Art Is for Seeing Evil

University of Chicago philosopher Agnes Callard proposes a very simple theory of art: it exists for seeing the parts of life — death, cruelty, despair, the limits of self-knowledge — that direct philosophical analysis cannot fully approach. She makes the case via her own teaching: pairing Plato's Euthyphro with Sophocles's Antigone, Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich with the philosophical literature on death, and Hamlet with Descartes's Meditations. Art lets us look squarely at things that would otherwise destroy our capacity to look.