Aesthetic Judgment (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Cite this entry Search the SEP • Advanced Search • Tools • RSS FeedTable of Contents• What's New• Archives• Projected ContentsEditorial Information• About the SEP• Editorial Board• How to Cite the SEP• Special CharactersSupport the SEPContact the SEP ©Metaphysics Research Lab,CSLI,Stanford University  Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia FreeAesthetic JudgmentFirst published Fri Feb 28, 2003; substantive revision Mon Oct 22, 2007Beauty is an important part of our lives. Ugliness too. It is nosurprise then that philosophers since antiquity have been interestedin our experiences of and judgments about beauty and ugliness. Theyhave tried to understand the nature of these experiences andjudgments, and they have also wanted to know whether these experiencesand judgments were legitimate. Both these projects took a sharpenedform in the twentieth century, when this part of our lives came undera sustained attack in both European and American intellectual circles.Much of the discourse about beauty since the Eighteenth century haddeployed a notion of the ‘aesthetic’, and so that notionin particular came in for criticism. This disdain for the aestheticmay have roots in a broader cultural Puritanism, which fears theconnection between the aesthetic and pleasure. Even to suggest, in therecent climate, that an artwork might be good because it ispleasurable, as opposed to cognitively, morally or politicallybeneficial, is to court derision. The twentieth century has not beenkind to the notions of beauty or the aesthetic. Nevertheless, somethinkers — philosophers, as well as others in the study ofparticular arts — have persisted in thinking about beauty andthe aesthetic in a traditional way. In the first part of this essay, Ilook at the particular rich account of judgments of beauty given to usby Immanuel Kant. The notion of a ‘judgment of taste’ iscentral to Kant's account and also to virtually everyone working intraditional aesthetics; so I begin by examining Kant'scharacterisation of the judgment of taste. In the second part, I lookat the issues that twentieth century thinkers have raised. I end bydrawing on Kant's accout of the judgement of taste to consider whetherthe notion of the aesthetic is viable. 1. The Judgment of Taste 1.1 Subjectivity1.2 Normativity1.3 Recasting Normativity1.4 Normativity and Pleasure1.5 Judgments of Taste and the Big Question2. Other Features of Aesthetic Judgements 2.1 Aesthetic Truth2.2 Mind-dependence and Nonaesthetic Dependence2.3 Dependence and Laws2.4 The Primacy of Correctness2.5 Disinterestedness3. The Notion of the Aesthetic 3.1 The Problem, and Some Terminological Remarks3.2 The Hierarchical Proposal3.3 Aesthetic MoralsBibliographyOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries1. The Judgment of TasteWhat is a judgment of taste? Kant isolated two fundamental necessaryconditions for a judgment to be a judgment of taste —subjectivity and universality (Kant 1928). Otherconditions may also contribute to what it is to be a judgment oftaste, but they are consequential on, or predicated on, the twofundamental conditions. In this respect Kant was following the lead ofHume and other writers in the British sentimentalist tradition (Hume1985).1.1 SubjectivityThe first necessary condition of a judgment of taste is that it isessentially subjective. What this means is that the judgmentof taste is based on a feeling of pleasure or displeasure. It is thisthat distinguishes a judgment of taste from an empirical judgment.Central examples of judgments of taste are judgments of beauty andugliness. (Judgments of taste can be about art or nature.)This subjectivist thesis would be over strict if it were interpretedin an ‘atomistic’ fashion, so that some subjective responsecorresponds to every judgment of taste, and vice versa. Sometimes onemakes a judgment of taste on inductive grounds or on the basis ofauthority. A more holistic picture of the relation between response andjudgment preserves the spirit of the subjectivist doctrine whilefitting our actual lives more accurately. The subjectivist doctrineneeds to be refined in order to deal with the cases of induction andauthority. But it must not be abandoned. The doctrine is basicallyright.However, it is not obvious what to make of the subjectivity of thejudgment of taste. We need an account of the nature of the pleasure onwhich judgments of beauty are based.Beyond a certain point, this issue cannot be pursued independently ofmetaphysical issues about realism. For the metaphysics we favour isbound to affect our view of the nature of the pleasure we take inbeauty. In particular, we need to know whether or not pleasure inbeauty represents properties of beauty and ugliness? If not, does itinvolve our cognitive faculties in some other way, as Kant thought? Oris it not a matter of the faculties that we deploy for understandingthe world, but a matter of sentimental reactions, which are schooledin various ways, as Hume thought? These are very hard questions. Butthere are some things we can say about the pleasure involved infinding something beautiful without raising the temperature toohigh.Kant makes various points about pleasure in the beautiful, which fallshort of what we might call his “deep” account of thenature of pleasure in beauty, according to which it is the harmoniousfree play of imagination and understanding. According to Kant's“surface” account of pleasure in beauty, it is not meresensuous gratification, as in the pleasure of sensation, or of eatingand drinking. Unlike such pleasures, pleasure in beauty is occasionedby the perceptual representation of a thing. (These days, we mightfeel more comfortable putting this by saying that pleasure in beautyhas an intentional content.) Moreover, unlike other sorts ofintentional pleasures, pleasure in beauty is“disinterested”. This means, very roughly, that it is apleasure that does not involve desire — pleasure in beauty isdesire-free. That is, the pleasure is neither based on desire nor doesit produce one by itself. In this respect, pleasure in beauty isunlike pleasure in the agreeable, unlike pleasure in what is good forme, and unlike pleasure in what is morally good. According to Kant,all such pleasures are “interested” — they are boundup with desire. It may be that we have desires concerning beautifulthings, as Kant allows in sections 41 and 42 of the Critique ofJudgement; but so long as those desires are not intrinsic to thepleasure in beauty, the doctrine that all pleasure is disinterested isundisturbed. (Some critics of Kant miss this point.)This is all important as far as it goes; but it is all negative. Weneed to know what pleasure in beauty is, as well as what itisn't. What can be said of a more positive nature?1.2 NormativityIn order to see what is special about pleasure in beauty, we mustshift the focus back to consider what is special about the judgment oftaste. For Kant, the judgment of taste claims “universalvalidity”, which he describes as follows:… when [a man] puts a thing on a pedestal and callsit beautiful, he demands the same delight from others. He judges notmerely for himself, but for all men, and then speaks of beauty as ifit were a property of things. Thus he says that the thing isbeautiful; and it is not as if he counts on others agreeing with himin his judgment of liking owing to his having found them in suchagreement on a number of occasions, but he demands thisagreement of them. He blames them if they judge differently, anddenies them taste, which he still requires of them as something theyought to have; and to this extent it is not open to men to say: Everyone has his own taste. This would be equivalent to saying that thereis no such thing as taste, i.e. no aesthetic judgment capable ofmaking a rightful claim upon the assent of all men. (Kant 1928, p. 52;see also pp. 136-139.)Kant's idea is that in a judgment of taste, we demand or requireagreement from others in a way we do not in our judgments about theniceness of Canary-wine, which is just a question of individualpreference. In matters of taste and beauty, we think that othersought to share our judgment. That's why we blame them if theydon't. It is because the judgment of taste has such an aspiration touniversal validity that it seems “as if [beauty] were aproperty of things.”Now, if the above quotation were all that Kant had to say by way ofelucidating the judgment of taste, then he would not have said enough.For the following question is left hanging: why do we requirethat others share our judgment? We might want others to shareour judgment for all sorts of strange reasons. Maybe we will feel morecomfortable. Maybe we will win a bet. And if we say that theyought to judge a certain way, we need to say more. In whatsense is this true? What if someone cannot appreciate some excellentwork of art because they are grief-stricken? What if it would distractsomeone from some socially worthy project? Of what nature is this‘ought’?We can recast the point about how we ought to judge in austere termsby saying that there is a certain normative constraint on ourjudgments of taste which is absent in our judgments about the nicenessof Canary-wine. The most primitive expression of this normativity isthis: some are correct, others incorrect. Or perhaps,even more cautiously: some judgments are better than others.We do not think that something is beautiful merely to me, inthe way that we might say that some things just happen to giveme sensuous pleasure. Of course, we might well say “Ithink X is beautiful,” because we wish toexpress uncertainty; but where we judge confidently, we think of ourjudgment as being correct. And that means that we think thatthe opposite judgment would be incorrect. We assume that not alljudgments of beauty are equally appropriate. “Each to their owntaste” only applies to judgments of niceness and nastiness, whichKant calls “judgments of agreeableness” (see Kant 1928, pp.51-53, p. 149).Of course, some people just know about food (especially inFrance and Italy). There are experts and authorities on makingdelicious food and in knowing what will taste good (Kant 1928, pp.52-53). But what these people know is what will taste pleasurable to acertain kind of palate. In a sense, some things just do taste betterthan others; and some judgments of excellence in food are better thanothers. There is a sense in which some are even correct and othersincorrect. But still, this is only relative to “normal”human beings. There is no idea of correctness according to whichsomeone with very unusual pleasures and displeasure is at fault, oraccording to which the majority of human beings can be wrong. (Kantsays that judgments of agreeableness have “general” butnot “universal” validity (Kant 1928, p. 53.) But in thecase of judgments of taste or beauty, correctness is not hostage towhat most people like or judge.To say that a judgment of taste makes a claim to correctness thismight seem merely to shift from the problematic ‘ought’that is involved in a judgment of taste to a problematic‘correctness’ or ‘betterness’. This may beinevitable. We are dealing with a normative notion, and while somenormative notions may be explainable in terms of others, we cannotexpress normative notions in non-normative terms.In some cases the correctness of a judgment of taste may beimpossibly difficult to decide. We may even think that there is noright answer to be had if we are asked to compare two very differentthings. But in many other cases, we think that thereis a right and a wrong answer at which we are aiming, andthat our judgments can be erroneous. If we don't think this, in atleast some cases, then we are not making a judgment of taste —we are doing something else.Before we move on, it may be worth saying something about“relativism”, according to which no judgments of taste arereally better than others. It is common for people to say “Thereis no right and wrong about matters of taste.” Or people willexpress the same thought by saying that beauty is“relative” to individual judgment, or even that it is“socially relative.” Such relativism about value of allsorts is part of the Zeitgeist of a certain recent Westerncultural tradition. It is part of the intellectual air, in certainquarters. And in particular, many intellectuals have expressed adislike of the idea that judgments of taste really have any normativeclaim, as if that would be uncouth or oppressive. However, if we aredescribing our thought as it is, not how some think it ought to be,then it is important that philosophers should be persistent and insist— in the face of this Zeitgeist — thatnormativity is a necessary condition of the judgment of taste. Twopoints ought to embarrass the relativist. Firstly, people who say thiskind of thing are merely theorizing. In the case of judgmentsof beauty, relativist theory is wildly out of step with commonpractice. As with moral relativism, one can virtually always catch theprofessed relativist about judgments of beauty making and acting onnon-relative judgments of beauty — for example, in theirjudgments about music, nature and everyday householdobjects. Relativists do not practice what they preach. Secondly, onething that drives people to this implausible relativism,which is so out of line with their practice, is a perceived connectionwith tolerance or anti-authoritarianism. This is what they see asattractive in it. But this is upside-down. For if ‘it's allrelative’ and no judgment is better than any other, thenrelativists put their judgments wholly beyond criticism, andthey cannot err. Only those who think that there is a right and wrongin judgment can modestly admit that they might be wrong. What lookslike an ideology of tolerance is, in fact, the very opposite. Thusrelativism is hypocritical and it is intolerant. The time has comewhen this Zeitgeist should give up the ghost. Move overgeist, your zeit is up!1.3 Recasting NormativityAs I formulated the normative claim of judgments of taste, otherpeople do not figure in the account. I gave an austereexplanation of what Kant meant, or perhaps of what he ought to havemeant, when he said that the judgment of taste claims “universalvalidity”, by contrast with judgments about the niceness ofCanary-wine. Given this account, we can explain thefact that we think that others ought to share our judgment. They oughtto share it on pain of making a judgment which is incorrect orinappropriate. And this would be why we do in fact look toothers to share our judgment; we don't want them to make incorrectjudgments. Kant's reference to other people in characterizing thenormativity of judgments of taste has dropped out of the picture asinessential.However, Kant would probably not go along with this; for hecharacterizes the normativity in a way that ties in with his eventualexplanation of its possibility. Kant expresses the normativeidea in a very particular way. He writes:[we] insist on others agreeing with our taste (Kant1928,pp. 53.)And Kant says that the judgment of taste involvesa claim to validity for all men… (Kant 1928, p.51.)By contrast, Kant thinks that although we sometimes speak asif our judgments of the agreeable are universally valid(“Lamb tastes better with garlic”), in fact they are not:judgments of the agreeable appeal only to most but not toall men (Kant 1928, pp. 52-53).However, in my austere characterization, I hope to catch a morebasic idea of normativity — one that might serve as the target ofrival explanations. As far as explaining how subjectively universaljudgments are possible, Kant has a complicated story about theharmonious interplay of the cognitive faculties — imagination andunderstanding — which he thinks constitutes pleasure in beauty (Kant1928, p. 60). This “deep” account of pleasure in beauty ishighly controversial and not particularly plausible (see Budd 2001).But we can see why Kant gives it. For Kant, the normative claim of ajudgment of taste has its roots in the more general workings of ourcognitive faculties, which Kant thinks we can assume others share. Thuswe have the beginnings of an explanation of how such a pleasure canground a judgment that makes a universal claim. However, Kant does nothave very much to say about the nature of the“universality” or normativity that is being explained bysuch a speculative account of pleasure in beauty. It is no accidentthat Kant phrases the obligation in interpersonal terms, consideringwhere he is going. And it may be no great fault on his part that hedoes so. But for our purposes, we need to separate what is beingexplained from its explanation. For if Kant's explanation does notwork, we want to be left with a characterization of the normativity hewas trying to explain. We need to separate Kant's problem from hissolution, so that the former is left if the latter fails. Maybe thereis an alternative solution to his problem.1.4 Normativity and PleasureAs I have described it, normativity attaches to judgments oftaste themselves. What does this bode for pleasure inbeauty? Since judgments of taste are based on responses of pleasure,it would make little sense if our judgments were more or lessappropriate but our responses were not. The normative claim of ourjudgments of taste must derive from the fact that we think that someresponses are better or more appropriate to their object thanothers. Responses only license judgments which can be more or lessappropriate because responses themselves can be more or lessappropriate. If I get pleasure from drinking Canary-wine, and youdon't, neither of us will think of the other as beingmistaken. But if you don't get pleasure from Shakespeare'sSonnets, I will think of you as being in error — not justyour judgment, but your liking. I think that I amright to have my response, and that yourresponse is defective. Someone who thinks that thereis, in Hume's words, “an equality of genius” between someinferior composer, on the one hand, and Bach, on the other, has adefective sensibility (Hume 1985, p. 230). Roger Scruton putsthe point well when he says:When we study [the Einstein Tower and the Giotto campanile]… our attitude is not simply one of curiosity, accompanied bysome indefinable pleasure or satisfaction. Inwardly, we affirm ourpreference as valid… (Scruton 1979, p. 105).This is the reason why we demand the same feeling fromothers, even if we don't expect it. We think that our response is moreappropriate to its object than its opposite. And, in turn, this iswhy we think that our judgment about that object ismore correct than its opposite. The normativity of judgment derivesfrom the normativity of feeling.But how can some feelings be better or worse than others?To answer this question, we need to ask: how far does the normativityof judgments of taste inhere in the feeling itself? The realist aboutbeauty will say that the feeling has normativity built into it invirtue of its representational content; the feelings themselves can bemore or less veridical. Pleasure in beauty, for example, has as itsobject the genuine property of beauty: we find the beautypleasurable. A Humean sentimentalist will probably say that normativityis something we somehow construct or foist upon our pleasures anddispleasures, which have no such content. And Kant has his own account,which appeals to cognitive states that are not beliefs. The issue iscontroversial. However, what we can say for sure is that it isdefinitive of pleasure in beauty that it licenses judgments that makeclaim to correctness. Beyond this, there will be theoreticaldivergence.This normativity is definitive of the judgment of taste, and is itssecond defining characteristic, which we should add to the fact that itis based on subjective grounds of pleasure or displeasure.1.5 Judgments of Taste and the Big QuestionWe can sum things up like this: judgments of taste occupy amid-point between judgments of niceness and nastiness, and empiricaljudgments about the external world. Judgments of taste are likeempirical judgments in that they have universal validity; but, they areunlike empirical judgment in that they are made on the basis of aninner response. Conversely, judgments of taste are like judgments ofniceness or nastiness in that they are made on the basis of an innersubjective response or experience; but they are unlike judgments ofniceness and nastiness, which makess no claim to universal validity. Tocut the distinctions the other way: in respect of normativity,judgments of taste are like empirical judgments and unlike judgments ofniceness or nastiness; but in respect of subjectivity, judgments oftaste are unlike empirical judgments and like judgments of niceness ornastiness. So we have three-fold division: empirical judgments,judgments of taste, and judgments of niceness or nastiness. Andjudgments of taste have the two points of similarity and dissimilarityon each side just noted.As Kant recognized (more or less following Hume), all this is apoint from which to theorize. The hard question iswhether, and if so how, such a subjectively universaljudgment is possible. On the face of it, the two characteristics are intension with each other. Our puzzle is this: what must be the nature ofpleasure in beauty if the judgments we base on it can make claim tocorrectness? This is the Big Question in aesthetics. Kant set the rightagenda for aesthetics. His problem was the right one, even if hissolution was not.However, our hope thus far has been to get clearerabout what it is that is under scrutiny in this debate. Once we arearmed with a modest account of what a judgment of taste is, we can thenproceed to more ambitious questions about whether or not judgments oftaste represent real properties of beauty and ugliness. We can evenconsider whether or not our whole practice of making judgments of tasteis defective and should be jettisoned. But first things first.2. Other Features of Aesthetic JudgementsThere is more to aesthetic judgement than just subjectivity andnormativity, and we should describe this more. To this end I shallhere survey a number of other candidate features of aestheticjudgements: truth, mind-independence, nonaesthetic dependence, andlaws.2.1 Aesthetic Truth The normativity of aesthetic judgements can be recast interms of a particular conception of aesthetic truth. For manypurposes, it is useful to do this. Some might worry that deploying theidea of aesthetic truth commits one to the existence of anaesthetic reality. But this worry springs from the assumption that astrong correspondence conception of truth is all there ever is totruth in any area where we might employ the notion. In many areas —scientific and psychological thought, for example — a strongcorrespondence conception of truth is likely to be inquestion. However, the conception of truth applicable in aestheticsmight be one according to which truth only implies the sort ofnormativity that I have described, according to which there arecorrect and incorrect judgements of taste, or at least that somejudgments are better than others. If we deploy the notion of truth, we can express the normative ideaby saying if a judgement is true then its opposite is false. Or we cansay that the law of non-contradiction applies to aesthetic judgements:there are some aesthetic judgements such that they and their negationscannot both be true. This principle need not hold of all judgements oftaste, so long as it holds of a significant proportion of them. Such a normative conception of truth is stronger than a notion oftruth which is merely a device for ‘semantic assent’; thatis, normative truth is more than thin ‘disquotational’truth. Even judgements of the agreeable, about the niceness ofCanary-wine, can have access to an inconsequential disquotationalconception of truth. We can say “;‘Canary-wine isnice’ is true if and only if Canary-wine is nice” withoutraising the metaphysical temperature. However, judgements about theniceness of Canary-wine do not aspire to a normative conception oftruth. There are no right and wrong answers to the question of whetherCanary-wine really is nice. And so of neither the judgement that it isnice nor that judgement that it is not nice can it be said that if itis true then its opposite is false. But this is what we do say of someaesthetic judgements. However, although we can cast aesthetic normativity in termsof truth, we need not do so. Aesthetic ‘truth’, in fact,adds little to the notion of correctness that we have alreadyencountered. We can do without the word ‘true’. We can saythat something cannot both be beautiful and ugly (in the same respectat the same time), and that if something is beautiful then it is notugly (in the same respect at the same time). (What Mary Mothersill calls her ‘Second Thesis’ in herbook Beauty Restored is the thesis that a judgement of taste,such as “Beethoven's first Rasumovsky quartet … isbeautiful (has artistic merit)” (p. 145) “is a‘genuine’ judgement” (p. 146). However, as sherealizes, we then need to know what makes a judgement agenuine judgement. She mentions truth, but wisely does notstop there. What she then adds in order to explain this are variousnormative characteristics, such as the aspiration to correctness(pp. 157-170). So in the end her view on this matte seems to convergewith the normative idea that I have described.) 2.2 Mind-dependence and Nonaesthetic DependenceGiven an understanding of the normativity of judgements of taste— which we might or might not express in terms of aesthetictruth — we can and should add some more sophisticated normativefeatures, which are also important. One such feature is mind-independence. Mind-independence isbest expressed as a negative thesis: whether something is beautifuldoes not depend on my judgement. Thinking it so doesn't make itso. This can be re-expressed in counterfactual terms: it is not thecase that if I think something is beautiful then it is beautiful. Thisis common sense. For example, we tend to think that our judgementshave improved since we were younger. We think that some of our pastjudgements were in error. So thinking it so, at that time, didn't makeit so. We also think that beauty, ugliness and other aesthetic propertiesdepend on nonaesthetic properties. Dependence contrasts withmind-independence in that it says what aesthetic propertiesdo depend on, as opposed to what they don't dependon: the aesthetic properties of a thing depend on its nonaestheticproperties. This dependence relation implies (but is not identicalwith) the supervenience relation or relations: (a) two aestheticallyunlike things must also be nonaesthetically unlike; (b) somethingcouldn't change aesthetically unless it also changed nonaesthetically;and (c) something could not have been aesthetically different unlessit were also nonaesthetically different. These are, respectively:cross-object supervenience, cross-time supervenience, and cross-worldsupervenience. (‘Supervenience’ is often been discussedunder the heading of ‘dependence’ but actually they aredistinct relations, related in a complex way.) Sibley's papers"Aesthetic Concepts" and "Aesthetic/Nonaesthetic" were pioneeringdiscussions of the dependence of the aesthetic on the nonaesthetic(Sibley 1959, 1965). Some have argued that what aesthetic properties depend on (their‘dependence base') extends beyond the intrinsic physical andsensory features of the object of aesthetic assessment (Walton1970). The nonaesthetic supervenience base, Walton thinks, alwaysincludes ‘contextual properties’ — matters to dowith the origin of the work of art, or other works of art. I havedisputed this (Zangwill 1999). This is one aspect of thedebate over formalism. However, this issue need not concern ushere. The important thing is that some dependence thesisholds. The controversial question is about the extent of thedependence base of aesthetic properties, not whetheraesthetic properties have some nonaesthetic dependence base. This claim is enormously intuitive, but let us try to say somethingmore in support of it. It seems to be a deep fact about beauty andother aesthetic properties that they are inherently‘sociable’; beauty cannot be lonely. Something cannot bebarely beautiful; if something is beautiful then it must be in virtueof its nonaesthetic properties. Furthermore, realizing this is aconstraint on our judgements of beauty and other aestheticproperties. We cannot just judge that something is beautiful; we mustjudge that it is beautiful in virtue of its nonaestheticproperties. In fact, we pretty much always do so, and not to do sowould be bizarre. Of course, we might not have in mind every singlenonaesthetic property of the thing, nor exactly how the nonaestheticproperties produced their aesthetic effect. But we think that certainnonaesthetic properties are responsible for the aestheticproperties and that without those nonaesthetic properties, theaesthetic properties would not have been instantiated. Beauty does notfloat free, and recognizing this is constitutive of aestheticthought. Our aesthetic thought, therefore, is fundamentally differentfrom our thought about colours, with which they are too oftencompared. Perhaps colours are tied in some intimate way to intrinsicor extrinsic physical properties of the surfaces of things, such asreflectance properties. But colour thought does not presupposethis. One might think that colours are bare properties of things. Butone cannot think that beauty is bare; it is essential to aestheticthought to realize that that the aesthetic properties of a thing arisefrom its nonaesthetic properties. The principles of correctness, mind-independence and dependence canbe phrased in the property mode or in terms of truth. We can cast themeither way. We can say that whether something is beautiful does notdepend on what we think about it; but it does depend on itsnonaesthetic features. Or we can equally well say that the truth ofaesthetic judgements is independent of our aesthetic judgements but itis dependent on nonaesthetic truths. Semantic ascent changes little.2.3 Dependence and Laws Thus far we have been making positive claims about features ofaesthetic judgements. Let us now consider a negative claim: that thereare no interesting nonaesthetic-to-aesthetic laws, rules orprinciples. And the aesthetic/nonaesthetic dependence relation canobtain, even though there are no such interesting laws, rules orprinciples. By ‘interesting’ laws of taste I meangeneralizations to the effects that anything of such and such anonaesthetic kind is of such and such aesthetic kind, andthese generalizations can be used to predict aesthetic properties onthe basis of knowledge of nonaesthetic properties. In this sense, itis plausible that there are no laws of taste and aesthetic propertiesare anomalous. The problem of the source of correctness in aesthetic thought isindependent of the question of whether there are laws, rules orprinciples of taste. There is no reason to think that the possibilityof correct or true judgements depends on the existence of laws, rulesor principles from which we can deduce our correct or truejudgements. (For this reason, it is difficult to be gripped by thecentral puzzle of Mary Mothersill's Beauty Restored —which is how there can be aesthetic truths without aesthetic laws— although this problem is perhaps a cousin of the problem thatHume and Kant think is central.) Nevertheless the anomalousness of aesthetics is worth thinking aboutin its own right. Many aestheticians agree that the aesthetic isanomalous in the above sense. But they are not agreed on theexplanation of anomalousness. A notable exception is Monroe Beardsley, who claims —heroically and extraordinarily — that there are exactly threeaesthetic principles: things are aesthetically excellent either bybeing unified or intense or complex (Beardsley 1958, chapter XI).)However, Beardsley's trinitarian position faces a difficulty similarto that faced by moral philosophers who appeal to ‘thick’concepts. If Beardsley insists on a lawlike connection between histhree thick substantive aesthetic properties (unity, intensity andcomplexity) and aesthetic value, he can only do so at the cost ofconceding anomalousness between the three thick substantive aestheticproperties and nonaesthetic properties. There are three layers: andone can only hold onto laws between the top and middle layers only bylosing laws between the middle and bottom layers. Maybe intensity isalways aesthetically good; but there are no laws about what makesthings intense. Granting the anomalousness of aesthetic properties, then, we need toexplain it. There is great plausibility in Hume and Kant's suggestionthat what explains the anomalousness of the aesthetic is the firstfeature of judgements of taste — that judgements of taste areessentially subjective, unlike ordinary empirical judgements aboutphysical, sensory, or semantic properties (Hume 1985, pp. 231-232,Kant 1928, pp. 55-56, pp. 136-142). This is why the two sorts ofconcepts are not ‘nomologically made for each other’ (asDonald Davidson says about mental and physical concepts (Davidson1980)). How can we bring an essential subjective range of judgementsnomologically into line with a range of empirical judgements? The twoanswer to quite different sets of constraints. Frank Sibley observedthat aesthetic concepts are not positively ‘condition-governed'(Sibley 1959). And Mary Mothersill claimed that that there are no lawsof taste. But neither did much to explain those facts. The appeal tosubjectivity explains what Sibley and Mothersill notice anddescribe. Indeed Mothersill writes of her ‘First Thesis’(FT) — that there are no genuine principles or laws of taste:“…FT is central to aesthetics, and there is, as far as Ican see, nothing more fundamental from which it could bederived.” (Mothersill 1984, p. 143). But it seems that itcan be derived from the subjectivity of judgements oftaste. This kind of anomalousness is one thing, dependence or supervenienceanother. Even though aesthetic properties are anomalous, they dependand supervene on nonaesthetic properties. Many find such a combinationof relations uncomfortable outside aesthetics, such as in moralphilosophy and the philosophy of mind. Yet there seem to be goodreasons to embrace both principles in aesthetics. Both are firmlyrooted in ordinary aesthetic thought. 2.4 The Primacy of CorrectnessAesthetic judgements have certain essential features, andcorresponding to those features are certain principles. We can groupcorrectness, mind-independence, and nonaesthetic dependencetogether. However, it does no harm to focus on the feature ofcorrectness or universal validity. For this is the most basic of thefeatures. If aesthetic judgements did not claim correctness oruniversal validity, they could not claim the other features. Ifexplaining correctness or universal validity is a problem, then so isexplaining mind-independence and dependence. But clearly thereis a problem about explaining all three features. For whydoes our aesthetic thought have these three features and thusoperate according to these three principles? And what is the source ofthe right of aesthetic judgements to them? Hume and Kantspend much mental effort on these questions. These presuppositions ofaesthetic judgements need to be explained and justified. Given thatour aesthetic judgements have these commitments, we need to know howsuch judgements are possible, how they are actual, and how they arelegitimate. Having described and analyzed, as we have done here, weneed to explain and justify. But, as I said earlier, we first need agood description of what we are trying to explain and justify. 2.5 DisinterestednessAn idea that plays large role in Kant's discussion of the subjectiveuniversality of the judgement of taste is that of disinterestedness,and so some words about this idea are in order. Kant claims that (a)pleasure in the beautiful is ‘disinterested’, and (b) onlypleasure in the beautiful is ‘disinterested’. (Kant 1928,pp. 42-50.) And this plays a large role in Kant's project, for Kantconnects disinterestedness with the claim to universal validity of thejudgment of taste. However, before we go any further is crucial torecognize that the German word “interesse” has aspecial meaning in 18th Century German, and should not be confusedwith similar sounding English words or even contemporary Germanwords. For Kant an interesse means a kind of pleasure that isnot connected with desire: it is neither grounded in desire, nor doesit produce it. We should distinguish Kant's ambitious thesis that only pleasure inthe beautiful is disinterested from his less ambitious claim simplythat pleasure in the beautiful is disinterested — for itseems that there could be other disinterested pleasures. The lessambitious claim, however, is certainly controversial enough. The moreuncontroversial component of that less ambitious claim is thatpleasure in the beautiful is not grounded in the satisfactionof desire. It is plausible, surely, that when we take pleasure insomething we find beautiful, we are not pleased that we have gotsomething that we desire. Moreover, Kant wants pleasure in thebeautiful to be open to all (so there should be no ‘aestheticluck’), and if desire varied from to person, it seems that wecould not require that pleasure from everyone, as the idea ofuniversal validity requires. Hence the claim to universal validitywould be lost if pleasure in beauty were not disinterested in thesense of not being based on desire. However, it is not so clear that pleasure in the beautiful cannotproduce desire, which Kant requires fordisinterestedness. The issue here is whether it can produce desirefrom itself. Kant admits that we have certain generalconcerns with beauty that mean that desire may follow from a judgmentof beauty; but, according to Kant, such desires do not have theirsource solely in the pleasure in the beautiful (Kant 1928,pp. 154-162, on ‘empirical interest’ and‘intellectual interest’). So the less ambitious thesis iscontroversial because of the second component. Moreover, whether only pleasure in beauty is disinterested,because no other kind of pleasures are disinterested — theambitious thesis — is even more controversial. These are liveissues. 3. The Notion of the Aesthetic3.1 The Problem, and Some Terminological RemarksThe predicate “aesthetic” can qualify many differentkinds of things: judgments, experiences, concepts, properties, orwords. It is probably best to take aesthetic judgments ascentral. We can understand other aesthetic kinds of things in terms ofaesthetic judgments: aesthetic properties are those that are ascribedin aesthetic judgments; aesthetic experiences are those that groundaesthetic judgments; aesthetic concepts are those that are deployed inaesthetic judgments; and aesthetic words are those that are typicallyused in the linguistic expression of aesthetic judgments.The most common contemporary notion of an aesthetic judgment wouldtake judgments of beauty and ugliness as paradigms — what Icalled “judgments of taste” in part 1. And it excludesjudgments about physical properties, such as shape and size, andjudgments about sensory properties, such as colors andsounds. However, in addition to judgments of beauty and ugliness, thecontemporary notion of an aesthetic judgment is typically used tocharacterize a class of judgments that also includes judgments ofdaintiness, dumpiness, delicacy and elegance. In this respect, thecontemporary notion seems to be broader than Kant's, since he focusedjust on judgments of beauty and ugliness. However, there is also arespect in which the contemporary notion seems to be narrower thanKant's notion. For Kant used the notion to include both judgments ofbeauty (or of taste) as well as judgments of the agreeable— for instance, the judgment that Canary-wine is nice (Kant1928, pp. 41-42 and p. 54). But the modern notion, unlike Kant's,excludes judgments of the agreeable. The contemporary notionalso excludes judgments about pictorial and semantic content. Forexample, although the judgment that a painting represents a flowermight be “relevant” to an aesthetic judgment about it, itis not itself an aesthetic judgment.The question is: is the contemporary classification arbitrary? Whatis it that distinguishes these judgments as aesthetic? What do theyhave in common? And how do they differ from other kinds of judgment? Dothese judgments form a well-behaved kind?Incidentally, it may be worth mentioning that the notion of anaesthetic judgment should obviously not be elucidated in terms in termsof the idea of a work of art: we make aesthetic judgments about natureand we make nonaesthetic judgments about works of art.The articulation and defence of the notion of the aesthetic inmodern times is associated with Monroe Beardsley (1958, 1982) and FrankSibley (1959, 1965). But their work was attacked by George Dickie, TedCohen and Peter Kivy among others (Dickie 1965, Cohen 1973, Kivy1975).Beardsley claimed, somewhat heroically, that aesthetic experience isdistinguished by its unity, intensity and complexity. Dickie argued,in reply, that such characeristics were either not plausibly necessaryconditions of aesthetic experience, or else that Beardsley'sdescription of them was inadequate. Part of Dickie's attack wascompletely beside the point, since he confused aesthetic experienceswith the experiences of works of art; the fact that some experiencesof works of art are not as Beardsley describes is, or should be,irrelevant. But it cannot be denied that Dickie was right that even ifthe problems of characterizing the three features were resolved, itwould still not be remotely plausible that the three Beardsleyianfeatures are necessary (or sufficient) conditions of aestheticexperience. Nevertheless, all that would show would be thatBeardsley's account of the aesthetic is inadequate. ThatBeardsley's extraordinary and heroic Trinitarian doctrine cannot bemaintained does not mean that the notion of the aesthetic should beabandoned. That would be a flawed induction from a singleinstance.Sibley claimed that the discernment of aesthetic properties requires aspecial sensitivity, whereas the discernment of nonaestheticproperties could be achieved by anyone with normal eyes and ears.Furthermore Sibley claimed that it was distinctive of aesthetic termsor concepts that they were not “condition-governed”, inthe sense that they had no nonaesthetic positive criteria for theirapplication. He thought of the faculty of taste as special mentalfaculty, possessed by people with a special sensitivity. This accountof the aesthetic was inadvisable, since it allowed critics like Cohenand Kivy to argue that ascribing aesthetic properties did not in factrequire a special faculty, since anyone can distinguish and gracefulline from an ungraceful line. Moreover, some aesthetic ascriptions doseem to be nonaesthetically condition-governed, in Sibley's sense.Nevertheless — once again — that Sibley'spositive account of the aesthetic is implausible should not lead us todespair about the aesthetic. On the other hand, the pessimisticinduction, now with two instances under its belt, is perhaps looking alittle less unhealthy — especially given two such distinguishedexponents.Despite this, Sibley was surely minimally right to think thatascribing aesthetic properties to a thing requires more than merelyknowing its nonaesthetic properties. Whether or not it isdistinctively difficult, erudite, sophisticated ornon-condition-governed, aesthetic understanding is something over andabove nonaesthetic understanding. So perhaps we should keep on tryingto articulate the notion of the aesthetic, or at least a useful notionof the aesthetic.3.2 The Hierarchical ProposalLet us pursue the following strategy. Begin with the account of whatit is to be a judgment of taste, or of beauty and ugliness, that wasoutlined in part 1, and then use that to elucidate the broader notionof an aesthetic judgment. To recall, it was argued that Kant wasright, with qualifications, to think that the crucial thing about thejudgment of taste is that it has what he calls “subjectiveuniversality”: judgments of taste are those that are (a) basedon aesthetic responses, and (b) claim universal validity, where thatcan be minimally interpreted as a normative aspiration. The presentstrategy is to use this Kantian account in order to ground a widercategory of the aesthetic, which includes judgments of taste alongwith judgments of daintiness, dumpiness, delicacy, elegance, and therest.Let us call judgments of taste, or judgments of beauty and ugliness,“verdictive aesthetic judgments,” and let us call theother aesthetic judgments (of daintiness, dumpiness, elegance,delicacy etc) “substantive aesthetic judgments.” The ideais that these substantive judgments are aesthetic in virtue of aspecial close relation to verdictive judgments of taste, which aresubjectively universal. (We can assume that judgments of beauty andugliness coincide with judgments of aesthetic merit anddemerit. However, even if beauty were taken to be a substantiveaesthetic notion, like elegance, delicacy or daintiness, there wouldremain some other overarching notion of aesthetic merit or excellence,and we could take that notion as central.)On this approach — which is unashamedly traditional —judgments of daintiness, dumpiness, delicacy and elegance stand in aspecial and intimate relation to judgments of beauty and ugliness (oraesthetic merit and demerit), and it is only in virtue of thisintimate relation that we can think of all these judgments asbelonging to the same category.Now, what exactly is this special intimate relation between verdictiveand substantive aesthetic judgments? The proposal is this. Firstly,substantive judgments describe ways of being beautiful orugly (Burton 1992, Zangwill 1995). It is part of what itis for a thing to be elegant, delicate or dainty that it isbeautiful in a particular way. And secondly, it is part ofthe meaning of substantive aesthetic judgments that theyimply verdictive aesthetic judgments. This is the hierarchicalproposal.[Remark: this may not be true of words like“dainty” and “delicate,” but it is true of theparticular substantive judgments that we linguisticallyexpress in such words on particular occasions. Both Beardsley andSibley, seem to have made the mistake of casting these issues at thelinguistic level rather than at the level of thought; they should havefocused not on aesthetic words but on aesthetic judgments andresponses. (Sibley did say in footnote 1 of Sibley 1959 that he wasconcerned with “uses” of aesthetic words; but he andeveryone else ignored that qualification.)]Now, let us now see how this hierachical proposal works. Consider anabstract pattern of curving lines, which is elegant. It might benecessary that that pattern is beautiful. This is because thebeauty depends on or is determined by that specificpattern. But it is not part of what it is to be that patternthat it is beautiful. That is, the pattern is necessarily beautiful butit is not essentially beautiful. (On the general distinction betweennecessity and essence, see Fine 1994.) Furthermore, we can think ofthat pattern without thinking of it as beautiful.By contrast, it is both necessary and essentialthat something that is elegant is beautiful. And this is reflected inour concepts and judgments. We can think of the pattern without therebythinking of it as beautiful, but to think of the pattern as elegant isto think of it as beautiful, at least in certain respects. Henceelegance is an aesthetic concept.Are representational properties aesthetic properties? Suppose that apainting represents a tree and is a beautiful representation of a tree.It is not merely beautiful and a tree representation butbeautiful as a tree representation (Zangwill 1999). Of course,that the painting represents a tree is “relevant” towhether it is beautiful because it is part of what determines itsbeauty. But being beautiful is not part of what it is to be arepresentation of a tree. Moreover, to think that the paintingrepresents a tree is not thereby to think that it is beautiful. Beingbeautiful is not an essential property of the representation, andthinking of the representation does not mean thinking of it asbeautiful, even though it is may be necessary that it is beautiful.Hence representational properties are not aesthetic properties.The hierachical proposal thus seems to characterise a non-arbitraryand useful notion of the aesthetic. The contemporary notion can bevindicated.3.3 Aesthetic MoralsSubstantive aesthetic judgments have attracted much attention in thelatter half of the twentieth century. But to some extent this may havebeen a mistake, since the role of such judgments is to serve verdictiveaesthetic judgments of beauty and ugliness. Beauty and ugliness are theprimary aesthetic notions, which give sense to the wider class thatcontemporary aestheticians include as “aesthetic”. We needa hierarchical rather than an egalitarian conception of aestheticnotions. The broad notion of the aesthetic can be fixed by what it isto judge that something is beautiful or ugly, or that it has aestheticmerit or demerit. Only by seeing beauty and ugliness as the pre-eminentaesthetic notions can we make sense of a unitary category of theaesthetic, which includes the dainty and the dumpy, and which excludesphysical, sensory and representational properties of things, as well astheir agreeableness. The hierarchical proposal allows us to make theaesthetic/nonaesthetic distinction in a useful way and answer Beardsleyand Sibley's critics. Thus the notion of the aesthetic can be defended.That leaves open the deep question of how aesthetic judgments arepossible — a matter not addressed here.BibliographyReferencesBeardsley, Monroe. Aesthetics, Indianapolis: Hackett,1958. An extraordinary work, staggering in scope,deploying the notion of the aesthetic. The target of Dickie'scritique. Beardsley, Monroe. The Asthetic Point of View, Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1982. A selection of Beardsley's essays. Blackburn, Simon, 1998: Ruling Passions, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press. A defence of expressivism, a modern version ofHume's sentimentalism. Budd, Malcolm. “The Pure Judgement of Taste as an AestheticReflective Judgement,” British Journal of Aesthetics,2001. Refreshingly less deferential than many writingson Kant. Burton, Stephan. “Thick Concepts Revisited,”Analysis, 1992. An insightful account of substantive aestheticdescriptions, and also of so-called “thick moralconcepts.” Cohen, Ted. “A Critique of Sibley's Position,”Theoria, 1973. Argues that Sibley's account of what makesconcepts aesthetic will not do. Dickie, George. “Beardsley's Phantom AestheticExperience,” Journal of Philosophy, 1965. Argues that Beardsley's account of aestheticexperience will not do. Davidson, Donald, 1980: “Mental Events”, in Essayson Actions and Events, Blackwell: Oxford. A classic paper in the philosophy of mindarguing for a version of materialism without strict laws relating themental and the physical. Fine, Kit. “Essence and Modality,” PhilosophicalPerspectives, 1994. Distinguishes essence from modality; of generalphilosophical importance. Hume, David. “Of the Standard of Taste” in Essays:Moral, Political and Literary, Eugene Miller (ed.), Indianapolis:Liberty, 1985. Hume's classic attempt to reconcilesentimentalism with normativity. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment, trans. Meredith,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928. Includes the idea that judgments of beauty andugliness are subjectively universal, and much else. Kivy, Peter. “What Makes ‘Aesthetic’ TermsAesthetic?,” Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch, 1975. Argues that Sibley's unitary notion of theaesthetic has no basis. Kivy also makes a positivesuggestion. Mothersill, Mary. Beauty Restored, Oxford, 1984. An exploration of the notion of beauty, withsome historical coverage. Scruton, Roger. Art and Imagination, London: Methuen,1974. A wide-ranging book, in which the role ofimagination is highlighted. Scruton, Roger. The Aesthetics of Architecture, London:Methuen, 1979. A superb discussion of architecture, but alsocontains much material relevant to more central topics inaesthetics. Sibley, Frank. “Aesthetic Concepts,” PhilosophicalReview, also reprinted in Approach to Aesthetics,Clarendon: Oxford, 2001, 1959. Sibley's classic paper, which makes the notionof the aesthetic central. The target of Cohen and Kivy'scritques. Sibley, Frank. “Aesthetic and Nonaesthetic,”Philosophical Review, 1965, also reprinted in Approach toAesthetics, Clarendon: Oxford, 2001. Explores the dependence of aesthetic features onnonaesthetic features. This paper was originally the second part ofSibley's paper “Aesthetic Concepts.” Zangwill, Nick. “The Beautiful, The Dainty and theDumpy,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 1995, reprintedslightly modified in The Metaphysics of Beauty, Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 2001. Includes a statement and defence of thecentrality of beauty and ugliness among other aestheticconcepts. Zangwill, Nick. “Feasible Aesthetic Formalism,”Noûs, 1999, reprinted in The Metaphysics ofBeauty, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001. Argues for a “moderate” formalistview that allows that things can be “dependentlybeautiful,” in Kant's sense. Zemach, Eddy. Real Beauty, Penn State Press, 1995. Argues for an extreme realistview. Further ReadingBender, John. “General but Defeasible Reasons in AestheticEvaluation: The Generalist/Particularist Dispute”, Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism, 1995.Dickie, George. Evaluating Art, Philadelphia: TempleUniversity Press, 1988.Goldman, Alan. Aesthetic Value, Boulder, Colorado:Westview, 1995.Greenberg, Clement. Homemade Esthetics, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1999.Hanslick, Eduard. On the Musically Beautiful,Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986.Kivy, Peter. "Aesthetic Aspects and Aesthetic Qualities",Journal of Philosophy, 1968.Levinson, Jerrold. “Pleasure and the Value of Works ofArt”, in The Pleasures of Aesthetics, Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1995.Levinson, Jerrold. “Aesthetic Properties, Evaluative Force,and Differences of Sensibility”, Aesthetic Concepts: EssaysAfter Sibley, E. Brady and J. Levinson, eds., Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2001.McCloskey, Mary. Kant's Aesthetic, New York: SUNY Press,1987.Plato. Hippias Major.Saito, Yuriko. “Everyday Aesthetics”, Philosophyand Literature, 2001.Scruton, Roger. "Understanding Music", in The AestheticUnderstanding, London: Carcanet, 1983.Other Internet ResourcesAmerican Aesthetics Association site: Aesthetics On-lineRelated Entries pleasure | relativism Copyright © 2007 byNick Zangwill<nick.zangwill@durham.ac.uk> |
|
