom to impart information
and the freedom to insult, offend or abuse."35
The fear of the tyranny of laws limiting freedom of expression must
be counterbalanced by the acknowledgement that democracies
guarantee not only freedom of expression but also freedom of religion.
Political philosophers have long noted that free speech is only one of a
package of natural and positive rights which also includes freedom of
religion and that such rights often come into conflict and must be
appropriately balanced or prioritized (Scanlon, 1972; Smith, 1990, pp.
85-86; George 1993, ch. 7; Rawls, 1993, VIII). Webster (1990)
observes that historically democracies have narrowly constrained every
medium of expression (except perhaps the novel) and argues that this
is because democracy is built not on layers of freedom but on the rule
of law, that is, the selective restriction of freedom.
During the Serrano affair a leading Australian human rights lawyer,
Michael Hains, was quoted as arguing that the right to freedom of
religion is not merely the positive freedom to practice one's religious
beliefs, but includes "the right to be protected from discrimination,
vilification, violence, unfounded and unwarranted ridicule and the
like." In that jurist's view, the exhibition o? Piss Christ "ridiculed
Christian faith, discriminated against Christians, promoted religious
hatred, was blasphemous, grossly offensive and provocative"; itwas
35Cf. the extreme position of Levy (1995, p. 572), that if there is a right to persuade
others to abandon religion, it should include "ridicule, raillery and reproach."
164 ANTHONY FISHER AND HAYDEN RAMSAY
36We need not rehearse here the growing jurisprudence on 'hate crimes', 'vilification',
'discrimination', 'gross offence' and the like of which Hains' comments are a typical
example, not merely in the area of religion but with respect to race, gender etc.
37Cf. Dahl, Letter to The Times, quoted in Smith (1990, p. 78): "In a civilized world
we all have a moral obligation to apply a modicum of censorship to our own work in
order to reinforce this principle of free speech."
OF ART AND BLASPHEMY 165
regulation of them.
5. Conclusion
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