Introduction
This chapter summarizes the methods, arguments, and contents of the overall book. It outlines the central considerations in support of the production-oriented approach to the ethical criticism of art. It claims that judgments of an artwork’s ethical value are often made (and often should be made) in terms of how it was created and, furthermore, that this is in part because some art forms more readily lend themselves to this form of ethical appraisal. In addition, the chapter claims that among the ways in which we ethically criticize art, this production-oriented approach more often leads to practical consequences (censure, dismissal, prosecution, legislation) because its claim to objectivity is less contested than that of other sorts of ethical criticism.