First published in Proceedings of the 11th International Congress in Aesthetics 1988: Selected
Papers, (ed.) Richard Woodfield, Nottingham Polytechnic Press, 1990.
That version had numerous printing errors.
TWO DOGMAS OF KANTIAN AESTHETICS*
Nick Zangwill
Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel!
Romeo to the friar, Romeo and Juliet,
Act III, Scene III
Introduction
How do aesthetic judgements differ from ordinary empirical judgements? It is widely accepted that one
important respect in which judgements of taste differ from empirical judgements is that they are based on
some kind of felt reaction or response — typically a pleasure or displeasure. This doctrine gained its
classic statement in Kant's Critique of Judgement.1 And it is the basis for the prevalent view that in
aesthetics, we must 'judge for ourselves'. The doctrine is generally taken to imply that a judgement which
is not based on such a reaction is not a judgement of taste.
It cannot be denied that there is something to be said for this doctrine. Nevertheless, there is a
considerable difficulty which needs to be dealt with, or at very least acknowledged. The usual crude
formulations are, as they stand, plain false — and thus formulated should be rejected.
In this chapter, I first look at what motivates the doctrine. I then turn to the difficulties which
surround it. Finally, I propose a solution which allows us to hang on to the spirit of the doctrine, while
avoiding the errors incurred by naive formulations. The doctrine is defensible only when considerably
modified. In particular, there are two dogmas associated with the doctrine which we must reject if a
respectable version is to be rehabilitated.
1. Kant’s Subjectivism
1.1 The Doctrine
Kant writes:
If we wish to discern whether anything is beautiful or not, ... we refer the representation [of it] to
the Subject and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure. (41:12-17)
To judge that something is beautiful, we need to be
...conscious of [a] representation with an accompanying sensation of delight. (42:10-11)
* An earlier version of this chapter was discussed with Chris Janaway; and Malcolm Budd gave some
useful advice. I am grateful to both.
1 Transl. Meredith, Oxford, 1928. Two important and influential recent proponents of this doctrine are
Roger Scruton, in his Art and Imagination (London: Methuen, 1974), and Mary Mothersill, in her Beauty
Restored (Oxford, 1984).
1
Kant's idea is that one essential characteristic of the judgement that a thing is beautiful is that it is made
on the basis of an inner feeling of pleasure or delight. At one point, Kant even describes this feeling as
"the feeling of life" (42:13). Judgements of ugliness, on the other hand, are made on the basis of
displeasure or disgust. Presumably, judgements that something is beautiful or ugly to some degree are
based on the degree of pleasure or displeasure felt in contemplating it.
We must make a couple of terminological observations here. Kant expresses his claim by saying that
the judgement of beauty is essentially 'subjective'. The word 'subjective' has come to have associations
which can be distracting, but we shall have to ignore these. Another important term is 'aesthetic'. In
Kant's usage, an 'aesthetic' judgement means any judgement made on the basis of a felt response. So that
includes judgements about the niceness of Canary-wine, since, like judgements of beauty, they are based
on a response of pleasure. Thus Kant can express his thesis about judgements of beauty or taste nontrivially by saying that "The judgement of taste is aesthetic" (41:11). However, I shall use the word
'aesthetic' only in the modern sense in which the judgement of taste or beauty is an aesthetic judgement
by definition, and judgements about the niceness of Canary-wine are not aesthetic judgements.
It is best to see Kant as inviting us to think of aesthetic judgement and response in terms of a fairly
simple psychological model.2
Homo Aestheticus I
World
Mind
Aesthetic
Judgement
Pleasure/
Response
Non-aesthetic
Representation
Flower
The idea is this: first there is an input of non-aesthetic beliefs or an awareness of physical, phenomenal or
semantic properties. This is what Kant calls the 'representation of the object', and I shall follow him in
this. There is then a response of pleasure or displeasure to this input. Lastly, there is the aesthetic
judgement which is based upon such responses. (It does no harm to talk of 'aesthetic responses' or
'aesthetic pleasures'.)
2 Sometimes, it even looks as though Kant is engaged in speculative 'cognitive psychology'. Or perhaps it
is 'transcendental psychology'. But whatever it is, it is some kind of psychology nonetheless.
2
We need not now investigate Kant's important idea that aesthetic pleasure is 'disinterested'. Very
roughly, this is the idea that the route from representation to pleasure entirely by-passes desire, and does
not itself provoke desire. However, the thesis that aesthetic pleasure is disinterested presupposes the
thesis that aesthetic judgement is subjective, and in this paper, I am concerned with this latter claim
alone.3
On Kant's account, we never straightforwardly perceive beauty, ugliness, or any other aesthetic
quality. We perceive objects and events, and thus become aware of their primary, secondary and
semantic properties, and we then react aesthetically. Whatever the ultimate nature of aesthetic response
and judgement turns out to be (a matter which has not, as yet, been prejudged), we move from nonaesthetic representation to inner experience or response, and from there to judgement. This is where we
must begin in aesthetics. (In this, it is plausible that there is a significant contrast with morality —
perhaps even the significant contrast; for moral emotions presuppose moral judgement.) In this respect,
aesthetic judgements are like judgements about the niceness and nastiness of Canary-wine, and unlike
empirical judgements.
Kant's claim that the judgement of taste is based on pleasure or displeasure has a great deal of
intuitive plausibility. Phenomenological introspection supports it. And if we do a little anthropology, we
find that the idea that there is a distinctive variety of pleasure which is provoked by contemplative
perception is no foolish obsession of post eighteenth century Europe. We are not dealing with some
parochial culturally conditioned phenomenon, but something common to human beings everywhere and
at all times.4 (I have never been to a country where people did not speak lovingly of the beauty of the
natural world around them, and of the pleasure that it gives them.)
1.2 Corrolories
We do, of course, need our normal non-aesthetic cognitive skills in order to understand the ordinary nonaesthetic features of a thing to which we respond aesthetically. Most obviously, we need good eyesight to
see the arrangement of colours in a painting or tree, and we need good hearing to hear the gamut of
different sounds produced by a musical instrument. What we need in order to understand the
representational and semantic arts is more complex. For example, we need background knowledge of
history or mythology to understand what is going on in some novels and in some paintings. Knowledge
of other works of literature is necessary for understanding literary allusions. And in order to understand
many works of literature, we need to understand the emotions which the characters are supposed to be
undergoing. (It may be that in order to do this, we need to have felt similar emotions at some time in our
past. But it is unlikely that we must actually experience the emotion while reading or hearing the literary
work, so long as we understand what feelings are in play.) However, all this is a matter of our
understanding of the non-aesthetic features of works of art, which is necessary but not sufficient for
aesthetic appreciation — that is, a felt response upon which judgement is based. People can agree in their
non-aesthetic understanding, but respond differently. So there are two places to locate disagreement:
some disagreement in aesthetic judgement may boil down to a difference over the non-aesthetic features
of a thing. But, notoriously, those who agree about non-aesthetic features often respond differently, and
3 To be committed to the claim that aesthetic pleasures and displeasures are the ground of the judgement
of taste, is not to be committed to the idea that there exist special acts of aesthetic attention, or that we take
up certain aesthetic attitudes when contemplating works of art.
4 Consider the following passage from Homer: "Upon first sight of this palace of the heaven-nurtured
king the visitors paused in amazement. The lustre that played through it was as though the sun or moon had
risen within the lofty dwelling of the far-famed Menelaus. They stared round, feasting their eyes..."
(Odyssey. Book IV.) And in the Torah, we have: "And God caused to grow from the ground every tree that
was pleasing to the sight and good for food..." (Genesis.II.9.)
And later on, Eve "...perceived that the tree [of good and evil] was good for eating and that it was a delight
to the eyes..." (Genesis.III.6.) Homer, Moses, Shakespeare (see the epigraph at the beginning of this
chapter): quite a mixed bunch!
3
thus disagree in aesthetic judgement. Getting right the representational features of an object may be no
simple business. But even where it is complex, it is not all.
The occurrence of aesthetic responses is, I suspect, more frequent than is often thought. They are not
curtained off for those rare and special moments when we are in the art-gallery, theatre or concert hall.
They are not announced with a fanfare. It may even be true that most of our waking adult lives, we are
having aesthetic responses of some sort; it is just that their intensity is greater at some times than at
others ('calm' and 'violent' aesthetic passions, as Hume might have said). It may be that whenever there is
perceptual input, there is an aesthetic reaction of some sort and to some degree. Aesthetic response is not
always conscious; it can be 'subliminal'. This is of particular importance in architecture.
2. Difficulties
We must now face the serious problems which beset the doctrine that aesthetic judgement is essentially
subjective. The claim is one which requires considerable delicacy. To begin with, there are counterexamples to the doctrine. And what is more, they are such that legislating them away is not a good idea.
The counter-examples are symptomatic of a deeper problem.
2.1 Two Obvious Counter-examples
A really obvious case where we judge without response is where we judge that something is neither
beautiful nor ugly, but rather a balance between the two, on the basis of a lack of a response of either
pleasure or displeasure. If something does not move us either way, we may judge that it is aesthetically
mediocre. But it would be strange not to classify this as a judgement of taste. Imagine a graded scale of
objects, constructed upon the basis of degrees of pleasure and displeasure, from the extremely beautiful,
at one end, through the marginally beautiful, and the marginally ugly, to the very ugly, at the other
extreme. Now, consider the object slap in the middle, between the marginally beautiful and the
marginally ugly. All the other objects apart from this one, called forth a pleasure or a displeasure of
varying degrees. We would assign a non-zero degree of beauty or ugliness. We would judge that the
middle object is neither beautiful nor ugly. Surely this judgement has as much right to the status of a
judgement of taste as all the others which ascribed a non-zero degrees of beauty and ugliness.
Another example is that of mood: if we are not in the right mood, we may fail to get the aesthetic
kick which is required of us. If we have our mind on other matters, we might well be bored instead of
enthralled by some worthy artwork. Or, after a hard days work, we may be too tired to appreciate a
sunset. But in such circumstances, we typically do not infer that the thing in question is aesthetically
boring, for we are aware of how our moods and feelings influence our responses. It might be replied that
in such cases of distraction and tiredness, the influence is entirely negative: it prevents response when it
ought to be forthcoming; so the original doctrine still stands. But the influence of mood can also function
positively. Anger might lead to judgements which are unfairly negative; euphoria might lead to overgenerous judgements. Mood can distort feeling. But these influences are often discounted in arriving at a
judgement; and this is perfectly legitimate. Perhaps, on some past occasion, we made a judgement when
under the influence of mood, and we later came to regret the judgement, in the cooler light of day. So
now we know that it is sensible to be less precipitous and rash in advancing to judgement when we know
that we are under the influence of a mood. The distortions of mood are like those of drink or drugs; we
compensate for them in judgement. The point is not so much that there is judgement in the absence of
response, but that judgement and response do not always run hand in hand.
Both of these examples will not be thought to raise any fundamental problems for Kant’s
subjectivism. My view is that in fact they prove more difficult to evade than it seems at first sight. But we
need not dwell on these counter-examples. Were these the only counter-examples, we might be
encouraged to ride roughshod over them. But there are plenty more.
4
2.2 Testimony
The first major problem is that it cannot be denied that we often take another's word about aesthetic
matters. We acquire aesthetic judgements on the basis of testimony. A friend of mine is a keeper at
London Zoo. She once told me about the beauty of the Zoo's geckos. Since I respect her judgement about
aesthetic matters, I came to share her judgement — even though I have not seen them for myself. My
aesthetic judgement was formed in the absence of any aesthetic response to the thing judged. If someone
were to ask me what the geckos at London Zoo are like, I would reply that they are beautiful.
A slightly more complex case is this. I used to form a great many aesthetic judgements about films
by reading the film reviews in the London magazine City Limits (which has since closed down). What I
did was to negate them. For I found them to be reliably unreliable. They were good at getting it wrong. If
they gave a film a good write up, one could be sure that it was mediocre; and if a film was good, they
were almost always negative or ambivalent. Again, in this case I formed judgements in the absence of an
aesthetic response to the thing judged. In general, aesthetic judgements may be based on grounds of
testimony. It may be a dangerous policy to take too far. And it may be for this reason that we have been
warned against doing this. But there is no doubt that it is sometimes quite legitimate to resort to another's
opinion. After all, one cannot see every animal and every film! Testimony is as important in aesthetics as
it is for empirical knowledge.
Now, a great many aestheticians want stubbornly to dig their heels in at this point, and wantonly
legislate that such second-hand judgements are not bona fide aesthetic — they are not really judgements
of taste. If so, they are not counter-examples to the doctrine.
This is crazy.
I might have nothing better to do on a saturday night, and I might get dragged along to see the film
which City Limits approved. After having seen the film, I might complain “There, I told you so; I knew it
would be rubbish”. Surely the content of my judgement after having seen the film is the very same as the
content of the judgement which I originally made before having seen it. The content is the same, it is just
that how I arrived at it is different. It is exactly like the case of two people who both believe that there
has been an earthquake, where one felt and saw things shaking, whereas the other read about it in a
newspaper. They both believe the same thing — the contents of their beliefs are the same — even though
the way they arrived at their beliefs is different. It would be crazy to put the two beliefs in two
fundamentally different categories. Such terminological legislation is no less pointless in the aesthetic
case. To use Plato's metaphor, it fails to cut the subject matter 'at the joints'.
Thus it seems to me that Kant goes too far when he writes:
There must be no need of groping around among other people's judgements and getting previous
instruction from their delights in or aversion to the same object. (137:7-9)
Taste lays claim simply to autonomy. To make the judgements of others the determining ground
of one's own would be heteronomy. (137:29-31)
It may be that Kant thinks that if the judgements of others are weighed in the balance in coming to a
verdict, it means that we can only make a judgement about what does please, as opposed to what ought to
please. But this by no means follows if beliefs about the judgements of others are combined with beliefs
about my own subjective reactions and judgements. Of course, Kant is right that testimony could never
be the sole ground of a judgement of taste, just as it could never be the sole ground of empirical beliefs.
But together with some of my very own reactions and judgements, the judgements of other people can
play a respectable evidential role in producing a judgement that a thing is beautiful. Kant seems to be
assuming that a judgement of taste is either based entirely on the judgements of others, or entirely on
subjective grounds. But this is a false dichotomy.
There are two sorts of cases where we weigh another's judgement.
5
One sort is the case I have been considering, where I have not seen the thing which others judge, and
I take their word. But I may also allow the judgements of others to influence my verdict about a thing
even when I have seen it for myself. Kant writes:
...what has pleased others can never serve [us] as the ground of an aesthetic judgement. The
judgement of others, where unfavourable to ours, may, no doubt, rightly make us suspicious in
respect of our own, but convince us that it is wrong, it never can. (139:29-4O:2)
The judgements of other alone cannot convince me that I am wrong. But in the light of their comments, it
is common, and indeed reasonable, to look again, and differently, and to respond differently. This is
precisely what critics often achieve. “The judgements of others where unfavourable to ours” may indeed
be a significant factor in bringing us, perhaps gradually, to change our mind. It can also work the other
way. The judgements of others, where favourable to ours, may harden our own judgements, increasing
our confidence in their correctness. There need be nothing shoddy in this.
What about the idea that we must 'judge for ourselves', which is so closely bound up with the
doctrine? There may be a sense in which this is a good maxim, but I do not think it means that we can
never justifiably take another's word about aesthetic matters. If there is a sense in which we ought to
judge for ourselves, then it is equally true of our moral and empirical judgements; it must not be seen as
something which is consequential on the role of response in aesthetics.
I suspect that what we require is a Nietzschean-style diagnosis: Kant is moralizing, or at least
offering us practical advice — but this is deceptively wrapped up as a priori philosophy. Kant is
preaching his usual enlightenment sermon of epistemic self-reliance. It may be a good maxim to an
extent. But it should not be written into the nature of an aesthetic judgement.5
2.3 Aesthetic Induction
We have noted that we often take another's word about aesthetic matters, and that this is often quite
respectable. But what should we say about this? We have as yet no theoretical understanding of this
apparently anomalous fact. What of the essentially subjective nature of aesthetics? There must be
something left of this idea.
It will help to begin by noting that the problem is not confined to aesthetics and empirical
judgement. Judgements about the niceness of food also seem to be essentially subjective. But I might say
'You must try Zabaglione; it's delicious!'; and someone might come to share my judgement that
Zabaglione is delicious, without ever having tasted it. Yet it is very plausible that judgements of niceness
and nastiness bear some essential relation to liking and disliking. Similarly, as Saul Kripke pointed out,
we often form mathematical judgements on another's say so.6 But it is nevertheless plausible that
mathematical judgement bears some essential relation to counting or calculating.
What is important to see is that the problem of aesthetic judgements which are not based on
aesthetic reaction, is not confined to cases of testimony; testimony is an instance of a more general
phenomenon. This more general phenomenon is the fact that we form aesthetic judgements on inductive
grounds.
Kant himself raises one aspect of this issue:
...by a judgement of taste I describe the rose at which I am now looking as beautiful. The
judgement, on the other hand, resulting from the comparison of a number of singular
representations: Roses in general are beautiful, is no longer pronounced as a purely aesthetic
judgement, but as a logical judgement founded on one that is aesthetic. (55:24-30)
5 Similar issues crop up in moral philosophy. It is perfectly reasonable to accept some of our judgements
on grounds of authority.
6 Naming and Necessity, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980.
6
Kant is, of course, using 'aesthetic' in his sense, not the modern sense. His use of the word 'purely' seems
to leave open the possibility that he is not saying that a judgement of beauty which is based on inductive
grounds is not an aesthetic judgement at all. He may instead be dividing judgements of taste into those
which are purely aesthetic and those which are impurely aesthetic. It is not clear whether Kant intends
this. At another point he writes:
The judgement of taste ... is aesthetic — which means that it is one whose determining ground
cannot be other than subjective. (41:17-42:1) his emphasis.
This does imply that there cannot be a judgement of taste which is based on 'non-subjective' (i.e. nonsubjective) grounds, but it is not clear that it excludes judgements which are based on inductive grounds.
However, he is clear about this when he writes:
As a matter of fact the judgement of taste is invariably laid down as a singular judgement upon
the Object. The understanding can, from the comparison of the Object, in point of delight, with
the judgements of others, form a universal judgement, e.g. 'All tulips are beautiful'. But that
judgement is then not one of taste, but is a logical judgement which converts the reference of an
Object to our taste into a predicate belonging to things of a certain kind. But it is only the
judgement whereby I regard an individual given tulip as beautiful, i.e. regard my delight in it as
of universally validity, that is a judgement of taste. (140:27-141:3)
Here, Kant definitely commits himself to the view that the judgement that roses or tulips in general are
beautiful is not a judgement of taste. It is not just a question of 'purity'.
What is wrong with legislating in Kant's fashion? There is the following difficulty. Suppose I judge
that the rose I have not seen next door is beautiful, on inductive grounds. I then go next door and look at
the rose, feel pleasure, and proceed to judge that the rose is indeed beautiful. Surely, as in the testimony
case, the contents of the two judgements are the same, even though my way of arriving at them is
different. Kant's legislation is unhappy.7
I admit that this argument is not utterly decisive — like the similar argument in the testimony case.
However, it does suggest that there is a problem. The really determined terminological legislator could
insist that it is immediate ancestry and not content which determines whether a judgement is one of taste.
But it is very difficult to see what could motivate this. It is so much simpler not to carve up our
judgements in Kant's way. At very least, we have a significant worry to keep in mind.
2.3 Logical Form
Kant's ban on aesthetic induction is bound up, in a distracting way, with a view about the 'logical form' of
judgements of taste:
In their logical quantity all judgement of taste are singular judgements. For, since I must present
the object immediately to my feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and that, too, without the aid of
7 Many aesthetic judgements are obviously formed on inductive grounds in the sense that we make an
inductive judgement about the non-aesthetic basis of an aesthetic judgement. For instance, we might look at
a photograph and judge that a certain mountain is beautiful. Or, having gone to the Chelsea flower show on
Monday, I might judge that the flowers are still likely to be beautiful on Friday; they will not wilt too much.
There will very probably be another beautiful selection next year. There might be a pest attack, of course,
but this is not likely. And there are a great many many works of art which we have only seen or heard in
reproduction — in photographs and in recordings. Yet, on the basis of such reproductions, we judge certain
paintings and certain musicians to be great without too much scruple. But the cases of aesthetic induction
which I have in mind, are not merely cases of induction concerning non-aesthetic matters. We might worry
about whether the unseen rose next door will be like other roses in non-aesthetic respects. But this is not
really aesthetic induction at all.
7
concepts, such judgements cannot have the quantity of judgements with objective general
validity. Yet by taking the singular representation of the Object of the judgement of taste, and by
comparison converting it into a concept according to the conditions determining that judgement,
we can arrive at a logically universal judgement. (55:16-24)
'All roses are beautiful' is a general statement, arrived at by induction. But in the testimony cases, the
judgement arrived at on inductive grounds was a singular judgement. That shows that a judgement can be
based on inductive grounds even where its logical form is not that of a general statement. Kant is running
two separate issues together. Some singular judgements are arrived at inductively. This is important
because if Kant wants to exclude inductive judgements of beauty from the class of judgements of taste,
he cannot do so on the grounds of logical form. It may be that if a judgement is not singular, it must be
inferred, inductively or deductively. But it does not follow that singular judgements are not inferred.
Conversely, we might assert that all roses are beautiful, not on inductive grounds, but because I have
examined every single one (and assuming I know there are no others). This judgement would be formed
on deductive grounds. But the judgement has universal logical form. Thus, merely by inspecting the
logical form of a judgement, one cannot tell whether its grounds are inductive or deductive.
Perhaps the problem with the claim that judgements of taste must be singular judgements, can be
illustrated with a mereological example. Suppose I look at a rose tree on which there are two
neighbouring roses: I look at one rose with pleasure and judge that it is beautiful; I look at the other, also
with pleasure, and judge that it too is beautiful; and then by a feat of logical deduction, I come to the
conclusion that both roses are beautiful. Is that an aesthetic judgement? Kant would say that it is a logical
judgement which is founded on two aesthetic judgements. But the following case seems no different: I
look at the left half of a rose and judge that that half is beautiful; I then look at the right half and judge
that it too is beautiful; I then put these two judgements together and deduce that the rose as a whole is
beautiful, because of the beauty of both its halves. I assert the apparently singular judgement: 'This rose
is beautiful'. Is this an aesthetic judgement? Surely Kant would have to admit that it is. But it is not
fundamentally different from the two-rose example.
We do well to separate questions of aesthetic induction from questions about logical form. Even on
his own theory, Kant should not associate the two. But this criticism is not fundamental. Kant could drop
his views about the logical form of judgements of taste, and his subjectivism would be unaffected.
3. Diagnosis
So far we have accumulated a number of counter-examples to, and difficulties with, the Kantian doctrine.
But we have no interpretation of them. We have no deeper account of the shortcomings of Kant's theory,
of which they are symptomatic. We have no diagnosis, which in my view is often what we need most in
philosophy.
3.1 Aesthetic Holism
What we should say about all these examples, I suggest, is that the route from judgement to response is
subtle. We need not simply respond. To parody Quine: we should say that our aesthetic judgements are a
'man-made fabric which impinges on [aesthetic] experience only along the edges'.8 It is not the case that
the sole ground of a judgement of taste about something is some response or set of responses to the
representation of that thing. A particular response only leads to judgement in the light of a background
set of judgements.
But what holds the background system of aesthetic judgements together? I think it is not just that we
have a loose association of mental items, tied by nothing more than non-rational causality. The crucial
8 See Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", in From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1953.
8
point is that we can form beliefs about our responses and judgements. We can make inductions
concerning how we will respond. We can be aware of the pattern and structure among our responses and
judgements. These beliefs about our aesthetic responses and judgements play an important role in
regulating a holistic function from response to judgement. So when we make a judgement of taste about
something, judgements about other things become part of its ground by participating in an aesthetic
theory — which is a set of settled aesthetic judgements and a set of beliefs about our aesthetic
judgements and responses. Such a theory constitutes our aesthetic outlook at any time. Particular
aesthetic judgements occur only against such a background. We assess objects and events for their beauty
in the light of our aesthetic theory. The influence can also go the other way. Our responses and
judgements on a particular occasion can modify the sprawling network of beliefs about judgements and
responses; and this can effect future dispositions to respond.
Given such a holistic picture, it is perfectly understandable that we can make an aesthetic judgement
without any response which corresponds to that particular judgement; nevertheless, the judgement must
have a place within a whole system of aesthetic judgements which is keyed into, or supported by the
whole range of our aesthetic responses.
This nicely allows us to understand aesthetic induction. What is happening in Kant's rose example is
that we assume that there is some type of physical structure which is nomologically connected with being
a rose, such that this type of physical structure is highly correlated with being beautiful. There is some
common cause of the physical structures which are responsible for the beauty of the roses that I have
seen, and for the physical structures which are responsible for beauty of the roses that I have not seen. I
assert that all (or most) roses are beautiful because I have systematically responded with pleasure to the
shape and colour of many roses; and in addition, I believe that there is something in common between all
roses which determines their shape and colour. In fact it turns out that it is the genetic structure that they
all share; but I need not know this. Thus, even though I have only seen a finite number of roses, I may, on
inductive grounds, confidently expect unexamined roses to be beautiful.
Aesthetic holism also solves the problem of accounting for testimony, as an instance of inductive
judgements. I believe that another person or group of people is a reliable indicator of the beauty of
things. I take their pronouncements to vary reliably with the beauty or ugliness of the things they judge.
And I acquire my judgements by causally interacting with their pronoucements.
In addition, the first two obvious counter-examples which I mentioned are easily dealt with, given
holism. It only requires a modicum of extrapolation to judge the aesthetically mediocre on the basis of a
lack of response. But it requires some extrapolation nonetheless. And awareness of mood is one of the
subtle factors that mediate between feeling and judgement. We know from past experience how mood
affects feeling. Thus, it is just what we should expect that beliefs about response are a regulating factor
which act so as to cancel out the distorting influences of mood.
All this makes sense only given that as well as responses, a network of beliefs about responses and
beliefs about judgements is also a factor leading to judgement.
3.2 The Myth of the Given
Thus, the dogma that all aesthetic judgements about a thing must be based on a response to a
representation of it is naive. It should be rejected. This dogma is bound up with another dogma. (As
Quine says of his empiricist dogmas, "The dogmas are, indeed, at root identical".)
Our unrepentant terminological legislator might insist on dividing judgements into those which are
'purely' aesthetic, and those which are 'impurely' aesthetic. A 'purely' aesthetic judgement would be one
which is based on a direct response to the thing judged — for example, when we are looking at a rose
which is right in front of us. One puts oneself in a 'me-rose-here-now' situation, perceives the rose,
responds with pleasure, and judges that the rose is beautiful. Impure aesthetic judgements, it might be
said, are not like this. They are at further remove from the 'aesthetic-experiential periphery'. As noted
already, the unrelenting legislator might disregard my earlier same-content arguments; immediate
ancestry is all the legislator is interested in.
9
Why would this do any harm? Surely it would be just a matter of terminology, with nothing
substantial hanging on it.
However, it does matter that we do not legislate this way. Such legislation is inadvisable for the
reason that it badly misrepresents what goes on in the more straightforward 'pure' case where one is
judging the beauty of a thing with which we are in direct perceptual contact. The cases are not, in fact, so
very distant. As we have already noted, in the seemingly straightforward case, many things, such as
mood, can subject our responses. And in catering for such factors, we bring in matters which are external
to the me-rose-here-now syndrome. Our previous experience in judging things of that sort is a significant
factor, influencing our judgement. (This is especially true when we are judging works of art.) One does
not arrive at each aesthetic situation with one's mind like a tabula rasa, as Kant seems to imagine.
Aesthetic response is not so pure and innocent. We bring with us a lifetime of aesthetic response and
judgement. My 'Homo Aestheticus I' diagram was misleading in that it only represented the person at one
time. What we need to represent is the dynamic and cumulative nature of our aesthetic lives. Our
aesthetic life is better represented in the following diagram:
Homo Aestheticus II
World
Mind
Aesthetic
Judgement
Pleasure/
Response
Aesthetic
Theory
Non-aesthetic
Representation
Flower
Our previous aesthetic responses and judgements, as well as our beliefs about our aesthetic responses are
a factor even in a straightforward case.
We need to quine the distinction between the straightforward me-rose-here-now case and inductive
cases, and see straightforward and inductive cases as lying on a continuum, with no sharp break between
them. That there is a hard and fast line between judgements of beauty which are directly based on some
given response of pleasure and displeasure felt in response to a perception of a thing, and those
judgements which are based on inductive grounds, is a dogma we should reject. It is the 'myth of the
given aesthetic response'. Aesthetic response is 'laden' with aesthetic theory. The only exception would
be the first crude stirrings and gurglings of the aesthetic response in children. Apart from such infantile
aesthetic sensibilities, the 'purely' aesthetic judgement is myth. It is the myth of the aesthetic tabula rasa
— of the untheoretical aesthetic given. We have been led to believe that in aesthetic response we are
locked in the present, with the past sealed off. It is not, and it should not be. Aesthetic response does not
take place in a psychological and temporal island.
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For Kant, aesthetic response is a direct response to a representation. And that is a tremendously
important insight of his aesthetic theory, for which we should be grateful. But this is given content by all
the factors — such as desire — which do not intervene in the function from representation to pleasure,
and from there to judgement. It should not involve the idea that the direct function is so utterly simple
that none of our previous life of aesthetic response and judgement is brought to bear on the case in hand.
3.3 The Truth in Subjectivism
Aesthetic holism rescues something intuitive from Kant's idea. There is indeed an important sense in
which aesthetic judgement is essentially subjective. But the relation between response and judgement is
holistic not atomistic — cumulative not sealed off from the past. We should abandon the dogma that each
aesthetic judgement is grounded piecemeal in aesthetic responses to the thing judged. It is still true that in
order to make aesthetic inductions, I must at some time have concurred with or dissented from the
judgements of my zoo friend or City Limits, on the basis of first-hand responses to my perception of
animals or films. I must know what it is like to judge without the distortion of mood. To judge the
mediocre, I must have judged the beautiful and the ugly. And to judge that all roses are beautiful, I must
at some time have gained pleasure from the beauty of several individual roses. So the resulting position is
very far from a complete rejection of subjectivism; it is subjectivism without the dogmas. It is still true
that the ground of every aesthetic judgement involves some response or a set of responses. But they need
not include a response to the thing judged; and even when they do, that is very far from being the sole
basis of the judgement. Not every judgement about a particular thing must be based on a response to a
perception of that very thing. And no judgement about a thing is based on nothing but a response to a
perception of that thing. A response to a thing is neither necessary nor sufficient for a judgement about it.
The essentially subjective nature of aesthetics must not be taken to imply that for every aesthetic
judgement about some particular thing, there must be some aesthetic response to that thing, which
grounds the aesthetic judgement about it. And it must not be taken to imply that for every aesthetic
judgement about a thing, its grounds are nothing but some aesthetic response to it. The connection
between judgement and response can be looser than that. But there must be some connection all the
same.
When Kant says that the determining grounds of the judgement of taste "cannot be other than
subjective", I hope to have argued that this stricture is over harsh if it is interpreted in an atomistic way,
and if it misses out on the temporal and cumulative aspect of our aesthetic lives. Kant was right to think
that aesthetics is essentially subjective, but he was wrong to have an over-simplistic view of the relation
between feeling and judgement.
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