The Judgment of Beauty
To judge that something is beautiful is, on the basis of one’s b-enjoyment, to
judge that others will enjoy the item in that way, other things being equal. We
restate the account of b-enjoyment for convenience.
One b-enjoys x’s appearing to have A only if φ is an experience of y’s
looking to x to have the features in the array A, and, for some group G
(1) x φ’s, and x's φing causes (2) – (5):
(2) (a) x occurrently believes, of φ, under A, that it occurs; (b) and has
the felt desire, of φ, under A, that it should occur for its own sake;
(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) is a first-person reason under A for x to
φ.
(4) x occurrently believes that x directly values φ’s having A.
(5) x occurrently believes that x G-universally values φ’s having A.
One believes that one G-universally values x’s appearing to have A if and only if
there is a sufficiently large group G of relevantly similar others, and collection C of
relevant similar arrays of features such that, for any member y in G, there is some
array A’ in C such that if x were to appear to y to have A’, then y would occurrently
believe that y directly values x’s appearing to y to have A’. One can think this is
not to commit to thinking that the G-similar others will b-enjoy x’s appearing to
them in the relevant way. To judge that something is beautiful is to take this step.
More fully,
One judges x beautiful if and only if
(1) one b-enjoys an item x as appearing to have an organized array A of
features;
[I had dropped the “organized” but put it back in here because of the
discussion simples that begins on p. 13]
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(2) one believes that those in the relevant similarity group will, other things
being equal, b-enjoy the item’s appearing to have a sufficiently similar array
A’;
(3) one’s b-enjoyment is one’s reason for belief in (2).
To motivate this account, imagine Carol is looking at Michelangelo’s David.
She b-enjoys it for the way the sensuous harmony of the naked form expresses
composure, confidence, and readiness for action; as part of her b-enjoyment, she
occurrently believes that she G-universally values the statue’s appearing that way.
When Carol, on the basis of her b-enjoyment, judges that appropriately believing
others in the similarity group G will b-enjoy the David as having the same or a
sufficiently similar array of features, she judges that their b-enjoyment will reveal
to them the same or a very similar G-universal valuing. She judges that they will
share with her the same vision of a contingency-transcending G-universally valuing.
The judgment of beauty is the claim of a shared perception of transcendence:
one’s subjective ascription of an array of features reveals through one’s enjoyment
a valuing valid for all relevant others.
A key difficulty this account faces is that there is an apparently compelling
argument that one’s b-enjoyment cannot be a reason to think that appropriately
believing members of the relevant similarity group will b-enjoy the item in question.
Consider Carol’s judgment that the David is beautiful. She b-enjoys the David as
having an array A of features, and, on that basis, judges that those in the relevant
similarity group will, other things being equal, b-enjoy the item as having A, or a
sufficiently similar array A’, provided they form the belief that x has A (or A’). The
difficulty that one knows that one routinely encounters disagreement with one’s
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judgments of beauty. Imagine, for example, that, in a discussion with his friend,
Roger, William expresses his belief that the “naked and ashamed” verse in Son
House’s rendition of John The Revelator is beautiful. William is confident Roger will
agree; he knows from the discussion that they both have formed very similar
beliefs about the verse, and he knows Roger belongs to the appropriate similarity
group: they share a very similar understanding and appreciation of the blues;
Roger understands and appreciates the references to Genesis, and he is very
familiar with other renditions of John the Revelator. Roger does not, however,
think the verse is beautiful. “I think it is very fine,” he says, “and I enjoy listening
to it, but—beautiful? No, I draw the line there. Beautiful it is not.” Such
disagreements are commonplace. Appropriately-believing others whom one, on
excellent grounds, regards as relevantly similar nonetheless often reject one’s
judgments of beauty.
This happens even in cases like the David, cases in which there is widespread
agreement that the thing is beautiful. Suppose Carol expresses her view that the
David is beautiful to her companion, Mason. Mason, who does not b-enjoy the
statue, replies, “Sadly, not for me.” Carol first assumes that he simply fails to
perceive the sensuous harmony expressive of composure, confidence, and
readiness for action, but she is quickly corrected. Mason, an art historian, offers a
description of the David that elaborates on the sensuous harmony theme in ways
that Carol finds illuminating and that deepens her b-enjoyment; in offering the
description, Mason is not merely reporting the views of other experts; he sees what
he is describing with his own eyes and is articulating his own belief. Carol is now
even more puzzled. She cannot understand how Mason can see the statue as he
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does and not find it beautiful. She suggests to him that a homophobia-induced
inability to enjoy looking at a naked male body prevents him from b-enjoying the
statue and on that basis finding it beautiful. Mason, who is gay, responds that he is
certain that homophobia is not the problem. He nonetheless does not b-enjoy the
David, and never has; he does not know why. Mason acknowledges that many
others agree with Carol, and he is more than willing on that basis to agree that the
David is beautiful, but this agreement does not express his own non-derivative
judgment that the statue is beautiful. He makes no such judgment; his agreement
merely acknowledges the view of the majority of others.
The solitary b-enjoyer who declares, “My b-enjoyment is sufficient reason to
attribute a like enjoyment to all relevant others,” would appear to be clinging to
slender reed of support, one quickly crushed the obvious fact of widespread
disagreement. So how can it be at all plausible to represent someone who judges
an item beautiful as predicting, on the basis of his or her b-enjoyment, that all
members of a group who form an appropriate belief will b-enjoy the item? We
know that our b-enjoyments are not generally a reliable guide in this regard.
Our answer is that the person who judges something beautiful entertains as
a working hypothesis that those in the relevant similarity group will, other things
being equal, b-enjoy provided they form the belief. When Carol judges the David
beautiful, she knows it is highly likely that she will encounter those who, like
Mason, fail to b-enjoy the David even though they belong to the appropriate
similarity group and form an appropriate belief. She nonetheless predicts their benjoyment as a working hypothesis. Like a full-fledged belief, the hypothesis
guides her thought and action. She uses it to identify similarities and dissimilarities
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between the David and other items she and others judge beautiful; and, to elicit
their reaction, she asserts to others that the David is beautiful. She proceeds in
this way because she wants to know who directly values relevant experiences of the
David in the way she does. She wants to know this because, as we noted earlier,
one has compelling reason to discover a like-minded community with which one
shares a vision of G-universal valuing. Responding to others disagreements can
lead to revisions of the working hypothesis that yield a more accurate definition of
the relevant community. There are three ways in which Carol can respond to
Mason’s failure to b-enjoy the David.
1. Refusing to revise
She can leave her judgment unrevised. A judgment of beauty is an “other
things being equal” judgment, and, Carol could take the position that other things
are not equal. Something unknown in Mason’s character or history might inhibit his
b-enjoyment; the statue might, for example, remind him of his first love, a memory
that enlivens pain still fresh despite the passage of time. In such a case, Mason is
excluded from a community to which Carol belongs. The community consists of all
those attribute the same (or a very closely similar) array of features as Carol does,
and who b-enjoy the statue as having that array. Members of this community see
their b-enjoyment has having revealed the same contingency-transcending Guniversal valuing. Mason does not share this vision of transcendence.
Where one has sufficient reason to suspect that other things are not equal,
the failure of someone to b-enjoy does not provide any reason to abandon one’s
other things being equal judgment that they would so enjoy.
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Many disagreements over beauty are plausibly disagreements over whether
“other things” are “equal.” Suppose Sally b-enjoys Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana and
for that reason judges it beautiful; Sam disagrees, calling Orff’s compositions
childish compared to Brahms. Despite his condemnation of the composition as
childish, Sam still directly values his listening experience. (One can directly value
what one regards as childish.) But Sam does not b-enjoy listening to Carmina
Burana since his perception of the music as childish prevents him from thinking,
with regard to any group G, that his valuing is G-universal. One believes that one
G-universally values x’s appearing to have A if and only if there is a sufficiently
large group G of relevantly similar others, and collection C of relevant similar arrays
of features such that, for any member y in G, there is some array A’ in C such that
if x were to appear to y to have A’, then y would occurrently believe that y directly
values x’s appearing to y to have A’. Sam does not believe that there is any group
of people relevantly similar to him that satisfies the above condition. Sally regards
Sam’s accusation of childishness as simply one more manifestation of his obsessive
need to appear superior to anyone with whom he engages in conversation, and she
is convinced that, if Sam were freed from his obsession, he would b-enjoy listening
to the music. Sam, who is well aware of Sally’s view of him, thinks Sally lacks a
sophisticated musical ear.
The claim that other things are not equal is not a plausible defense if a
sufficient number of those who form the appropriate belief fail to b-enjoy the item.
It is, of course, possible for “other things” not to be “equal” in such a case; evil
space aliens may have distorted the responses of almost everyone. Such
eventualities are extremely unlikely, however. So what are Carol’s options if a
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significant number of people disagree with her judgment that the David is
beautiful?
2. Revising the belief
One option is to decide that she has not identified the relevant array of
features with sufficient precision and detail. Perhaps she could count on agreement
from those who form the belief that the David has a different, perhaps richer and
more complex, array of features. It is helpful to switch examples.
Suppose Carol finds the opening lines of the poem in Nabokov’s Pale Fire
beautiful:
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the window pane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff—and I
Lived on, flew on, in that reflected sky.
Carol believes that the lines capture the situation of a self-consciousness that
identifies itself only with its own self-consciousness, not with any contingent
circumstance in which that self-consciousness happens to be embodied. Mason
forms the same belief, but he thinks any sufficiently mature adult should regard the
lines as the adolescent and indefensible refusal to accept that the self is embodied
in a particular contingent setting, and, far from regarding the lines as beautiful, he
finds their adolescent indulgence unpleasant. Grant, for the sake of argument, that
the vast majority of readers agree with Mason.
Carol could respond by attempting to reformulate her first-personauthoritative assessment of the lines in a way that side-stepped the charge of
adolescent indulgence. To respond this way is to concede the non-existence of the
community of b-enjoyers to which one thought one belonged and to seek to a
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differently defined community. Carol might, for example, set the lines in the
context of the rest of the poem and see the lines, not as the endorsement of a selfconsciousness refusing to identify with anything beyond its own self-consciousness,
but as introducing the plight of such a self-consciousness and laying the foundation
for considering ways to escape its isolation (the first line, after all, reads “I was” not
“I am”).
Debates over beauty often exhibit just this sort of criticism and redefinition.
In taking this line we do not wish to decide whether there is some specific set of
concepts (as invoked by our critical vocabulary) which are the exact beauty-making
features of the thing, or whether, as argued in an influential paper of Isenberg’s,
there is some kind of non-conceptual perceptual content which our critical
vocabulary gestures at rather than explicitly identifying. Whether the features in
question relate most primordially to a way of experiencing or to a way of
conceptualizing, or whether there is even a coherently expressible difference
between the two, is not at issue. The point is just that whatever the specific array
of features in question is, and however we indicate it, it is an open possibility for
the lonely lover of beauty to try to work harder to make others see or understand,
and for the lonely holdout to believe that there something he or she is simply
missing, in either case no matter how much intelligent scrutiny has come before.
3. Relativization
Another way to defend one’s judgment of beauty against disagreement is to
revise one’s description of the similarity group. By way of illustration, suppose Vicki
reads Wallace Steven’s Sunday Morning, a poem offering Stevens’ reflections, from
a distinctly non-Christian perspective, on the Christian story of the crucifixion of
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Christ, the sacrament of communion, and the Christian promise of immortality.
She forms the belief that the poem has a certain array of features (concerning the
elegance of the language, the power of the metaphors to capture aspects of the
Christian themes of communion, suffering, salvation, and immortality); she benjoys the poem as having that array, and, on that basis, judges it beautiful. That
is, she thinks that appropriately-believing others in the relevant similarity group
will, other things being equal, b-enjoy the item. In her enthusiasm for the poem,
she takes the relevant similarity group to include anyone with sufficient knowledge
of Christianity. A few days later, she encounters Guanglei, a Buddhist, who is a
counter-intelligence analyst for the Chinese government. He has thoroughly
studied Christianity and Christian culture, and, when he reads Sunday Morning, he
easily forms a belief which is not at all dissimilar to the one Vicki forms, but he does
not b-enjoy his reading of the poem as having the array of features he attributes to
it. He does not in fact enjoy reading the poem in any way at all, but, even if he
did, his enjoyment would not amount to b-enjoyment. Even if he were to directly
value his reading the poem, he would not, value his reading of it G-universally. He
would not recognize any group of relevantly G-similar others.
The poem offers
him a vision of an alien world, a world he understands, but with which he does not
identify or sympathize. In response to Guanglei’s reaction, Vicki revises her
judgment of beauty; she now restricts her prediction of b-enjoyment to those who
are not only sufficiently familiar with Christianity but who also have an affective
attachment to it similar to her own. Vicki could have tried to avoid this revision by
claiming that other things are not equal in Guanglei’s case. The boundaries of
“other things are not equal” claims are hardly clear, but we interpret such claims as
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asserting interferences with processes and attitudes that would otherwise yield a
particular result, and we do not think it is plausible to posit such interference in
cases like Guanglei’s.
Some debates about beauty are plausibly regarded as debates about the
proper relativization of a judgment of beauty. Consider Vladimir Nabokov’s novel,
Pale Fire, for example. The novel contains a long poem by the—fictional—famous
poet, John Shade; the poem is preceded by an introduction by Shade’s friend,
Charles Kinbote; Kinbote’s commentary, correlated with the poem’s numbered
lines, follows the poem. The poem and Kinbote’s observations comprise a highly
allusive and self-referential narrative in which Shade and Kinbote are the
characters. The novel makes considerable demands on the readers intellectual
abilities, sophistication, and literary knowledge (the title, “Pale Fire,” for example, is
from Act IV, scene 3 of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens: "The moon's an arrant
thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun", a line traditionally interpreted
as a metaphor for creativity and inspiration). Carol and Mason both attribute more
or less similar arrays of features to the novel; each b-enjoys it as having the
relevant array, and each judges it beautiful on that basis. They restrict their
respective judgments to different similarity groups, however. Carol excludes from
her group traditionalists about the novel who regard Pale Fire as “self-referential
trash”; Mason includes them on the theory that they would abandon their “selfreferential trash” assessment if they were ever to form a belief about the novel
similar to Mason’s own. Mason is convinced that if they could see the novel through
his eyes, they would indeed b-enjoy it and judge it beautiful. Carol is convinced
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they would not. Mason attributes greater power to the novel to generate benjoyment than Carol does.
The extent of an item’s power to generate b-enjoyment matters. Compare
the community that b-enjoys Pale Fire as having arrays of features similar to those
Carol and Mason attribute to it to the community that b-enjoys the Taj. Members
of each group are convinced their b-enjoyments reveal a contingency-transcending
G-universal valuing; however, the contingency transcending vision of the Pale Fire
group is available to the relatively few capable of understanding the novel; the
vision of the Taj group, however, is accessible to many. One cares about both.
The b-enjoyments accessible only to “specialist” groups may offer profound
insights, but few would forego membership is wide reaching communities such as
those who b-enjoy the Taj.
B. Knowledge?
If one successfully defends/revises one’s judgment of beauty in one or more
of the above ways, does one thereby qualify as knowing, or at least having good
reason to believe, that appropriately-believing others in the relevant similarity
group will b-enjoy the item? One may plausibly offer the David as an example.
Carol b-enjoys the statue for the way the sensuous harmony of the naked form
expresses composure, confidence, and readiness for action, and judges that those
who form the same or similar belief will, other things being equal, b-enjoy the
David as having the same or similar array of features. The group that has made
the same or more or less similar judgment is quite large, and has endured as a
sizable group from the creation of the statute in 1504 to the present. One might
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plausibly regard Mason-like failures to b-enjoy (failures of appropriately believing
members of the relevant similarity group) as cases in which other things are not
equal, and hence regard Carol as knowing that relevant others will b-enjoy the
statue. The background of agreement, moreover, need not be agreement about
the particular item one judges beautiful. Imagine Carol sees a man on the street
during a trip to Beijing; she b-enjoys his face and judges it beautiful. She will
never see the man again, nor ever meet anyone who has, but the face is similar to
those that people have for centuries judged beautiful. Compare a case of “unique
beauty.” Suppose Carol is the first to see a new painting by an aspiring artist. The
painting is as innovative as impressionist painting was when it first appeared. She
thinks the painting is beautiful, but there is no David-like history she can rely on to
support her claim that others will b-enjoy the painting; indeed, apart from her and
the artist, there is no history of others judging, or refusing to judge, the painting
beautiful. Of course, Carol—and others—can develop a relevant history by
determining whether others agree with her judgment of beauty, and, if there is
sufficient agreement, she will at some point know that others will b-enjoy.
We want, however, to deemphasize the importance of knowledge in this
context. Responses to other’s disagreement may lead to knowledge, but, on the
way, they may also define communities of like b-enjoyers. The process may lead
one to join with others in forming the same or similar beliefs that an item has a
certain array of features, and to b-enjoy the painting as having that array. One
may care as much or more about the formation of such communities as one does
about whether one ultimately achieves knowledge. Of course, none of this may
happen. The innovative artist may abandon painting to go to law school, and burn
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his paintings, leaving Carol the only one who has seen them. In this case, Carol
may never know whether others would have b-enjoyed them.
IV. False Positives, False Negatives
False positives and false negatives would show that our account of the
judgment of beauty was incorrect. False positives are cases in which the definition
is fulfilled but in which one withholds any judgment of beauty; false negatives,
cases in which one makes a judgment of beauty when the definition is not fulfilled.
We consider a number of false negatives and false positives. Our goal is not merely
to dispose of objections, but to illustrate the explanatory power of the account.
A. False negatives
1. Simples
On our account, a completely uniform shade of blue cannot be judged
beautiful; only items which one regards as having an organized array of features
can be so judged. This may seem questionable. After all, people do say, “That is a
beautiful shade of blue,” and, in any case, to avoid the charge of arbitrariness, the
requirement of an organized array needs a justification.
To begin with, one should set aside examples which do not really involve a
uniform shade and which are not disallowed by our account. A shade of blue can
be the dominant feature in a b-enjoyed organized array of features (in an abstract
painting, for example) where that b-enjoyment serves as the reason for a judgment
of beauty; further, a “color connoisseur” (an artist, for example) might attribute to
a shade of blue an organized array of relations to other shades of that color, benjoy the shade as having that array, and, on that basis, judge it beautiful. What
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follows from our account is that one cannot b-enjoy a shade of blue as merely
having the feature being that shade of blue. Since we require that b-enjoyment be
the reason for one’s judgment of beauty, it follows that one cannot judge the shade
beautiful.
To justify this result, suppose one did claim to b-enjoy looking at the shade
of blue merely as being that shade. That is, one claims that, for some similarity
group G,
(1) one looks, and one 's looking causes (2) – (5):
(2) (a) one occurrently believes, of his looking, under the feature blue, that
it occurs; (b) and has the felt desire, of his looking, under the feature blue,
that it should occur for its own sake;
(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) is a first-person reason under blue for
one to look;
(4) one occurrently believes that one directly values looking at the blue
color;
(5) one occurrently believes that one G-universally values looking at the blue
color.
(5) is the problem. Can one coherently G-universally value looking at the particular
shade of blue? To G-universally value is to directly value [direct valuing is not
required as the definition is currently stated, but should be]. One directly
values an x’s having an array of features A if and only if one regards x’s having A
as, in and of itself, a third-person reason to act in ways that contribute to its being
the case that x has A. Our argument appeals to general limitations on what one
can coherently regard as a reason for action. One cannot, for example, coherently
regard the belief that there will be a full moon as a reason to seek a new proof that
no positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation an + bn = cn, for n greater than
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2 (Fermat’s Last Theorem). We first explain why this is so, and then return to the
shade of blue issue.
Limitations on what one can regard as a reason for action arise because one
cannot coherently claim that a belief is a reason for action without being able, in
principle, to offer others an explanation of why the belief provides as least some
justification for performing the action. The others may reject the explanation, but
what one offers must qualify—at least in one’s own eyes—as a possible explanation,
and it will do so only if one believes things that one regards as weighing in favor of
performing the action. One may object that one can indeed meet this requirement
with regard to offering the belief that the moon is full as a reason to seek a new
proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem; one could easily meet the requirement if one lived
in a community of astrologers who believed in appropriate connections among
astronomical events and mathematical discoveries. But no one, or almost no one,
lives in such a community, and absent some such convictions, there is nothing one
believes that one regards as weighing in favor of thinking that the moon’s being full
provides some degree of justification for seeking a new proof. To avoid
misunderstanding, we should emphasize that we are not embracing a “community
relativism” about reasons; we do not think that a belief qualifies as a reason only
relative to this or that community. We are just emphasizing two facts: first, to
claim that a belief is a reason is to commit oneself to being able in principle to offer
others an explanation of the justificatory force of the belief; second, one’s beliefs
impose limits on what one can offer as an explanation. This is consistent with an
anti-relativism that recognizes principles for assessing, criticizing, and revising
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views about what counts as an explanation that are valid independent of the views
of any particular community.
Now let us return to the question of whether one can G-universally value
looking at the blue color. One who claims to do so is committed to offering a
candidate explanation to others of why the color’s appearing in the way it does
provides a third-person reason to look at it. The task is demanding. One could
meet this demands if, for example, one believed that by enjoying the shade one
would be granted a vision of the ultimate spiritual reality and that one’s life would
thereby be transformed for the better. We do not, however, think that the vast
majority of people have beliefs that would support any explanation at all.
One issue remains: remarks like, “That is a beautiful shade of blue.” These
can be understood as claiming the blue is particularly pleasing, suitable, or
whatever.
2. Beauty without G-universal valuing
It appears that one can judge that something is beautiful without a relevant
G-universal valuing. If history had been different, impressionist painting would
have been a putative example. Impressionism was not well received when it first
appeared (critics included Henry James, who lamented the retreat from the “good
old rules that decree that beauty is beauty and ugliness, ugliness”1). Imagine a
world in which impressionism never catches on; painters eventually stop painting in
that style until only a single impressionist painter remains. Imagine him looking at
1
Henry James, “Parisian Festivity,” New York Tribune, 13 May 1876.
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one of his paintings. As he does so, he fulfills the following conditions for the
appropriate φ and A:
(1) x φ’s, and x's φing causes (2) – (5):
(2) (a) x occurrently believes, of φ, under A, that it occurs; (b) and has
the felt desire, of φ, under A, that it should occur for its own sake;
(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) is a first-person reason under A for x to
φ.
(4) x occurrently believes that x directly values φ’s having A.
The above conditions are almost the conditions for b-enjoyment. All that is missing
is (5): x occurrently believes that x G-universally values φ’s having A
The objection is that the painter may judge the painting beautiful on the
basis of the enjoyment characterized by (1) – (4) and hence that b-enjoyment is
not required as the reason for a judgment of beauty. To make his plausible,
suppose that, over the years since the disappearance of impressionism, the painter
has encountered many who have looked at the painting and formed beliefs very
similar to the painters; however, not a single one of them has G-universally valued
the paintings. They understood the painting, they just didn’t like it. The negative
responses have worn the painter down to the point at which, when he looks at the
painting, he no longer expects anyone else to G-universally value looking at the
painting.
Our answer is that when the painter fulfills (1) – (4), there is a similarity
group G such that he G-universally values looking at the painting. The group
consists of anyone who shares his attitudes and reactions to impressionism. That
group currently consists, as far as the painter knows, only of himself; however,
even when, at a certain time, a similarity group consists just of oneself, one may
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still judge a painting beautiful on the basis of the related b-enjoyment. We offer
the following considerations in defense of this claim.
We begin with the observation that groups of people making the same
judgment of beauty can be categorized along two dimensions. The first is the size
of the group that b-enjoys the item as having more or less the same array of
features. The “more or less” allows variation in enjoyed arrays; they must just be
more alike than they are different. The second dimension is temporal duration, the
length of time the group exists. Michelangelo’s David illustrates both ideas. Recall
Carol’s judgment that the David is beautiful. She b-enjoys the statue for the way
the sensuous harmony of the naked form expresses composure, confidence, and
readiness for action, and judges that those who form the same or similar belief will,
other things being equal, b-enjoy the David as having the same or similar array of
features. The group that has made the same or more or less similar judgment is
quite large, and has endured as a sizable group from the creation of the statute in
1504 to the present. Similar remarks hold for the Taj, the Parthenon, and
selections from Shakespeare, Goethe, and Keats, to take just a few examples.
Contrast the judgment that 1960 pop song Teen Angel is beautiful. In the song,
the teen-aged narrator’s car stalls on a railroad track; he helps his girlfriend to
safety, but she runs back to the car and is killed when the train strikes; they find
the narrator’s high school ring in her hand. The group that judges the song
beautiful is small (if it exists), and it most likely reached its maximum size around
February 1960 when Teen Angel ranked number one on the U. S. Billboard Hot 100.
Innumerable examples fall between extremes represented by the Taj and Teen
Angel, including Sunday Morning and Pale Fire. The former, like the David, has a
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large group that judges it beautiful on the basis of b-enjoying it as exhibiting arrays
of features that are more or less similar, and the group has remained sizable since
the first publication of the poem in 1915; however, unlike the David, which has
cross-cultural appeal, the group that judges Sunday Morning beautiful is almost
certainly restricted to those with sufficient emotional and intellectual attachment to
Christianity and Christian culture. The group that judges Pale Fire beautiful is even
more restricted, given the demands the work makes on its readers; nonetheless, a
sizeable group has endured since the book’s 1952 publication.
We concede that, when one expresses a judgment of beauty, others most
naturally understand the judgment as follows: one judges that others who
experience in the relevantly similar waywill, other things being equal, b-enjoy the
item as having a specific organized array of features, where, at the time of the
judgment, the relevant similarity group is, or under appropriate circumstances
would be, a reasonably sizable group that is a successor to similar groups extending
significantly back into time (more or less like the groups that, for example, judge
the Taj, Sunday Morning, and Pale Fire beautiful). The “or under appropriate
circumstances would be” qualification allows one to judge something beautiful in
this way even if few, if any, others have encountered it. The rationale for this
attitude lies in a point we emphasized earlier: to regard a reason as G-universal is
to regard it as transcending the contingencies of one’s particular situation—in the
sense that others in other situations with other attitudes and interests also
acknowledge the reason. The larger and more diverse the similarity group, the less
one’s recognition depends on idiosyncratic attitudes and interest, and the more it
depends only on widely shared attitudes and interests. Given one’s compelling
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reason to discover such contingency-transcending reasons, our interest in
judgments of beauty involving sizeable similarity groups is understandable. This
does not, however, mean that, when the similarity group consists just of oneself,
one cannot judge something beautiful on the basis of the related b-enjoyment. It
just means that others may not be much interested in the judgment.
3. Beauty without enjoyment
There are some examples that suggest b-enjoyment—indeed, enjoyment in
general—is not required for a judgment of beauty. Goya’s Third of May is an
example. It is arguably a case of what one might call “horrific beauty.” The center
of the painting is occupied by a white-shirted guerilla with arms outstretched about
to be shot by faceless firing line of blue-uniformed French soldiers, who are
executing the lined up guerillas with mechanical precision. The following seems
extremely plausible: only an extremely perverse person would enjoy contemplating
the horrific scene; nonetheless, the painting, a masterpiece, has a beauty that
makes it depiction of the horror all the more effective. There is a large and
complex literature addressing “horrific beauty”; we offer the following reflections,
not as a decisive treatment, but as an indication that our account of beauty has
resources that may shed some light on such case.
We agree of course that only the very perverse would enjoy the horror just
for the horror, but this is consistent with b-enjoying the painting as having an array
of features that concern its artistic merits—it masterful composition, use of color,
and effective depiction of the contrast between the guerilla’s and the French army.
One can b-enjoy the painting as having this array, and judge it beautiful on that
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basis. The enjoyment aids one in looking at the horror, from which one might
otherwise turn away.
Our answer to the Goya example depends on the claim that one does not
enjoy the horror. One may well object that many who watch horror films enjoy
being horrified. Surely, there is no reason to deny that they can b-enjoy the
horrific aspects of a particularly artfully executed film, but no one would claim the
horror was beautiful.
We do deny that the horrific aspects of the film are b-enjoyed. To b-enjoy
the horror one must believe one G-universally values in the relevant way. That is,
one must think that relevant others would also directly value the relevant
experiences. For any relative large and diverse G, no one will believe this (or, if
they do, they will soon be corrected). Not everyone enjoys horror films; many are
repulsed.
One may object that the objection gains power if we change the example
from horror films. Consider Matthias Grünewald’s triptych of the crucified Christ,
which depicts the horror of the crucifixion. It is fairly standard commentary on the
painting that, in presenting the horror, Grünewald’s goal was not beauty but a
sermon in pictures. Someone might b-enjoy the painting. Imagine that Perry, in
despair over the troubles in his life, finds himself in front of the picture. As he
contemplates the suffering Christ, he suddenly no longer feels lost and alone in his
own suffering, which, in a sudden reversal of attitude, Perry now sees as a path to
purification and salvation, and, as he looks the picture, he b-enjoys Christ’s
purifying-path-to-salvation-suffering; in particular, he thinks anyone who sees the
picture as he does would believe that there is a third person reason to looking the
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picture finding in it Christ’s purifying-path-to-salvation-through-suffering. Isn’t
Perry an example of b-enjoying something without judging it beautiful? We do not
think so. We think that one who b-enjoys the painting in the way described will
also judge it beautiful. Indeed, Perry might well describe his experience this way:
“When I saw the beauty in Christ’s suffering, I realized my own suffering was the
path to my salvation.” In general, the “horrific beauty” examples divide into two
types: those in which the horror, which (virtually) no one would judge beautiful, is
enjoyed but not b-enjoyed; and those in which the horror is b-enjoyed but judged
beautiful.
4. Beauty without causation
The account requires that one’s enjoyment causes the belief that one Guniversally values. The following example appears to show that this is not required.
An elderly museum curator is looking at his favorite Gauguin. He fulfills the
conditions for b-enjoyment with respect to an appropriate φ and A—except the
causal conditions. Instead of causing the relevant beliefs and desires, the
experience of the painting floods his consciousness with memories of his youth
combined with an attention-consuming awareness of the comparative shortness of
the rest of his life. He has the relevant beliefs and desires, but in spite of his
experience, not because of it. Can the curator judge the painting beautiful on the
basis of fulfilling (1) – (5) without the causal conditions?
We see no reason to deny that he can. However, we take the robust
enjoyment sustained by the feedback loop, not the curator’s pale refection thereof,
to be the paradigm case of enjoying beauty. Indeed, if the curator had never b-
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enjoyed the painting with the causal feedback loop in place, he would not, at least
not without qualification, judge it beautiful. His attitude would be that something is
missing, that it is not quite beautiful.
B. False positives
1. Wine, chocolate, and chess
Compare “Michelangelo’s David is beautiful” with “This Côtes du Rhône is
beautiful.” Although wine connoisseurs sometimes describe wines as beautiful,
wine is hardly the example one would produce if asked for a paradigm case of
beauty, and—as we will argue shortly—for good reason. Our account of beauty,
however, there is no relevant difference between judging the David beautiful and
making the same judgment about the Côtes du Rhône. Imagine Robert, the goutridden wine critic, tastes a wine. He b-enjoys the wine. That is: (1) he forms a
first-person authoritative belief ascribing array A of features to the wine; he finds in
it an aroma of cherry and a touch of smoke combined with light taste of tannin and
a soft taste of red fruit, spice, and earth). (2) This belief motivates and justifies his
enjoyment of the wine for its own sake; that is, that belief is an underived active
reason to enjoy of the wine has having that array. Further, as a deeply committed
wine connoisseur, he thinks he should believe that the wine has that array, and
that the belief should serve as an underived active reason. That is, he regards the
proposition that the wine has A as an underived normative reason for him to enjoy
the wine as having A. In addition, for a similarity group G of wine connoisseurs of
similarity sophistication and discriminatory abilities, he thinks that if one of them
forms the same or sufficiently similar belief, he or she will also believe that he
regards the proposition that the wine has A as an underived normative reason for
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him to enjoy the wine as having A. That is, (3) he regards the proposition that the
wine has the array as a G-universal normative reason for any member of G to enjoy
the wine as having A. Finally, his enjoyment causes or causally sustains (3). On
the basis of his b-enjoyment, Robert judges the wine is beautiful.
Similar remarks
hold for b-enjoying the complexities of chocolate, or any item one can experience
with sensations of sufficient structure and complexity.
We think the wine, chocolate, and the like can be beautiful; however, we also
think there is an important difference between, for example, judging a wine
beautiful and judging the David beautiful. Take the latter example first. Now, by
way of contrast, suppose Barbara and Carol are looking at the David; unlike Carol,
Barbara fails to b-enjoy it. When Barbara expresses her disappointment, her
remarks reveal that, unlike Carol, she does not believe that statue to evince a
sensuous harmony expressive composure, confidence, and readiness for action.
Indeed, she fails to attribute any organized array of features to the statue; it is, for
her, just a lifeless piece of marble. To aid Barbara in forming an appropriate belief,
Carol calls Barbara’s attention to the way the left leg is bent, the bend and slight
turn at the waist, and the way the head is turned directing the gaze to the left and
exhibiting the muscles of the neck; and he could ask her to try to see all these as
combining to express concentration and readiness for movement. The essential
point is that Carol can aid Barbara by directing attention to publicly accessible
features of the statue. This is possible in many—but we do not claim all—cases.
One can often refer to publicly accessible features when trying to assist others to
form an appropriate first-person authoritative belief.
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Compare the wine example. Imagine that Barbara neither smells the cherry
aroma and touch of smoke, nor tastes the tannins, red fruit, spice, and earth. To
help her detect these features, Paul, a wine connoisseur, could have her taste other
wines with similar but more easily detectable features; after sufficient practice with
these wines, Barbara might be able to detect the features that initially eluded her.
Paul does not, however, typically direct Barbara’s attention to publicly accessible
features of the wine. He might call her attention to the wine’s color and viscosity,
but this aid Barbara little, if any, in detecting the aromas and tastes that elude her.
One may well object that aromas and tastes are “publicly accessible” features of
wines. They are in the sense that there is remarkable agreement among wine
experts—well-trained sommeliers, for example—on aromas and tastes. We have no
wish to deny this. Our point is that such features are less accessible in the sense
that reliably detecting them typically requires considerable specialized experience
and training.
It matters whether one can refer to generally publicly accessible features
when trying to assist others to form an appropriate first-person authoritative belief.
Iris Murdoch emphasizes similar point about art:
The accessible existence of art, its ability to hang luminously in human minds
at certain times, depends traditionally upon an external being, a fairly precise
and fixed sensory notation or ‘body’, an authority to which the client
intermittently submits himself. . . Art experience . . . is something we can
self-evidently and identifiably have and enjoy, in various ways in various
materials.2
We think a similar point holds for beauty: the “ability [of beauty] to hang
luminously in human minds at certain times, depends [in a range of central and
2
Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics As A Guide To Morals (Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1993).
25
important—but not all—cases] upon an external being . . . an authority to which the
client intermittently submits himself.” The publicly accessible features (accessible
with out specialized experience and training) provide an “external authority,”
shared external point of reference around which communities of like b-enjoyers
may readily form.
We do not, however, wish to overemphasize the role of publicly accessible
features. By way of counterpoint, consider the conversion of M. Alphonse
Ratisbonne, a Jew by birth and, for the first part of his life, an atheist by conviction.
When Alphonse entered a chapel devoted to the Virgin Mary, he had a vision of the
Virgin and was instantly converted to Catholicism. Alphonse described his state
immediately after the conversion:
I did not know where I was: I did not know whether I was Alphonse or
another. I only felt myself changed and believed myself another me; I looked
for myself in myself and did not find myself. In the bottom of my soul I felt
an explosion of the most ardent joy; I could not speak; I had no wish to
reveal what had happened . . . All that I can say is that in an instant the
bandage had fallen from my eyes, and not one bandage only, but the whole
manifold of bandages in which I had been brought up. One after another they
rapidly disappeared, even as the mud and ice disappear under the rays of the
burning sun. I came out as from a sepulchre, from an abyss of darkness; and
I was living, perfectly living. But I wept, for at the bottom of that gulf I saw
the extreme of misery from which I had been saved by an infinite mercy.3
One can readily imagine that, as part of the “explosion of the most ardent joy,”
Alphonse b-enjoyed the vision of the Virgin and judged the vision beautiful. There
are of course few publicly accessible features that one might indicate to help others
b-enjoy a similar vision. There is the chapel and its adornments, but few who
experience them experience visions.
2. The Oprah Sign
3
William James, Principles of Psychology
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The following objection rests on two claims. First, there are attempts to
judge something beautiful that misfire so badly that one should not regard them as
genuine judgments of beauty. Second, on our account, such cases count as
entirely non-defective judgments of beauty. We offer an example to illustrate and
defend the first claim. If one finds the example unconvincing, it poses no threat to
our account of the judgment of beauty. For those who are convinced, we contend
that it follows from our account that the purported judgment of beauty does not
really qualify as one.
The example: outside Oprah’s studio in Chicago, there is a sign with a
slanted “O” on top that reads “HARPO STUDIOS,” and below that, in smaller letters,
“The Oprah Winfrey Show.” A group from a small town in Iowa gathers before the
sign on Mother’s Day; having laid flowers before it, they contemplate it. Each
forms the belief that the script-like slanted “O” complements the straight block
letter “HARPO STUDIOS,” which is harmoniously offset by modest, “The Oprah
Winfrey Show.” In their adoration of Oprah, the features combine in a way that fills
them with awe, and, as a result, each fulfills—at least apparently fulfills—the
remaining conditions of b-enjoyment for an appropriate φ and A : for some group
G, (2) (a) each occurrently believes, of φ, under A, that it occurs; (b) and has
the felt desire, of φ, under A, that it should occur for its own sake; (3) the
belief/desire pair in (2) is a first-person reason under A to φ; (4) each
occurrently believes that he or she directly values φ’s having A, and (5) each
occurrently believes that he or she G-universally values φ’s having A. On the basis
of this apparent b-enjoyment, each judges—or, at least appears to judge—that
others will, other things being equal, b-enjoy the sign has having the array,
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provided that they form the belief that it has the array. That is, each judges, or
appears to judge, the sign is beautiful.
Do they really judge that the sign is beautiful? Some will certainly think so,
and with apparent good reason. Does one really want to deny that the beloved is
beautiful in the eyes of the lover? On the other hand, it does seem wrong to
concede that they really judge the sign beautiful. Imagine the fans extol the
beauty of the sign as they show pictures of it to their friends. The astonished
friends react with, “You’ve got to be kidding. You can’t really think that is beautiful.
It’s just a sign!” Our account explains both reactions.
We begin with the reasons to think the fans do not really judge the sign
beautiful. One judges something beautiful only if one’s b-enjoyment is one’s
reason for the judgment. To fulfill this requirement, the fans must think that, for
some group G, they G-universally value the way the sign appears. . They cannot
fulfill this condition. To see why, recall the point we emphasized when discussing
the uniform shade of blue example.
There are limitations on what one can regard
as a reason for action: namely to claim that a belief is a reason is to commit oneself
to being able in principle to offer others at least a candidate explanation of the
justificatory force of the belief. The fans could meet this requirement if, for
example, they believed that by enjoying the sign in the requisite way one would be
granted a vision of the ultimate spiritual reality and that one’s life would thereby be
transformed for the better. The fans, one may safely assume, do not have any
such beliefs; indeed, one may safely assume that they do not have any beliefs that
would support any candidate explanation at all. The fans adoration of Oprah dupes
them into merely thinking that they think that they appropriately G-universally
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value. Compare thinking, in one’s eagerness to impress one’s friends, that one
understands why, in the theory of special relativity, the speed of light is constant in
all frames or reference; when one tries to explain why to the friends, one discovers
one only thought one understood. Since the fans cannot coherently regard
themselves as G-universally valuing, they cannot b-enjoy the sign as having that
array; consequently, they cannot make a judgment of beauty that requires that benjoyment as a reason.
Having said this, can we still do justice to the truism that the beloved is
beautiful in the eyes of the lover? We can offer this much: the fans almost judge
the sign beautiful. The only problem is the requirement that they regard they Guniversally value. This is no small problem. It is by convincing one that one values
in this way that the enjoyment of beauty convinces one that it has provided a
contingency-transcending insight. Nonetheless, the fans think—mistakenly think,
but still think—that their enjoyment of the sign provides them with such an insight.
In their eyes, the eyes of the lover, they appear to themselves to judge the sign
beautiful.
3. Michael Jackson’s Thriller
The Oprah sign example reveals limits on what one can coherently judge
beautiful. How far do those limits extend? Can one, for example, coherently judge
Michael Jackson’s Thriller beautiful?
On our account, one can b-enjoy Thriller and judge it beautiful on that basis.
There is no “Oprah sign” problem of producing a candidate explanation of the
existence of a reason that will support a claim of G-universal valuing. Thriller fans
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will cite the elements of the music, lyrics, dance, and video, and, while one may not
agree with the explanation, the features identified are certainly sufficient to
constitute a candidate explanation. Many, perhaps most, will nonetheless think
something has gone wrong if, when the visitors from outer space ask for examples
of beauty, earth’s representatives offer, without further comment or qualification,
the David and Thriller. We suggest the reason lies in a point we made earlier:
when one expresses a judgment of beauty, others most naturally understand the
judgment as predicting that others in a certain similarity group will b-enjoy the
item, where the group is reasonably large and a successor to similar groups
extending significantly back into time. Thus, imagine the space visitors return fifty
years later; they again ask for examples of beauty and are again offered the David,
but no one even mentions Thriller. When the aliens enquire about Thriller, earth’s
representatives explain that Thriller is passé; it has been years since any significant
number of people b-enjoyed it and judged it beautiful. It is currently viewed as in
the same league as Teen Angel—a somewhat embarrassing moment in cultural
history. This is not to deny that Thriller was once (on our story) b-enjoyed and
judged beautiful. We are just pointing out that we recognize an important
distinction between judgments of beauty which are associated with sizeable and
enduring similarity groups, and judgments which are not. A distinction sufficiently
important that we would not be likely to offer the aliens Thriller as an example of
beauty even at the height of its fame—the court still being out on whether it should
take its place alongside the David or Teen Angel.
V. Beauty’s Power
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We can now deliver on our promise to explain beauty’s power to compel our
attention and appreciation, to unite us in shared visions, and to divide us with
different ones. B-enjoyment is the source of these powers. It compels our
attention and appreciation in three ways. When one b-enjoys x’s appearing to have
the features in an array A, the associate belief/desire pair is an active reason, a
reason that motivates and justifies continuing the experience. Second, the
operation of the active reason is reinforced by the two beliefs about valuing: that
one directly values and that one G-universally values. Third, the b-enjoyer is not
only in the grip of a causal feedback loop, that loop typically enriches the
conception of the relevant array of features and thereby renews the enjoyment in a
more complex form.
Judgments of beauty unite us in communities of like b-enjoyers, communities
in which each member shares the belief that his or her b-enjoyment has revealed a
particular normative reason that transcends life’s contingencies. Judgments of
beauty, however, also divide us into distinct communities of b-enjoyers,
communities from which, as a practical matter, many are simply forever barred
from entry. Bobby Fischer played many beautiful chess games, but, since the vast
majority of people lack the expertise to b-enjoy the complex chess relationships in
which their beauty consists, the vast majority are forever barred from the
community that b-enjoys them for those relationships. Similar examples abound,
as the earlier discussion of Wallace Steven’s Sunday Morning illustrates. Guanglei
will never become sufficiently immersed in Christian culture to join Vicki and others
in the community that b-enjoys the poem for its portrayal of Christianity-rooted
concerns over purification, suffering, forgiveness, communion, and immortality.
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Vicki on the other hand will never join Guanglei in the community that enjoys
classical Chinese landscape paintings. In each case, group members believe they
G-universally value in ways that transcend life’s contingencies, but the two groups
have profoundly different conceptions what that contingency-transcending valuing
is.
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