Beauty
Beauty is powerful. It compels our attention and appreciation, unites
us in shared visions and divides us with different ones. Our goal is to
describe beauty in a way that illuminates its power. The description consists
of arguments for three claims. First, one enjoys the items one judges to be
beautiful. Second, the enjoyment is a special kind; one does not enjoy in
that way items one does not find beautiful. Third, to believe that something
is beautiful is to believe, on the basis of the special kind of enjoyment, that
others will, other things being equal, enjoy the item in that special way. The
arguments for the second characterize beauty’s power to compel attention
and appreciation; the arguments for the third claim address its power to
unite and divide. The first claim is an essential preliminary. The inspiration
for this approach is Kant’s Critique of Judgment, in which Kant (arguably)
advances all three claims. Our concern, however, is with the truth of the
claims, not with Kantian exegesis, and our arguments will not, for the most
part, be the same as Kant’s.
I. The First Claim
The First Claim is that one must enjoy what one believes is beautiful.
This appears false. Imagine that you and Jones are looking that the Taj
Mahal. Your enjoyment leads you to exclaim, “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Jones
agrees, thereby expressing his own judgment that the Taj is beautiful.
Jones, however, does not enjoy the Taj, never has enjoyed it, and does ever
expect to. He agrees with you because he knows that the received opinion is
that the Taj is beautiful, and his agreement acknowledges that the Taj
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belongs with that diverse collection of items that people generally take to be
beautiful. Doesn’t this show that one can judge something beautiful even if
has never enjoyed the item and never expects to?
A. Reasons, Enjoyment, and Judgment
Our response rests on two points. The first is that we support our
judgments of beauty with reasons. One does not, for example, treat the “Taj
is beautiful” like “Chocolate tastes good.” If, after a good faith tasting of
chocolate under appropriate conditions, you and Jones disagree over whether
chocolate tastes good, you will not try to change Jones’ mind. Chocolate
tastes good to you but not to Jones, and that is the end of the matter. In
contrast, if after a good faith viewing of the Taj Mahal under appropriate
conditions, if you think the Taj is beautiful, and Jones does not, it would
neither be out of place nor unusual for you to try to change Jones’s mind by
offering him reasons to think the Taj is beautiful. To avoid
misunderstanding, we should emphasize that we are not claiming that, when
one gives reasons for a judgment of beauty, one expects others to infer on
the basis of these reasons that the item is beautiful. As we discuss more
fully in Sections III and IV, the purpose of giving reasons is not to compel
agreement by providing evidentiary grounds.
The second point is a distinction between derivative and non-derivative
judgments of beauty. Our claim is only that one must enjoy what one nonderivatively judges to be beautiful. When Jones judges the Taj beautiful, his
judgment is derivative. A judgment of beauty is derivative if and only if it is
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based solely on the reports of others. We intend the “solely” to exclude
cases in which the reports of others provide one with reason to think one will
enjoy something, and in which one judges it beautiful on the basis of one’s
own possible future enjoyment. By way of illustration, suppose that, Arthur
sends the following text message to Gwen, “At Taj. Beautiful! Must see to
appreciate.” Gwen, who shares Arthur’s tastes and whom she regard as a
competent judge, assumes that if she were to see the Taj, she would not
only enjoy it but would also, on that basis, judge it beautiful. Her post-textmessage assertion that the Taj is beautiful is not—in the sense we intend—
based solely on Arthur’s report, but on her expectation of her own enjoyment
and consequent judgment.
Not all judgments of beauty are derivative. Your “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
in response to the Taj is an example. If you were required to defend your
judgment, you would you would describe the aspects of it that you enjoy. It
is your belief that you enjoy the Taj in the way you, not the reports of
others, that constitutes your reason for your judgment that the Taj is
beautiful. This is typical; one gives reasons for one’s judgment that, for
example, a face, painting, statue, or poem is beautiful by indicating the
features one enjoys. Typically, when one non-derivatively judges that
something is beautiful, one’s reason for the judgment is, at least in part, that
one enjoys (has enjoyed, or expects to enjoy) the item in a certain way. It is
sufficient for our purposes simply to note that this is typically true; however,
one might well wonder whether what is typically true is also necessarily so,
and the question merits some brief attention. It appears at first sight that
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the answer is no. One might not be prepared to offer one’s enjoyment as a
reason if one arrived at the conviction that something is beautiful was
instilled by hypnotic suggestion, or a mad psychophysiologist, or some other
form of manipulation. One can, however, defend the necessity claim by
regarding such cases as qualify as judgments of beauty only because they
are degenerate instances of the paradigm case in which one’s past, present,
or expected enjoyment is one’s reason for the judgment.
To summarize, the First Claim is that one enjoys the items one judges
to be beautiful; we can now reformulate the claim as: Typically, when one
non-derivatively judges that something is beautiful, one’s reason for the
judgment is, at least in part, that one enjoys (has enjoyed, or expects to
enjoy) the item in a certain way. The reformulation of the First Claim leads
to the following reformulation of the Second Claim: the enjoyment which
serves as the reason for a non-derivative judgment of beauty is a special
kind of enjoyment. To characterize the relevant kind of enjoyment, we first
focus on the fact that to enjoy is to enjoy an experience or activity. The
question is what the relevant experience or activity is in the case of the
enjoyment which serves as a reason for a non-derivative judgment. We
argue that that one enjoys the experience of something’s appearing in a
certain way. That argument comprises the conclusion of this section.
Section II then distinguishes the enjoyment of this experience from other
types of enjoyment. A final terminological point: since we will be exclusively
concerned with non-derivative judgments, we will from here on drop the
qualification “non-derivative”.
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B. The Enjoyed Experience
Reflection on examples strongly suggests that when one judges
something beautiful, one enjoys the item’s appearing a certain way. We use
“appear” as it is used in “Objects in the mirror will appear more distant than
they are”; that is, under normal conditions, objects will appear more distant.
Our reference to normal conditions assumes that, in a variety of contexts,
one can identify factors which alter the way things appear, and that there is
widespread agreement that these factors qualify as abnormal.
By way of examples, consider what one says when one explains what
it is that one enjoys about an item one regards as beautiful. The colored
squares in the abstract painting appear to dance; the (real or painted) ship’s
gently full sails appear to mirror the tranquility of the sea; the washerwoman
appears to have the face and bearing of a Madonna; the statue of Aphrodite
presents the goddess’s flesh as at once marble-hard and humanly soft; the
strong diagonal elements in a painting, building, face, or body are broken up
to just the right degree to appear just short of being mechanical. Note that
these are all examples of sensuous appearances. We will not provide any
definition or account of the notion of a sensuous appearance; we rely on the
above examples to indicate what we mean.
The appearance involved in the enjoyment of beauty need not be
sensuous. Thus: when Stephan first encounters Cantor’s diagonal proof of
the existence of uncountable sets, understanding dawns simultaneously with
the apprehension of beauty as the elements of the proof appear to organize
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themselves with an astonishing simplicity and clarity, a clarity and simplicity
that appears to Stephan to invest him with the power to tame the infinite.
The appearance, although non-sensuous, has a force and immediacy
analogous to a sensuous appearance. We will call such appearances nonsensuous appearances, and again we rely on examples to indicate what we
mean. We offer one more. Sarah reads the following lines from Wallace
Stevens’ “Peter Quince at the Clavier”:
Beauty is momentary in the mind—
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
The body dies, the body’s beauty lives.
Sarah finds the lines beautiful as she sees in the image of immortality in the
flesh a simultaneous rejection and endorsement of a Platonic conception of
beauty as a Form that shines through physical appearances. This is not to
say that she formulates to herself the thought, “The image of immortality in
the flesh is a simultaneous rejection and endorsement of a Platonic
conception of beauty as a Form that shines through physical appearances”;
rather, the image encapsulates this idea with a force and immediacy
analogous to Stephan’s experience of Cantor’s argument.
Three further points are in order. First, one can be mistaken about the
way things appear. Imagine that, as you turn a corner, you suddenly see a
modern interpretation of a traditional church constructed entirely out of
concrete; you think that the strong diagonal elements appear just short of
mechanical. However, when you return the next day, it is plain to you that
the elements appear quite mechanical. You attribute your earlier belief to
your surprise and consequent unexpected enjoyment at discovering the
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structure; your sudden enjoyment made you see the building in a more
favorable light than you do on your return. When you see the building under
more normal conditions, it appears differently. Similar remarks are possible
in the case of all the examples. It is indeed typical for us to change our
minds about the way things appear on ground that conditions were not
normal.
Second, the way things appear may vary from person to person even
under normal conditions. When you look at the statue, Aphrodite’s body may
appear to you to be covered with flesh at once marble-hard and humanly
soft, but when Jones looks, the statute may not appear as having flesh at all,
but simply as a marble rendition of a human form. Neither you nor Jones
need be mistaken about how the statue appears. Under normal conditions, it
just appears differently to you than it does to Jones.
Third, as we will argue more fully in Section IV, when one enjoys
something one judges beautiful, some selection of the item’s parts, qualities,
internal and external relations appear as an interconnected whole. Even with
the relatively less complex beauties of flowers and geometrical designs, the
eye ranges over the form, appreciates the variations in color, calls to mind
perhaps other beautiful flowers. Even apparently simple beauties, like the
beauty of a particular shade of red, only stand out as beautiful because of
the relation of that red to its surroundings (visual or conceptual) and our
ability to compare it to many other closely similar shades. The point is
commonplace in discussions of beauty; Kant, for example, emphasizes that
one regards the items one judges beautiful as exhibiting the unity of the
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objects to which the concepts of the Understanding apply (even though, in
the case of beauty, the Understanding does not actually supply any relevant
unity-creating concept). Our version of the commonplace point is that the
enjoyed features of a beautiful object appear as an organized array.1
To summarize: typically, one judges something x beautiful, one’s
reason for the judgment consists, at least in part, in the fact that, for some
organized array A of features, one enjoys x’s appearing to have A. That is,
one’s reason consists at least in part in the fact that, some organized array
A of features
(1) x appears to one to have A;
(2) x's so appearing causes one
(a) to occurrently believe, of x’s appearing to have A, that it
is an appearance of x as having A; and
(b) to have the felt desire, of x’s appearing to have A, under
A, that it occur for its own sake.
Our description in (2a) of the belief may strike one as unnecessarily
cumbersome. Once we describe the belief as “of x’s appearing to have A,”
surely it is just repetitive to say one believes that the appearance is an
appearance of x as having A. In fact, it is not. As noted earlier, one may
mistakenly think something appears in a way which it in fact does not. The
Kant describes the appearance of a organized array as a product of the “free
play of the Imagination.” The Imagination to which Kant appeals is a transcendental
faculty, and we wish to avoid any such appeal. We can nonetheless find a role for
non-transcendental imagination in the enjoyment of beauty. Beauty creates
opportunities for imaginative interaction, opportunities we value highly. The
interaction is typically temporally structured in a way which involves attention to the
various features in question as a sustained appreciation of the whole. One typically
repeatedly contemplates and investigates things one finds beautiful in ways that
extend and enrich that array of features one apprehends it as having.
1
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specification of the belief rules out this type of mistake; one must believe, of
x’s in fact appearing to one to have A, that it is an appearance of x’s having
A as opposed to an appearance of x’s having some other array A’. A similar
point holds for the specification of the desire. One might desire, of x’s
appearing to have A, under some other array A’, that it occur. (2b) requires
that one desire that x appear in the way it in fact does.
II. The Second Claim: A Special Kind of Enjoyment
The Second Claim is that the enjoyment which serves as the reason for
judgment of beauty is a special kind of enjoyment. This section
characterizes the relevant kind. It is important to be clear about what the
task is.
In the last section, we claimed that typically, one judges that
something is beautiful only if one’s reason for the judgment is, at least in
part, that one enjoys (has enjoyed, or expects to enjoy) the item’s appearing
to have some organized array of features; in this section, we characterize the
type of enjoyment that typically provides the reason. Let us call the
enjoyment which plays this role a b-enjoyment.
Not just any sort of enjoyment can serve as a b-enjoyment. Suppose
Alex enjoys the following verse from “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” by Iron Butterfly:
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby
(in the Garden of Eden)
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, honey
Don’t you know I am loving you?
Alex regards the lines as childish trash, and, as he is well aware, he would
actually find listening to them distasteful were it not for his memories of the
‘60’s, a time and culture to which he remains deeply emotionally attached.
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Alex does not, however, think the lines are beautiful, nor does he think that
his enjoyment is any reason whatsoever to think so. If he were asked why
he listens to the verse as opposed, say, to songs with more worthy content,
he would reply that he has discovered, to his surprise, that he still enjoys
listening to the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” verse, and taking the time to enjoy
the song is a way of remaining connected to his past.
The example suggests that a plausible candidate for the role of benjoyments—normative reason enjoyments. Normative reason enjoyments
are characterized by the presence of an underived normative reason to have
the relevant experience or engage in the relevant activity. Alex’s enjoyment
is not paired with any such reason. Consider any proposition to the effect
that the verse has a certain array of features A. Alex does not regard any
such proposition as an underived normative reason to experience the verse
as having A. He regards the verse as childish trash. Alex’s normative
reasons to experience the verse are derived from his conviction that enjoying
the verse is a means to staying in touch with his past, and from his desire to
remain so connected. When one enjoys what one regards as beautiful, on
the other hand, one typically regards some array A of features of the time as
an underived normative reason to enjoy the item as appearing to have A.
Suppose, for example, Alex were asked why he took time out of his business
trip to New York to look at Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” He answers by
identifying the features he enjoyed—the luminescence and intense activity of
the stars, moon, clouds, and sky above the quiet town, all of which contrast
with the potentially ominous massive dark shape in the foreground. These
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features make the painting worthy of enjoyment in Alex’s eyes; that is, he
regards the proposition that the painting appears to him to have those
features as an underived normative reason to enjoy the painting’s appearing
to have those features. His conviction that this reason exists plays a central
role in his justification and explanation of why he takes time out of the New
York trip to enjoy the painting. We suggest therefore that:
One b-enjoys x’s appearing to one to have A only if
(1) x appears to one to have A;
(2) x's so appearing causes x
(a) to occurrently believe, of x’s appearing to have A, that it
is an appearance of x as having A; and
(b) to have the felt desire, of x’s appearing to have A, under
A, that it occur for its own sake.
(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) functions as an active reason to
experience x’s appearing to have A.
(4) one regards the proposition that x appears to have A as an
underived normative reason for one to experience x’s appearing to
have A.
The fourth condition is our version of Kant’s claim that the enjoyment of
beauty is a “disinterested” enjoyment.
As Kant explains in a famous passage,
If any one asks me whether I consider that the palace I see before me
is beautiful, I may, perhaps, reply that I do not care for things of that
sort that are merely made to be gaped at. Or I may reply in the same
strain as that Iroquois sachem who said that nothing in Paris pleased
him better than the eating-houses. I may even go a step further and
inveigh with the vigor of a Rousseau against the vanity of the great
who waste the sweat of the people on such superfluous things. Or, in
fine, I may quite easily persuade myself that if I found myself on an
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uninhabited island, without hope of ever again coming among men,
and could conjure such a palace into existence by a mere wish, I
should still not trouble to do so, so long as I had a hut there that was
comfortable enough for me. All this may be admitted and approved;
only it is not the point now at issue. All one wants to know is whether
the mere representation of the object is to my liking, no matter how
indifferent I may be to the real existence of the object of this
representation. It is quite plain that in order to say that the object is
beautiful, and to show that I have taste, everything turns on the
meaning which I can give to this representation, and not on any factor
which makes me dependent on the real existence of the object. Every
one must allow that a judgment on the beautiful which is tinged with
the slightest interest, is very partial and not a pure judgment of taste.
One must not be in the least prepossessed in favor of the real
existence of the thing, but must preserve complete indifference in this
respect, in order to play the part of judge in matters of taste.
Our version of “All one wants to know is whether the mere representation of
the object is to my liking” is that “all one wants to know” is whether I regard
the proposition that the item appears to me to have a certain array of
features (this appearance being the “representation”) as an underived
normative reason to experience the item as so appearing. Our appeal to the
underived nature of the reason is our version of Kantian “disinterestedness.”
Note that we have replaced Kant’s appeal to “liking” with an appeal to the
recognition of underived normative reasons; Kant links “liking” to reasons
through his (in our eyes mythical) transcendental psychology. For us, and
indeed for Kant as well, Alex’s attitude toward the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”
verse is not “disinterested,” but his attitude toward Van Gogh’s “Starry
Night” is.
Despite this incorporation of a version of Kantian “disinterestedness,”
the proposed conditions are not sufficient, as the following example shows.
Byron enjoys looking at his wife’s face. The relevant belief/desire pair
functions as an active reason, and Byron regards the proposition that his
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wife’s face appears to have certain features as an underived normative
reason for him to experience her face as appearing to have to those features.
His regarding the way her face appears as an underived normative reason is
the result the years of marriage that have given this particular appearance a
unique place in his heart. Her face is quite plain, however, and, as Byron
acknowledges, no one would regard it as beautiful. Bryon certainly does not,
and he does not regard his enjoyment as any reason whatsoever to think
otherwise. To see how to work toward sufficient conditions, ask why Byron
declines to judge his wife’s face beautiful. The most plausible answer is that
he knows his recognition of the normative reason is idiosyncratic. He does
not expect others to recognize any such normative reason. It is one of the
oldest and most compelling insights about beauty that its appeal transcends
differences in interests, attitudes, time, and place. It is commonplace to
characterize beauty as involving the presentation of the universal in the
particular. For Plato, for example, the Form of Beauty shines through the
particulars in which participate in it with a unique power to awaken in us a
memory of our prior perception of, and love for, the eternal Form itself.
Shorn of appeal to the Forms, the claim in Kant becomes that the claim that
beauty speaks with a “universal voice”:
Whether a dress, a house, or a flower is beautiful is a matter upon
which one declines to allow one's judgment to be swayed by any
reasons or principles. We want to get a look at the object with our own
eyes, just as if our delight depended on sensation. And yet, if upon so
doing, we call the object beautiful, we believe ourselves to be speaking
with a universal voice, and lay claim to the concurrence of everyone,
whereas no private sensation would be decisive except for the
observer alone and his liking.
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To formulate our version of the claim that beauty speaks with a universal
voice, suppose you are looking at the Taj Mahal.
The Taj appears to you to have an organized array A of features, and
its so appearing causes the relevant belief/desire pair; that pair functions
as an active reason to so experience the Taj, and you regard the proposition
that the Taj appears to have A as an underived normative reason to so
experience the Taj. In addition, you have the following, not uncomplicated,
thought: 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 y would regard the
proposition that the Taj appears to have A’ as an underived normative reason
to experience the Taj as appearing to have A’. For us, beauty speaks with a
more or less universal voice, depending on the size of the group G. We
conclude this section with a discussion of issues surrounding the size of G.
In Sections III and IV, we discuss at length the issues surrounding the
appeal to a “sufficiently large” group, the two appeals to relevant similarity.
To avoid misunderstanding, we should emphasize that we are not claiming
that one who judges something beautiful must have a relevant group
explicitly in mind, or even that—implicitly or explicitly—any relatively definite
criteria for membership in such a group. Implicit appeal to a vaguely
defined, over-inclusive group may well be the norm, where one comes to
appreciate the need to limit the group as one bumps into disagreements with
one’s judgment of beauty. Sections III and IV examine the process of
disagreement and revision.
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To generalize from the Taj example, let us first say that one believes
that the proposition that x appears to have A is a G-universal normative
reason to experience x’s appearing to have A if and only if one believes that
there is a group G of relevantly similar others, and collection C of relevant
similar arrays of features such that, for any member y of G, there is some
array A’ in C such that y would regard the proposition that x appears to have
A’ as an underived normative reason to experience x as appearing to have A’.
Then:
One b-enjoys x’s appearing to have A only if
(1) x appears to one to have A,
(2) x’s so appearing
(a) to occurrently believe, of x’s appearing to have A, that it is
an appearing of x as having A;
(b) to have the felt desire, of x’s appearing to have A, under A,
that it occur for its own sake;
(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) functions as an active reason for one to
experience x’s appearing to have A;
(4) one regards the proposition that x appears to have A as an
underived normative reason for one to experience x’s appearing to
have A;
(5) one regards the proposition that x appears to have A as a Guniversal normative reason to experience x as having A.
To regard a normative reason as G-universal it to see its recognition as
dependent on only on the attitudes and interests that define membership in
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G. The more widely those attitudes and interest are shared, the more closely
G approximates all of humanity.
The Taj, with its considerable cross-cultural, appeal is an example;
from its completion in 1631, an increasingly large and culturally diverse
group has enjoyed the Taj and has on that basis judged it beautiful. The
larger, more diverse, and more temporally extended the similarity group, the
less the recognition of the normative reason depends on any person’s
idiosyncratic attitudes or interests. It depends only on the shared interests
and attitudes defining membership in the group, and on the formation of a
relevant belief; moreover, in the case of the Taj, the arrays of features
attributed to the Taj tend to be quite similar (focusing on the completely
unified presentation of perfect symmetry, simplicity, lightness, complexity,
immense detail, and massiveness). Even the formation of the relevant belief
seems largely independent of idiosyncrasies. The G-universal normative
reason to enjoy the Taj is thus a contingency-transcending reason.
Contingency-transcending reasons matter greatly to one. One is
immersed we in contingencies. One finds oneself thrown into a particular
time, in a particular place; the circumstances in which one is born, raised,
and educated, largely shape one’s interests and attitudes; some of these
interests and attitudes reflect the peculiarities of one’s unique circumstances
and personality, others are shared by smaller or larger groups but are still
the product of the contingent conditions and may not be shared by groups
formed by other circumstances (New Yorkers take things for granted that Los
Angelinos find bizarre, and vice versa). We take it for granted that one has a
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compelling reason to seek such reasons, to see oneself as having at least
partly transcended the web of ruthless contingencies in which one must
otherwise live (we do not of course mean to suggest that it is a trivial task to
explain why one has compelling reason to seek such reasons). G-universal
normative reasons offer an escape from the contingences that shape us.
They allow one to answer the question, “What reason was there for you to
experience that?”, by offering a reason the existence of which does not (in
one’s eyes) depend on one’s idiosyncratic interests and attitudes.
Contingency-transcending reasons are more or less transcendent
depending on the size of G. The Taj example illustrates the “more”; the
following example illustrates the “less.” William is listening to Son House’s
1965 a cappella rendition of the following verse from the Gospel/blues song,
John The Revelator:
You know God walked down in the cool of the day
Called Adam by his name
But he refused to answer
Because he's naked and ashamed.
William ascribes an array of features to the rendition (concerning Son
House’s tone, cadence, the relations of his version to Blind Willie Johnson’s,
and so on); he enjoys the verse as having that array, and he judges it
beautiful on that basis. He regards the possession of the array as a Guniversal normative reason, where G includes only those who appreciate the
blues more or less as he does, who understand the references to Genesis 3:
8 – 10, and who can compare Son House’s rendition to other treatments of
the same song, such as Blind Willie Johnson’s. Given such a similarity group,
whether someone will acknowledge the existence of the normative reason
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depends on interests and attitudes that are far less widely shared than the
interests and attitudes in the Taj example. We have—we assume—
compelling reason to discover G-universal reasons we share with a likeminded community, even when that community is relatively small.
The current conditions for b-enjoyment incorporate notions of
“disinterestedness” and “universality,” but they omit one crucial
consideration: causality. The key to sufficient conditions consists in
recognizing causal relations between the item’s appearing in a certain way
and the reasons one has to so experience it.
C. Causation
An analogy reveals the need to incorporate causal relations. Suppose
Jim enjoys his dining with his wife, Ellen. He fulfills these conditions. For
some array A and group G,
(1) he dines with his wife,
(2) his dining with is wife causes him
(a) to occurrently believe, of his dining with his wife, that it has
an array A of features;
(b) to have the felt desire, of his dining with his wife, under A,
that it occur for its own sake;
(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) functions as an active reason for him to
enjoy dining with his wife;
(4) he regards the proposition that dining with his wife has A as a Guniversal normative reason to engage in that activity as exemplifying
A.
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Focus initially on (3). (3) is true only because Jim thinks that, since Ellen is
his wife, he ought to enjoy dining with her. When he actually dines with her,
however, the enjoyment is a tepid one, and its half-heartedness not only
constantly reminds him of other, more lively, enjoyments he could pursue, it
is also a poignant, sadly insistent, contrast with the dinners when they first
met. Back then, the experience of her company causally sustained his active
reason to share her company; the experience continually enlivened the
reason, constantly renewing its power to keep his full attention directed on
her. When the relationship was new, dinning with the woman who was to
become his wife exercised a power over him that has long since faded way.
In b-enjoyment, the power to causally sustain the relevant active
reason is fully present. “A thing of beauty is,” as Keats would have it,
a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
A companion case to the Jim’s wife example provides a (partial) illustration.
An elderly museum curator is enjoying looking at his favorite Gauguin. The
relevant belief/desire pair functions as an active reason to look at the
painting, but the experience of looking does not causally sustain that reason.
It used to; in his youth, one look at the painting would rivet his attention on
it. But now to look at the painting is to be reminded of his youth and of the
comparative shortness of the rest of his life. The painting is powerless to
hold these thoughts at bay; indeed, power the painting now has is the power
to spark unpleasant reflections, and the curator turns away from the painting
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in the hope that the reflections will more quickly run their course. Far from
causally sustaining his active reason to look at the painting, the experience
of looking at the painting causes him to turn away. The painting no longer
“keep[s] a bower quiet . . . full of sweet dreams.”
We do not deny that the
curator can still judge the painting beautiful on the basis of his present
enjoyment; however, we also take it to be clear that, if the painting had
never causally sustained an active reason, the curator would have no reason
to judge it beautiful. The painting would lack beauty’s attention riveting
power.
We propose then that one b-enjoys x’s appearing to have A only if x’s
so appearing causes (causally sustains) the relevant belief/desire pair’s
functioning as an active reason to experience x as appearing to have A. We
make essentially the same claim in regard to the normative reason involved
in b-enjoyment: one b-enjoys x’s appearing to have A only if x’s so
appearing causes (causally sustains) one’s conviction that the proposition
that x so appears is an underived normative reason for one to so experience
x.
To see that causation is also required here, suppose you and Jones are
looking at the Taj; you enjoy it and find it beautiful; Jones enjoys it but does
not find it beautiful. Disturbed by his failure to find the Taj beautiful, Jones
returns the next day, having spent the prior evening studying expert
discussions of the Taj. He looks at the Taj again—armed this time with a
thorough knowledge of the features the experts regard as contributing to the
Taj’s beauty. When he looks at the Taj, it does indeed appear to him to have
20
the organized array of features the experts identify, and fulfills the proposed
conditions for b-enjoying the Taj’s so appearing. That is, he enjoys the Taj’s
appearing to have that array; the relevant belief/desire pair serves as an
active reason to enjoy the Taj’s so appearing; he regards the proposition that
the Taj appears to him to have A both as an underived normative reason for
him to enjoy the Taj’s appearing to have A, and as a G-universal normative
reason for him to enjoy the Taj’s appearing to have A. He so regards the
proposition, however, only because his reading of the experts has convinced
him it is true. He finds no ground for the belief in his own experience. As he
says, “The Taj does not speak to me in the way it evidently speaks to
others,” and he still does not find the Taj beautiful. He thinks it is a nicely
designed building, and he enjoys the harmony of the design, but, as far as
he is concerned, the Taj belongs with the wide variety of other things—
including tastefully appointed bathrooms, HBO’s Sex and the City, and an
immense variety of faces and bodies—that he enjoys as harmoniously
designed but does not (non-derivatively) judge it beautiful. He continues to
regard the belief that the Taj has the array as an underived normative reason
and as a G-universal normative reason, but this belief persists in spite of, not
because of, his experiences.
Now imagine that, in the midst of his disappointment at not finding the
Taj beautiful, Jones notices the unexpected presence of a friend who is also
contemplating the Taj. They fall into conversation for some time, and, then,
in a lull in the conversation, Jones happens, without thinking about it, to look
back at the Taj. He looks without any expectations, without any explicit
21
thought about the expert-identified features which he was scrutinizing
earlier. Suddenly, the building speaks to him in a way it did not before: he
enjoys its appearing to have the expert-identified array of features, and, this
time, the enjoyment causes him to regard the proposition that it appears to
have the array both as an underived normative reason for him to enjoy the
Taj as appearing that way, and as a G-universal normative reason. This time
the belief persists because of, not in spite of his experiences. Jones thinks,
“Now I see! It is beautiful!” The experience testifies to its own justification
by causing one to believe in the existence of a normative reason to have the
experience.
Should we add a final causal condition—that the experience cause one
to regard the proposition that x appears to have A as a G-universal
normative reason? The following example argues in favor of doing so. At
age 22, Mason reads Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Pale Fire. 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 selfreferential narrative in which Shade and Kinbote are the characters. Mason
enjoys the novel’s appearing to have an array A of features, where the
features consist of those involved in his appreciation and understanding of
the novels themes of loneliness, alienation, love, self-consciousness, multiple
simultaneous viewpoints, the elusiveness of the self, the power and danger
of fantasy. The novel’s appearing to him in this way causally sustains his
22
active reason to so experience the novel, and his conviction that the
proposition that Pale Fire appears to have A is an underived normative
reason for him to experience Pale Fire’s appearing to have A.
In addition, there is a group G such that he regards the proposition that Pale
Fire appears to have A as G-universal underived normative reason to enjoy
Pale Fire as appearing to have A. But he believes this only because he has
discovered, from conversations, and from reading reviews and discussions,
that it is true. Pale Fire speaks to him so directly about his particular
loneliness and alienation that, whenever he reads the novel, he is astonished
that it would appear to anyone else in more or less the way it appears to
him; indeed, he finds the thought that of its appearing so to others as
inconceivable, or he would so regard it if he did not know it was true. In his
eyes, the novel is a message from Nabokov to him, to what is unique and
idiosyncratic about his experience, experience that is, in his eyes, essentially
unknown and unknowable by others. He reluctantly admits that others seem
to be receiving a similar message, but the way the novel appears to him
when he reads it does not causally sustain that admission; it works against
it.
Mason reads the novel when he is 44. He enjoys it as before, and
again the way the novel appears to him causally sustains his active reason to
so experience the novel, and his conviction that its so appearing is an
underived normative reason for him to experience it as appearing that way.
Further, as before, there is a group G such that he regards the proposition
that Pale Fire appears to have A as G-universal underived normative reason
23
to enjoy Pale Fire as appearing to have A. This time, however, his
experience of the novel causally sustains that belief. He sees his youthful
obsession with a unique message as just one more illustration of feelings of
isolation and alienation that plagued him when he was young. It is obvious
to him now that many readers would respond to the novel by believing that
there is an appropriate G-universal reason. If the forty-four year old Mason
were asked if Pale Fire was beautiful, he would answer that it was. The
twenty-two year old Mason would reject the question as irrelevant. To make
the claim that it is beautiful would be to claim, on the basis of his enjoyment,
that not just that there a normative reason for him to experience the novel in
a certain way, but that others recognize a similar normative reason as well.
He knows they do, but that fact remains a mystery to him. In the case of benjoyment, it is not mystery because the enjoyed experience causally
sustains that belief that others recognize a similar normative reason.
Thus, we suggest:
One b-enjoys x’s appearing to have A if and only if
(1) x appears to one to have A, and x’s so appearing causes (2) – (5):
(2) one (a) occurrently believes, of x’s appearing to have A, that it is
an appearing of x as having A; and, (b) one has the felt desire, of x’s
appearing to have A, under A, that it occur for its own sake;
(3) the belief/desire pair in (2) functions as an active reason for one to
enjoy x’s appearing to have A;
(4) one regards the proposition that x appears to have A as an
underived normative reason for one to enjoy x’s appearing to have A;
24
(5) one regards the proposition that x appears to have A as a Guniversal normative reason.
A final point is in order. The enjoyment of beauty captures us in a
feedback loop: the item’s appearing in a certain way causally sustains an
active reason to experience it as so appearing, which may lead one to act in
ways which continue the experience, which may continue to cause the
relevant belief/desire pair and to sustain that pair as an active reason to
have the experience, which . . . One is all the more likely to act on the
active reason to have the experience when one believes that there is an
underived normative reason to do so. That belief eliminates doubt about
whether the active reason should indeed function as an active reason. A
similar point holds for one’s belief that the proposition that the items appear
a certain way is a G-universal normative reason. That belief removes any
concern about whether one is investing one’s time and energy in the pursuit
of an idiosyncratic passion that others will neither share nor understand.
The feedback loop makes it hard to tear one’s eyes away. As we enjoy
the work we attend to it, and as we attend to it we may (or may not)
discover additional features of the work which give it even greater power for
us, which then feeds back into our enjoyment, and so on. The Taj example
illustrates the point. The array of features you believe the Taj to have is the
initial focal point of your enjoyment; however, as you continue to enjoy the
Taj, the array of features you subjectively ascribe to the Taj may increase in
number and complexity, and your original enjoyment of the item as having
the array A may transform into the enjoyment of the Taj as having the more
25
complex array A’; A’ then becomes the focal point of your continued
contemplation and investigation of the Taj, with the result that the array of
features you subjectively ascribe to the Taj, which may increase in
complexity . . . and so on—until some natural limit is reached (or perhaps,
for optimists, once the critical task of understanding the artwork is fully
complete). It is worth noting that the changes in the array A that occur as
the feedback loop operates may alter one’s conception of the relevant
similarity group. As one apprehends the item differently, one may change
one’s view about whose responses will parallel one’s own.
III. The Third Claim
The Third Claim is that to judge that something is beautiful is to judge
that certain others will enjoy the item in that way. Kant comments,
It would . . . be ridiculous if any one who plumed himself on his taste
were to think of justifying himself by saying: "This object (the building
we see, the dress that person has on, the concert we hear, the poem
submitted to our criticism) is beautiful for me." For if it merely pleases
him, be must not call it beautiful. Many things may for him possess
charm and agreeableness—no one cares about that; but when he puts
a thing on a pedestal and calls it beautiful, he demands the same
delight from others. He judges not merely for himself, but for all men,
and then speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things. Thus he
says the thing is beautiful; and it is not as if he counted on others
agreeing in his judgment of liking owing to his having found them in
such agreement on a number of occasions, but he demands this
agreement of them.
To formulate our version of this Kantian claim, recall first that one’s reason
for the judgment is (typically) one’s b-enjoyment. One b-enjoys an item’s
appearing to have an organized array A of features only if the experience has
the causal properties specified in the last section, including, for some group
26
G, causing one to regard the proposition that the item has A as a G-universal
underived normative reason to experience the item as having A. One
believes that the proposition that x appears to have A is a G-universal
normative reason to experience x’s appearing to have A if and only if one
believes that there is a group G of relevantly similar others, and collection C
of relevant similar arrays of features such that, for any member y of G, there
is some array A’ in C such that y would regard the proposition that x appears
to have A’ as an underived normative reason to experience x as appearing to
have A’. To judge that x is beautiful is to judge that for some—sufficiently
large—group G and for some collection C, for any member y in G, there is an
array A in C such that: other things being equal, if x appears to y as having
A, y will, b-enjoy x as having A. Thus, when, one basis of one’s benjoyment, one calls a thing beautiful, one “demands the same delight from
others.” One’s own b-enjoyment provides a reason for this judgment to the
extent that it provides a reason for thinking that the causal effects on oneself
of one’s experience of x as appearing to have A will be appropriately
replicated in relevantly similar 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 benjoy the item in question. Consider Carol’s judgment that Michelangelo’s
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 sufficiently similar
27
array A’, provided x appears to them as having A’. The difficulty that one
knows that one routinely encounters disagreement with one’s 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,
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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 does and not find it beautiful. She suggests to him that a homophobiainduced inability to enjoy looking at a naked male body prevents him from benjoying 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 a 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.
The key to a solution to this problem lies—paradoxically—in first
seeing why it does not arise for Kant. Kant appeals to transcendental
psychology: the transcendental faculty of Judgment, which is the same in all
29
subjects, links representations and pleasure in a way that justifies one in
thinking a priori that certain representations will arouse pleasure in all
subjects. This is why Kant remarks that, when one “says the thing is
beautiful; and it is not as if he counted on others agreeing in his judgment of
liking owing to his having found them in such agreement on a number of
occasions.” Against this background, our position looks hopeless. We have
eschewed any appeal to transcendental psychology, but we have also
abandoned basing the judgment of beauty on an appeal to the fact that
others generally agree with one’s judgments of beauty. We seem to have
left ourselves without any reason for judgments of beauty. Further reflection
on Kant provides the solution. For Kant, the beautiful object presents itself a
unity, an organized whole; the source of this perceived unity does not lie in
any determinate concept of the Understanding, and one cannot consequently
expect the agreement of others based on a shared application of such a
concept. This is why he notes that
nothing is postulated in the judgment of taste but such a universal
voice in respect of delight that it is not mediated by concepts;
consequently, only the possibility of an aesthetic judgment capable of
being at the same time deemed valid for everyone. The judgment of
taste . . . only imputes this agreement to everyone, as an instance of
the rule in respect of which it looks for confirmation, not from
concepts, but from the concurrence of others. The universal voice is,
therefore, only an idea—resting upon grounds the investigation of
which is here postponed. It may be a matter of uncertainty whether a
person who thinks he is laying down a judgment of taste is, in fact,
judging in conformity with that idea; but that this idea is what is
contemplated in his judgment, and that, consequently, it is meant to
be a judgment of taste, is proclaimed by his use of the expression
"beauty." For himself he can be certain on the point from his mere
consciousness of the separation of everything belonging to the
agreeable and the good from the delight remaining to him; and this is
all for which be promises himself the agreement of everyone-a claim
which, under these conditions, he would also be warranted in making,
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were it not that he frequently sinned against them, and thus passed an
erroneous judgment of taste.
Kant treats the judgment of beauty as a working hypothesis. It is possible to
adopt this idea without also thereby embracing Kant’s transcendental
psychology, and this is what we propose.
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 the item appears to them in a relevant way. One
adopts this working hypothesis, not because of the operations of
transcendental psychology, but because one wants to investigate whether
the causal effects the item has on oneself are replicated in others. Thus,
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 have a relevant
experience of the statue. She nonetheless predicts their b-enjoyment as a
working hypothesis. Like a full-fledged belief, the hypothesis guides her
thought and action. She uses it to identify similarities and dissimilarities
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 does and does not
share her conviction that the David’s possession of the relevant array of
features (or a closely similar array) is a G-universal normative reason. 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 Guniversal normative reasons. Responding to others disagreements can lead
31
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 benjoyment has having revealed the same contingency-transcending Guniversal normative reason to enjoy. 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.
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. Sam does not b-enjoy Carmina
Burana since his perception of the music as childish prevents him from
32
thinking that there is a G-universal normative reason to experience the music
in any relevant way. 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 Orff. 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 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
organized 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.
33
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 nonexistence of the community of b-enjoyers to which one thought one belonged
and to seek to a 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 self-consciousness 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
34
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 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 b-enjoys 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
35
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 the poem as having the array
of features he attributes to it. He does not in fact enjoy the poem in any way
at all, but, even if he did, his enjoyment would not amount to b-enjoyment
as he does not, and would not, regard the poem’s possession of the array of
features he attributes to it as normative reason for him to enjoy the poem.
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 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
36
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 “self-referential 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 they would not. Mason
attributes greater power to the novel to generate b-enjoyment 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 benjoys the Taj. Members of each group are convinced their b-enjoyments
37
reveal a contingency-transcending G-universal normative reason; 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 benjoyments 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 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
38
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.
Consider that the process involves determining whether other things are
equal, whether the first-person-authoritative-belief should be revised, or
whether the similarity group should be redefined. 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
39
school, and burn his paintings, leaving Carol the only one who has seen
them. In this case, Carol may never know whether others would have benjoyed 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”
40
(an artist, for example) might attribute to a shade of blue an organized array
of relations to other shades of that color, b-enjoy the shade as having that
array, and, on that basis, judge it beautiful. What 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 the shade of
blue merely as being that shade. That is, one claims that, for some similarity
group G,
(1) one believes the color is the relevant shade of blue;
(2) that belief is an underived active reason to enjoy of the color as
that shade of blue;
(3) one regards the proposition that the color is that shade of blue as
a G-universal normative reason for any member of G to enjoy the
color as being that shade;
(4) one’s enjoyment causes or causally sustains (3).
(3) is the problem. One cannot coherently regard the proposition that the
color is that shade of blue as a G-universal normative reason for any member
of G to enjoy the color as being that shade. 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 2 (Fermat’s Last
41
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
42
consistent with an anti-relativism that recognizes principles for assessing,
criticizing, and revising 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 regard the belief
that an object has a uniform shade of blue as a G-universal normative reason
to enjoy the item as having that shade. One who so regards the belief is
committed to offering a candidate explanation to others of why the belief
qualifies as a G-universal normative reason to enjoy. The task is demanding.
The reason must be underived, so one cannot appeal to reasons for other
ends for which enjoying the shade would be a means. The reason must be
G-universal, so one must attempt to explain why anyone who formed the
belief that the item had the relevant shade of blue would also believe that
there was a normative reason to enjoy the thing as having that shade. One
could meet these 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 a G-universal reason
43
It appears that one can judge that something is beautiful without
regarding the proposition that the item has a certain array of features as a
G-universal normative reason. If history had been different, impressionist
painting would have been a putative example. Impressionism was not well
received when it first appeared (Henry James, for example, lamented the
retreat from the “good old rules that decree that beauty is beauty and
ugliness, ugliness”2). 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 one of his paintings.
As he does so, he fulfills the following conditions:
(1’) he believes the painting has a certain array A of features;
(2’) that belief is an underived active reason to enjoy the painting as
having that array;
(3’) he regards the proposition that the painting has the array as an
underived normative reason for him to enjoy the painting as having A;
(4’) his enjoyment causes or causally sustains (3).
The above conditions are almost the conditions for b-enjoyment. The only
difference is in (3’), which omits the provision that the painter regard the
reason as G-universal.
The objection is that the painter may judge the painting beautiful on
the basis of the enjoyment characterized by (1’) – (4’) and hence that benjoyment is not required as the reason for a judgment of beauty. To make
his plausible, suppose that, over the years since the disappearance of
2
Henry James, “Parisian Festivity,” New York Tribune, 13 May 1876.
44
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 thought the relevant normative reason existed. 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 agree with him that the normative
reason exists.
Our answer is that when the painter fulfills (1’) – (4’), there is a
similarity group G such that he regards the proposition that the painting has
the array as a G-universal normative reason for anyone in G to enjoy the
painting as having A. 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 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
45
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 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.
46
We concede that, when one expresses a judgment of beauty, others
most naturally understand the judgment as follows: one judges that others
who form the appropriate belief will, 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 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.
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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 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-
48
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 benjoy the horror one must regard the relevant first-person authoritative
belief as a G-universal normative reason to enjoy the horror. That is, one
must think that anyone who so believed would think there was an underived
normative reason to enjoy the horror. For most, if not all, horror films, no
one will believe this (or, if they do, they will soon be corrected). Not
everyone enjoys horror films; many are repulsed. Those who are repulsed
may form the same beliefs as those who enjoy the films, but they will hardly
regard that belief as a G-universal normative reason to enjoy the horror.
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-pathto-salvation-suffering; in particular, he thinks anyone who sees the picture as
he does would believe that there is a normative reason to enjoy Christ’s
purifying-path-to-salvation-suffering. Isn’t Perry an example of b-enjoying
49
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 benjoyed but judged beautiful.
4. Beauty without causation
The account requires that one’s enjoyment causes the belief that there
is a G-universal normative reason to enjoy. The following example appears
to show that this is not required. An elderly museum curator is looking at his
favorite Gauguin. He forms the first-person authoritative belief that the
painting has a certain—to him long-familiar—array of features; the belief
serves as an active reason; and, as result of his enjoyment, he regards the
belief as a belief universal underived normative reason. But all this quickly
fades away. His consciousness is flooded with memories of his youth
combined with an attention-consuming awareness of the comparative
shortness of the rest of his life. His conviction that a normative reason exists
to enjoy the painting cannot hold these thoughts at bay, and they rob that
conviction of his causal power to sustain his enjoyment. The curator can
nonetheless judge the painting beautiful on the basis of his present
enjoyment.
50
We agree that the curator can judge the painting beautiful, and that he
can do so on the basis of his present enjoyment. However, that enjoyment
is a pale reflection of what it once was. 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 benjoyed 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. (An interesting
suggestion is that prettiness is characterized by b-enjoyment without
causation.)
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 gout-ridden wine critic, tastes a wine. He benjoys 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
51
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 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
52
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.
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—welltrained 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
53
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.3
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 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:
Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics As A Guide To Morals (Allen Lane, The Penguin Press,
1993).
3
54
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.4
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
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
4
William James, Principles of Psychology
55
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 (2) – (4) of b-enjoyment: (2) the belief is an active underived
reason to enjoy the sign as having the array of features; (3) each regards—
or apparently regards—the sign’s having the array as a underived Guniversal normative reason to enjoy the sign as having the array, for some
similarity group G; and (4) the enjoyment causes each to so regard the
sign’s having the array. 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, 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 certain 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
56
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
regard the sign’s possession of the relevant array as a G-universal normative
reason to enjoy the item as having that array, for some similarity group G.
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 the sign’s possession of the
relevant array as a normative reason. 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 the sign’s possession of
57
the relevant array as a G-universal normative reason, they cannot b-enjoy
the sign as having that array; consequently, they cannot make a judgment of
beauty that requires that b-enjoyment 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 the possession of the array as a normative reason. This is no
small problem. It is by convincing one that such a reason exists that the
enjoyment of beauty convinces one that it has provided a contingencytranscending 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 why there is a normative reason to enjoy Thriller. Thriller fans
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
58
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. To see how, suppose
one forms the belief that x has an array A of features and b-enjoys x as
having that array; then, first, the belief is active reason to enjoy x as having
A, a reason that motivates and justifies continued enjoyment. Second, the
operation of the active reason is reinforced by the conviction that the belief is
a normative reason to enjoy x as having A. That is, one not only has an
active reason to enjoy x, one also believes that one should have the reason.
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 benjoyment 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 benjoys them for those relationships. Similar examples abound, as the earlier
discussion of Wallace Steven’s Sunday Morning illustrates. Guanglei will
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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. Vicki on the other hand will never join
Guanglei in the community that enjoys classical Chinese landscape paintings.
In each case, group members believe their b-enjoyments reveal a normative
reason that transcends life’s contingencies, but the two groups have
profoundly different conceptions what that contingency-transcending reason
is.
We take this to be characteristic of the enjoyment of the beautiful:
the belief that the item has an organized array of features is an underived
active reason to enjoy the item as having that array. Typically, this reason
motivates and justifies a sustained interaction which reveals the beauty of
the item in a variegated, temporally extended experience. That experience
may increase the number and richness of the enjoyed features and increase
the detail and complexity of the array of features one believes the item to
possess. The result is a richer, more complex and detailed reason. Of
course, continued contemplation and investigation will be curtailed, or never
initiated, if competing reasons direct action along different lines.
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