Enjoyment and Beauty
Beauty is powerful. It compels our attention and appreciation and
unites us in shared visions. 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 and third claims characterize beauty’s power to compel attention and
appreciation and address its power to unite. The first claim is an essential
preliminary. The inspiration for this approach is Kant’s Critique of Judgment,
where 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
Must one enjoy what one finds beautiful? The question arises because
it seems possible to think something beautiful without enjoying it at any
time. Imagine, for example, 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
is not, however, enjoying the Taj. He is not cognitively or affectively
impaired; he attends to features that people generally regard as making the
Taj beautiful, and he makes a good faith effort to enjoy looking at the
building, but he simply does not enjoy it. He is indifferent. He agrees with
you because he knows that it is the received opinion that the Taj is beautiful.
His agreement acknowledges that the Taj belongs with that diverse collection
of items that people generally take to be beautiful. Jones’s statement that
the Taj is beautiful may be misleading since it is typically one’s enjoyment
that convinces one that something is beautiful. But surely Jones can
consistently say, “I believe the Taj is beautiful, although I do not, never
have, and expect I never will enjoy it.” Even if Jones cannot base his
judgment on his own enjoyment, he can base it on the reports of others.
Compare believing that Beijing is densely populated. One can form that
belief based in entirely on the reports of others, so why can’t one, on the
basis of reports, judge that the Taj is beautiful? In response, we distinguish
two types of judgments of beauty. Jones’ judgment of beauty illustrates the
first; the defining feature is that the reasons for judgment consist entirely in
the reports of others. The following conditions characterize the second type
of judgment: (1) one forms the subjective conviction that the item has
certain features; (2) one enjoys the item as having those features; and (3)
that enjoyment is one’s reason for the judgment. By “a judgment of beauty”
and similar expressions, we shall mean a judgment of this second sort unless
we explicitly indicate otherwise. Section II discusses (2); Section III, (3).
We devote the rest of this section to explaining and defending (1). In doing
so, we assume that a judgment of beauty is something for which one
typically has reasons.
To see that one typically has reasons for a judgment of beauty,
suppose that, in the Taj example, Jones asks you why you think the Taj is
beautiful. Jones is not asking for an explanation of why you respond to the
Taj as you do; he is asking you to identify what you regard as the features
which are key to experiencing it as beautiful. You answer by citing the
features you enjoy. We take this to be the typical pattern: one defends
one’s judgment that a face, painting, statute, or poem, for example, is
beautiful by citing the features one enjoys. It is a fundamental fact about
beauty that the features are unified; the beauty items parts, qualities,
internal and external relations present themselves to the enjoyer as an
organized whole. The enjoyment reveals the item as having these features
and his enjoyment-mediated revelation serves as the reason for the
judgment of beauty. It is a fundamental fact about beauty that, as we will
argue in Section IV, this revelation is articulated. 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. 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. The
role of reasons is not to compel agreement by providing evidentiary grounds.
We assign a far different role to reasons in Sections II and III. Now we turn
to the claim that, when one judges something beautiful, one forms the
subjective conviction that the item has certain features. We begin by
explaining what we mean by “subjective.”
A subjective judgment is one that is not objective. Israel Scheffler
captures the relevant sense of “objective”:
A fundamental feature of science is its ideal of objectivity, an ideal that
subjects all scientific statements to the test of independent and
impartial criteria, recognizing no authority of persons in the realm of
cognition. The claimant to scientific knowledge is responsible for what
he says, acknowledging the relevance of considerations beyond his
wish or advocacy to the judgment of his assertions. In assertion . . .
he is trying to meet independent standards, to satisfy factual
requirements whose fulfillment cannot be guaranteed in advance.
In this case of judgments of beauty, one does recognize the “authority of
persons in the realm of cognition,” as the following example illustrates.
When Brian asks Brianna why she thinks the Mona Lisa is beautiful, Brianna
describes an organized array of features she perceives the painting as
having. Here we understand “perceives the painting as having” to mean that
she is not, for example, merely repeating what she has read; she sees the
painting as having the array of features for herself, through her own eyes.
In response, Brian produces a painting—the faux Mona Lisa—having all of the
specified features. Brianna denies it is beautiful. Brian complains that the
two paintings are relevantly the same: both have the array of features
Brianna specified. Brianna responds by pointing out relevant differences--e.
g., “the background is different,” “the use of light is different,” “the eyebrows
are different,” and so on. None of the features she mentions were included
in her earlier specification of the array. She insists that the differences mean
the faux Mona Lisa does not exhibit the same organized array of features as
the true Mona Lisa.
When Brianna denies the faux Mona Lisa lacks the relevant organized
array, she is not—cannot be—making a mistake about a matter of objective
fact. As Kant notes,
If any one reads me his poem, or brings me a play, which all said and
done, fails to commend itself to my taste, then let him adduce . . .
critics of taste, with the host of rules laid down by them, as a proof of
the beauty of his poem; let certain passages particularly displeasing to
me accord completely with the rules of beauty (as . . . universally
recognized) . . . I take my stand on the ground that my judgment is
one of taste . . . This would appear to be one of the chief reasons why
this faculty of aesthetic judgement is has been given the name of
taste. For a man may recount to me the ingredients of a dish, and
observe that each and every one of them is just what I like . . . yet I
am deaf to these arguments. I try the dish with my own tongue and
palate, and I pass judgement according to their verdict.
One recognizes the authority of persons in ascriptions of features to the
items we judge beautiful, as illustrated by Brianna authority with regard to
whether the two Mona Lisa’s share the same organize array of features.
There are two dimensions to her authority: whether the paintings possess
certain features, and whether those features are organized in a certain way.
Her authority may extend to both; “may” because if one of Brianna’s
organized features is simply “red there,” we do not claim she is authoritative
about that; if however, the feature is “a certain interaction of light and dark
in the background,” she may be authoritative in this regard (one may try to
decompose all such features into arrays of features over which one is not
authoritative; we will not pursue this possibility).
As we argue in Section III, Brianna’s reason for her judgment that the
Mona Lisa is beautiful is her enjoyment of the painting as having the
organized array of features she subjectively ascribes to it. The Taj Mahal
example illustrates the same point. Jones judges that the Taj is beautiful
merely based on the reports of others. You—we may assume—form a firstperson authoritative belief that the Taj has a certain organized array of
features, enjoy the Taj as having that array, and for that reason judge it
beautiful.
We should clarify what we mean by enjoying an item “as having an
array of features.” Consider first that, whenever one enjoys something, one
enjoys it as having one or more features. There is typically an answer to the
question, “What do you enjoy about it?” If, for example, one enjoys
chocolate, one enjoys it for its bitter-sweet taste, or as a rebellion against
one’s strict diet, or whatever. The answer to, “What do you enjoy about it?”
specifies the features one enjoys it as having. To see that there must always
be some answer to that question, imagine Carol claims to enjoy dining out in
restaurants, but sincerely denies that there is anything she enjoys about it.
She insists she does not enjoy the food, the restaurant atmosphere, the
experience of being waited on, the people watching, or anything else. She is
completely indifferent to every feature of dining out. This is a paradigm case
of not enjoying dining out; Carol just self-deceptively believes she enjoys it.
The enjoyment of items we first-person-authoritatively believe to have a
certain array of features is just a special case of the general truth that to
enjoy is to enjoy an item as being some way.
We conclude this section with a final comment on the Mona Lisa
example. It is tempting, following Kant, describe Brianna’s subjective
ascription of an array of features to the Mona Lisa as a product of the “free
play of the Imagination.” Of course, the Imagination to which Kant appeals
is a transcendental faculty, and we wish to avoid any such appeal. Even so,
we can still non-transcendentally describe Brianna’s perception as a result of
“free play of the imagination” in the following sense: the organized array of
features Brianna ascribes to the Mona Lisa is her own first-personauthoritative construction. What Brianna does is akin to seeing shapes in
clouds, an activity that one might well describe as a free play of the
imagination. Unlike one’s typical attitude toward clouds, however, 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. 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. Even with the simple
beauties of flowers and geometrical designs, the eye ranges over the form,
appreciates the variations in color, calls to mind perhaps other beautiful
flowers. Beauty is typically discovered in a sustained and variegated
experience of the object over time. The experience would not be the kind of
experience it is without the features of the object in question; they are in
that sense necessary to the experience of beauty, as is the object itself. But
the beauty is the object's as a whole.
This imaginative activity is associated, not just with enjoyment, but
with enjoyment of a special kind. A further consideration of the Mona Lisa
example motivates this claim. Imagine that, although Brianna does not find
the faux Mona Lisa beautiful, she nonetheless enjoys it as having a certain
organized array of features, just not the same array she believes the true
Mona Lisa as having. Her enjoyment of the true Mona Lisa provides with her
reasons to think it is beautiful, but her enjoyment of the faux Mona Lisa does
not. What accounts for the difference? The relevant differences she points
out between the two paintings do not constitute an answer to this question.
They merely show that she is not guilty of failing to treat like things alike;
they do not provide an explanation of how one enjoyment plays a reasonproviding role and the other does not. We suggest that what accounts for
the difference is that the basis of a judgment of beauty is a special kind of
enjoyment.
II. The Second Claim: A Special Kind of Enjoyment
The distinguishing feature of the relevant kind of enjoyment is the
presence of a certain type of reason for that very enjoyment, a presence
caused (or causally sustained) by the enjoyment itself. Section B
characterizes the type of reason; section C addresses the causal claim.
Section A explains what we mean by a reason to enjoy something.
A. Reasons
We treat a reason to enjoy as a special case of a reason for action.
This may seem obviously wrong. Surely, unlike action, enjoyment is an
experience which is not under our voluntary control; it just either happens or
does not happen. In fact, enjoyment is typically under one’s voluntary
control in two ways: one can often determine whether it occurs, and how
long it endures. If Smith goes the museum, he knows he will enjoy various
impressionist paintings, which he finds beautiful; if he does go, he can
determine the duration of the enjoyment by how long he stays.
This is,
however, not sufficient to give a clear sense to a reason to enjoy. One may
rightly object that all the example shows is that Smith’s expectation of
enjoyment is a reason for him to go to the museum. The expectation of the
experience is a reason for the action of going to the museum. Where is there
a need to posit a reason for the enjoyment itself?
The answer lies in a fundamental fact about beauty: it commands
enjoyment. Everyday talk and thought about beauty reflect this fact.
Imagine two painters, Marcia and Martin, discussing the facial features of a
potential model; they both see her as having the same organized array of
features; however, while Marcia finds her beautiful, Martin finds her
completely unappealing. Marcia responds, “You don’t enjoy looking at her?
What is wrong with you?” Similar examples abound. One who judges
something beautiful one’s enjoyment reveals features the one is convinced
are to be enjoyed, not just by oneself, but by anyone—at least anyone who
apprehends the item in the same way. One is convinced that the command
has it source entirely in the way the item is apprehended, and that—apart
from whatever individual traits condition the apprehension—that source is
otherwise free of any idiosyncratic taint from one’s wants, aspirations,
dreams, values, and the like. Compare enjoying bittersweet chocolate. If
Sally enjoys bittersweet chocolate, and Ed does not, Sally does not think that
Ed ought to. She just thinks they differ. We capture the idea of beauty
commanding enjoyment in terms of reasons: One who judges an item
beautiful, on the other hand, is convinced that there is a reason for anyone
(everyone who apprehends the item in the same way) to enjoy the item.
Smith’s visit to the museum illustrates the point. Smith finds some of the
impressionist paintings beautiful, and his conviction that there is a reason to
enjoy the paintings serves as a reason for him to do so by visiting the
museum. Similarly, when Marcia responds to Martin, “You don’t enjoy
looking at her? What is wrong with you?”, she expresses her puzzlement
that he does not acknowledge and conform to the reason she is convinced
there is to enjoy the model’s face.
To characterize the special kind of enjoyment associated with
judgments of beauty, we will distinguish two types of reason to enjoy. The
distinction is a special case of a general distinction between two types of
reason for action. To draw the distinction, we first ask, what is it for
something to be a reason for a person to perform an action? We begin with
the observation that reasons typically play a characteristic motivationaljustificatory role. An example: Smith devotes considerable time to chess;
he studies the game, analyzes his past games, seeks out chess partners,
browses in the chess section of bookstores, and so on. When asked why he
engages in these activities, he explains that a well-played game displays the
beauty of forces in dynamic tension and reveals creativity, courage, and
practical judgment in an exercise of intuition and calculation akin to both
mathematics and art. These considerations motivate him to engage in a
variety of activities; and, they serve as his justification for performing the
very actions they motivate. We take it to be clear that reasons play a
distinctive motivational-justificatory role. We need not, however, offer any
further characterization role that role in order to make it clear what we mean
by a reason for action.
The chess example, which involves the explicit articulation of reasons,
may suggest the implausibly rationalistic view that a reason always plays its
motivational-justificatory role through explicit reasoning prior to action.
Worse yet in the context of our discussion of beauty, it may associate
reasons for action with dispassionate reflection. Reasons may of course
operate explicitly and dispassionately. For example, reflecting on his need to
improve his ability to blend strategy and tactics, Smith may—explicitly and
even dispassionately—reason his way to the conclusion that he should study
former world champion Mikhail Tal’s games. The same reasons, however,
could operate implicitly and in the presence of passion. Imagine that Smith,
without prior reasoning, he accidentally happens on a collection of Tal’s
games while wandering around a bookstore to kill time. The collection
catches his eye; the conviction, “I need this!” takes hold of him and he
straightaway decides to buy the book. The thought and the decision occur
against the background of an emotion-laden memory of a recent bitter defeat
caused by his lack of skill in blending strategy and tactics. Despite the
passion and lack of explicit reasoning, the same reasons that figure in the
explicit reasoning may also operate in this case. If Smith were later asked
why he bought the book, it would hardly be odd for him to give a reason by
saying, “I realized I need to study Tal’s games to improve his ability to blend
strategy and tactics.” He doing so he would not only be justifying his choice,
he would be citing the reason’s motivational power as an explanation of the
action. While on occasion we treat such after the fact rationalizations
skeptically as the likely products of self-deception or fabrication, on the
whole they are part and parcel of the routine conduct of everyday life, and
we, without specific grounds for doubt, we regard them as true.
These observations suggest the following initial account of a reason for
action: a psychological state (or complex of such states) is a reason for a
person to perform an action if and only if the state (or states) plays, or would
in appropriate circumstances play, the relevant motivational-justificatory
role. We drop the “or complex of such states” qualification from now on.
There is no need to take a position on the long-standing debate about what
sort of psychological state is required to explain the motivational dimension
of reasons. Some—crudely, “Humeans”—will insist that Smith’s beliefs about
chess are never sufficient on their own to motivate; they must always be
supplemented by a separate motivational state--a desire, hope, aspiration,
an allegiance to an ideal, or some such thing. Others—crudely, “Kantians”—
will insist that a separate motivational state is not always required; a belief
may, in appropriate circumstances, motivate on its own. Each view tends in
the direction of the other. Plausible Humeans interpret “desire” broadly to
include such diverse sources of motivation as values, ideals, needs,
commitments, personal loyalties, and patterns of emotional reaction;
plausible Kantians refer to such sources of motivation to explain why the
same belief may motivate one person but not another. There is, however, no
need to opt for one view or the other; everything we say is consistent with
either. We should, however, emphasize one merely terminological point:
We will, for convenience, describe beliefs as reasons; one should read in
whatever motivational factor one thinks is also required.
The suggested initial account conceives of reasons for action as
psychological states that do, or would, play a certain motivationaljustificatory role. The difficulty is that a state can be a reason even if it does
not, and would not, play the relevant role. Thus: Robert is a prominent wine
critic. His doctor informs him he has gout and must, on pain of destroying
his health and ultimately his life, stop drinking the rich French wines in which
he delights. Robert persists nonetheless; he thinks of himself as a badly
injured warrior who, although doomed to defeat, defiantly refuses to cease
fighting for his ideal—Robert’s ideal being the refinement of taste as a source
of pleasure. When his friends try to change his mind, their arguments fall on
deaf ears. Robert acknowledges that if others were in his situation, the
health considerations would, for them, serve as a compelling internal reason
choose good health over the delight of fine wine; but, as he emphasizes,
those considerations play no such role for him. He takes pride in this, seeing
it as a sign of the depth of his commitment.
The friends think the health considerations are a reason for Robert to
abandon his gourmet pursuits, a reason Robert ignores, and they are surely
correct. The considerations are a reason in the sense that Robert’s beliefs
about the effects of his gourmet pursuits on his health should play the
motivational-justificatory role of a reason, even though they do not. This is
not to say that the considerations should be decisive; playing a motivational-
justificatory role does not mean playing a decisive role. In general, a belief
can be a reason for a person even if it does not in fact play the motivationaljustificatory role of a reason for that person. Indeed, the person need not
have the belief. If Robert did not believe that his gourmet pursuits were
threatening his health, it would still be true that he should form that belief
and that it should play the motivational-justificatory role of a reason.
One way to accommodate examples like Robert is to define a reason
for action as follows: a psychological state is a reason for a person to
perform an action if and only if it should be the case that the state plays, or
would in appropriate circumstances play, the characteristic motivationaljustificatory role of a reason. This, however, has the uncomfortable
consequence that one cannot describe a person’s belief as a reason when one
thinks that belief should not play the relevant motivational-justificatory role.
Consider the shaman who believes that sacrificing a chicken will help cure a
disease that the observing anthropologist knows to be measles. The belief
about the efficacy of the sacrifice plays the motivational-justificatory role of a
reason for the shaman; the anthropologist, however, thinks the belief should
not play that role (on the ground that the shaman’s goal is to provide an
efficacious treatment). The anthropologist cannot, under the suggested
definition, agree that there is a reason for the shaman to sacrifice the
chicken. This seems quite odd as it is not obviously improper to answer, “Is
there a reason the shaman is sacrificing the chicken?” with, “Yes, he believes
that it will cure the disease.”
The solution we adopt is to acknowledge that one uses “reason”
ambiguously. One uses it to describe the “does play” cases whether or not
the belief should play the motivational-justificatory role of a reason, and one
uses it to describe the “should play” cases whether or not the belief does play
the relevant role.
We will call the belief in the “does play” cases an active
reason. More fully, a belief is an active reason if and only if it does, or would
in appropriate circumstances, play the motivational-justificatory role of a
reason. We will call the belief in the “should play” cases a normative reason.
More fully, a belief is a normative reason if and only if it should be an active
reason. Thus, an active reason may, but need not be, a normative reason,
and normative reason may, but need not be, an active reason.
There are of course competing accounts of when normative reasons
exist. Typically, views see the existence as depending on various factors—
values, ideals, needs, commitments, and the like; to the extent the view
holds that disagreements about the existence of normative reasons are not
rationally resolvable disagreements, the view embraces a degree of
relativism. On such views, Robert’s values (or whatever) may be sufficiently
different than the friends’ values (or whatever) that there is a normative
reason from their perspective but not from his. We will not address such
relativistic claims here; while we do not subscribe to a complete relativism
about reasons, everything we say will be consistent with any plausible
relativism. One just needs to add to our claims whatever relativization one
thinks is required.
Now we can provide a provisional characterization of the type of
enjoyment on which we base our judgments of beauty. One enjoys x as
having an organized array of features F, where:
(1)
one first-person-authoritatively believes x has F;
(2)
that belief is a—certain type of—active reason for one’s enjoyment
of x as having F;
(3)
that person regards this belief as a—certain type of—normative
reason to enjoy x as having F;
(4)
one’s enjoyment of x causes or causally sustains (3).
The next section motivates conditions (2) and (3) by characterizing the
relevant types of reasons.
B. The Special Type of Enjoyment
An example is helpful. Suppose you and Jones have taken time out of
your heavily scheduled business trip to travel from Delhi to Agra to see the
Taj Mahal, which you are not both contemplating. Each of you enjoys it;
however, you find it beautiful while Jones does not. After an hour, Jones has
had enough. He decides it is time to return to the pressing demands of the
business trip instead of lingering longer at the Taj. You, however, wish to
continue to contemplate and investigate the building, which you feel is just
beginning to yield up its treasures. When Jones asks you why, you respond,
with surprise, “Why? Just look at the way the whole structure seems almost
weightless!” You continue in this vein, articulating your active reason to
enjoy the Taj by drawing Jones’ attention the features of the Taj you enjoy.
The presence of this reason explains (in part) why you are motivated to
continue to contemplate and investigate the features in question, and why
you think you are justified in doing so. We take this to be characteristic of
the enjoyment of the beautiful: the (first-person authoritative) belief that
the item has an organized array of features is an active reason to enjoy the
item as having those features. The continued contemplation and
investigation may not occur if competing active reasons succeed in directing
action along different lines, but, when contemplation and investigation do
continue, they may increase the number and richness of the enjoyed features
and increase the detail and complexity of the features organization. The
result is a richer, more complex and detailed first-person authoritative belief
that the item has an organized array of features and hence a more complex
and detail active reason. But Jones is unmoved by all this and still wants to
leave.
Two differences in the reasons you have to enjoy the Taj explain the
difference in attitude. The first difference is that Jones’s reasons are
derived; yours are not. A reason is a derived active reason for a person to
perform an action A if and only if it is a reason for the person to perform A
only because there are other distinct reasons for the person to perform other
actions, and performing A is a means to performing those other actions. An
underived reason is a reason that is not derived. Jones’ active reasons to
enjoy the Taj are derived from the principles to which he adheres. The first
is that more enjoyment is better than less. Since he enjoys the Taj, he has a
reason to make time for that enjoyment among is other pursuits. Jones’s
second principle is that one should enjoy significant artistic achievements.
He regards the Taj as a significant artistic achievement, so he has a second
reason to make time to enjoy it. Were it not for his adherence to these
principles, Jones would not—let us assume—have an active reason to enjoy
the Taj. After an hour, however, he feels he has devoted enough time to
enjoying the Taj and is ready to turn to other pursuits.
Your active reason, in contrast, is underived. Your belief that the Taj
has certain features is not an active reason only because there are other
distinct active reasons for you to perform other actions, and enjoying the Taj
is a means to performing those other actions. Enjoying the Taj is, for you,
an end in its own right, and you feel that you have just begun to realize that
end, that the Taj has much more to reveal. This is characteristic of the
enjoyment of beauty: the first-person-authoritative belief that the item has
an organized array of features is an underived active reason to enjoy the
item has having those features. Typically, this active reason motivates and
justifies a sustained interaction which reveals the beauty of the item in a
variegated, temporally extended experience.
The underived nature of your active reason does not, however, fully
explain why you want to continue to contemplate the Taj. Why do the
pressing demands of the business trip not take precedence for you over your
underived active reason to enjoy the Taj? Because you recognize a second
to enjoy the Taj, a reason Jones does not acknowledge. Your first-personauthoritative belief that the Taj has certain features not only serves as an
underived active reason to enjoy the Taj, you also regard it as an underived
normative reason to do so. Of course, this reason too could yield to the
pressing demands of the business trip, but it nonetheless an additional
hurdle those demands must overcome. To regard the belief as an underived
normative reason to enjoy the Taj is to think that the belief should play the
role of an underived active reason. If you were asked why you regard the in
this way, you would identify the features you believe the Taj to have, the
features you enjoy it as having. Your attitude is, “You can’t see that and not
acknowledge that it is to be enjoyed!” The natural—but incorrect—
characterization of this attitude is that you regard the fact that the Taj has
the features you enjoy as sufficient in and of itself to establish the belief that
it has those features should serve as an underived active reason. The
problem is that the Taj’s having the organized array is not a matter of
objective fact. There is just your first-person-authoritative belief that the Taj
has those features; it is in your eyes that Taj reveals itself as possessing an
array of features sufficient to establish an underived normative reason to
enjoy it. But not only in your eyes. To say that would be to overlook the
point emphasized earlier: when beauty commands enjoyment, the command
is not personally addressed, but impersonally: not “You should enjoy this,”
but “This is to be enjoyed.”
We suggest capturing the impersonality of the
command the following way. You think that anyone who formed the firstperson authoritative belief that the Taj had the features in question would
also be convinced that there was an underived normative reason to enjoy the
Taj as having those features. We will have many occasions to use this
formula, and it proves convenient to shorten it. To this end, let us say that
an underived normative reason is belief-universal when and only when
anyone who forms the relevant first-person-authoritative belief will also
believe that that underived normative reason exists. We can then simply say
that you are convinced that your first-person-authoritative belief that the Taj
has a certain array of features is a belief-universal underived normative
reason to enjoy the Taj as having those features.
We take the conviction that the relevant first-person-authoritative
belief is a belief-universal underived normative reason to a defining feature
of the special sort of enjoyment that is the ground of the judgment of
beauty. In this regard, it is illuminating to compare Jones. When he looks at
the Taj, he does not believe that there is a belief-universal underived
normative reason to enjoy the Taj. His reasons to enjoy the Taj are entirely
derived reasons. In this regard, Jones’ attitude toward the Taj is similar to
his attitude toward bittersweet chocolate, which he also enjoys. He devotes
some time and attention to enjoying the chocolate because he believes more
enjoyment is, other things being equal, better than less, and because the
thinks a full life should have some room for sensory pleasures. He does not,
however, think that anyone who believes that the chocolate is bittersweet
will also believe that there is an underived normative reason to enjoy the
chocolate as bittersweet. We do not deny that a chocolate gourmet might
have such a belief. Imagine the gourmet, aware of chocolate’s manifold
possibilities, locates this realization of bitter sweetness in a complex of
similar discriminations and thereby reveals this particular realization of the
taste as something that should be highly prized. Jones, however, is no
chocolate gourmet; he just tastes an undifferentiated bitter sweetness, and
by no means believes that there is an underived normative reason to enjoy
the chocolate as bittersweet. The enjoyment of beauty differs in precisely
this way from the routine enjoyment of chocolate. One who finds an item
beautiful sees it as making a claim on everyone that it should be enjoyed—
everyone, that is, who forms the relevant first-person-authoritative belief.
One of course sometimes also thinks that everyone should form the
relevant belief. Many evidently take such a view of the Taj, one of the Seven
Wonders of the World. Those who take this view regard those who fail to
believe as they to as suffering from an impaired apprehension of the item: if
they were just able to apprehend the item in an unimpaired way, they would
form the relevant belief. We will consider such cases in more detail in
Section IV. At the moment, however, the point to emphasize is that there
are many examples in which it just reveals one’s lack of appreciation of the
ways in which others may be different to insist that others should believe as
one does. Consider Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Sunday Morning,” which offers
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 an immortal afterlife. Vicki enjoys reading the poem
and finds it beautiful. If asked why she thinks the poem beautiful, she would
point out the features she enjoys—the elegance and precision of the
language, the power of the metaphors, and so on. Vicki regards her firstperson authoritative belief that the poem has these features as an underived
normative reason to enjoy the poem as having those features. Now imagine
Guanglei, a Buddhist graduate student in Beijing reads “Sunday Morning” and
finds it opaque and boring. He does not form the same first-personauthoritative belief that Vicki does. Should he? It is difficult to see how this
could be true. Seeing in “Sunday Morning” what Vicki does requires some
understanding—both cognitive and affective—of the Christian picture of
purification through suffering, forgiveness through communion, and the
reward of immortality to the faithful. Ought Guanglei immerse himself in
Christian culture to better appreciate the poem? Perhaps, if one eliminates
the constraints of time, the press of practical demands, the limits of memory,
and understanding, and the like. But surely not if one imagines Guanglei in
the midst of his pursuit of a life to which the Christian background of Sunday
Morning is utterly foreign and completely irrelevant.
To summarize, we restate the suggested characterization of the
relevant type of enjoyment. One enjoys an item x as having an organized
array of features, where:
(1) one first-person-authoritatively believes x has F;
(2) that belief is an underived active reason for one’s enjoyment of x as
having F;
(3) that person regards this belief as a belief-universal underived
normative reason to enjoy x as having F;
(4) one’s enjoyment of x causes or causally sustains (3).
We turn to the causal claim.
C. Causation
The causal claim is that your enjoyment causes you to regard your
belief that the Taj has a certain array of features as a belief-universal
underived normative reason to enjoy the item as having that array. The
claim resolves an otherwise awkward difficulty. To see the problem, suppose
Ed has never seen Gauguin’s Riders On The Beach. The first time he lays
eyes on it, he enjoys in the special way just characterized and judges it
beautiful. It follows that he regards the relevant first-person-authoritative
belief that the painting has a certain array of features as a belief-universal
underived normative reason to enjoy the item as having that array. The
difficulty is that it is far from routine to form the conviction that an underived
normative reason exists as the result of a single experience of a particular
item. Compare this example. A mugger threatens Victoria with a knife. She
could safely retreat, but she does not consider that option; attitudes
inculcated through years of self-defense classes take hold, and, confident
that she can repel the attacker, she stands her ground. When he attacks, it
is necessary for her to use deadly force to repel the danger, and she kills the
would-be mugger. Was there a normative reason for Victoria to retreat?
And, if so, should that reason have been a decisive one? Edwards, upon
reading the report of the incident, immediately forms the belief that no
normative reason existed for Victoria to retreat, and that, if it had, it should
not have been decisive. Edwards does not, however, take the formation of
his belief to be sufficient to establish that that it is true. He takes as a
starting point for discussion and investigation; if he pursues the matter, he
will see if others agree, if his view of Victoria is consistent with other
particular and general judgments about normative reasons. So what
explains your regarding the belief about the Taj as sufficient to establish the
existence of a normative reason? Because your enjoyment causes you to
regard the belief in that way. Through enjoyment, beauty takes hold of one
and makes one believe that there is a normative reason for one—anyone who
apprehends it as one does—to enjoy it.
A further elaboration of the Taj example provides support. 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, he sees that it does indeed have the organized array of features the
experts identify. He sees this through his own eyes; that is, he forms the
first-person authoritative belief that the Taj has the array. He enjoys the Taj
as having that array, and the belief serves as an active reason to enjoy the
Taj.
He even regards the belief that the Taj has the array as an underived
normative reason to enjoy the Taj as having that array. But he regards the
belief in this way 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 bathrooms, HBO’s Sex and the City, and an immense variety of
faces and bodies—that he enjoys it as harmoniously designed but that he
does not regard as beautiful. He continues to regard the belief that the Taj
has the array as an underived normative reason to enjoy the Taj as having
that array, but this belief persists in spite of, not because of, his experiences.
Now imagine that, in the midst of his disappointment about 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 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 it has having the expert-identified array of features, and,
this time, the enjoyment causes him to regard his belief that it has the array
as an underived normative reason to enjoy the Taj.
The belief persists in
spite of, not because of, his experiences. Jones thinks, “Now I see! It is
beautiful!”
In general, when one enjoys an item one finds beautiful, one’s
enjoyment of the item as testifies to its own justification by causing (or
causally sustaining) one’s regarding one’s belief that the item has an array of
features is an underived normative reason to enjoy the item. The Jones
example illustrates how our talk of “causes or causally sustains” is to be
understood in the context of everyday causal explanations. The identification
of causes in such explanations is highly pragmatic. When eight-year-old
Sally asks her mother why the mill wheel turns, Catherine replies that the
wheel turns because the water strikes it. When Sally, now an
undergraduate, is working on a similar homework problem for her Physics
course, her answer includes a calculation of the friction in the mill wheel
system. Our only claim is that we can, and do, make distinctions of the sort
illustrated by the Jones example—between convictions that persist in spite
of, not because of one’s experiences, and convictions that persist because of,
not in spite of, them.
We propose a further causal condition: one’s enjoyment of the item as
having an organized array of features is not only the cause of one’s regarding
the belief as a belief-universal underived normative reason, the enjoyment is
also the effect of one’s so regarding the belief. One enjoys an item x as
having an organized array of features, where:
(1) one first-person-authoritatively believes x has F;
(2) that belief is an underived active reason for one’s enjoyment of x as
having F;
(3) that person regards this belief as a belief-universal underived
normative reason to enjoy x as having F;
(4) one’s enjoyment of x as having F causes or causally sustains (3), and
(3) causally sustains one’s enjoyment of x as having F.
III. The Third Claim
The third claim is that to judge that something is beautiful is to judge
that, other things being equal, others will enjoy the item in the way just
characterized. To elaborate and defend this account, we need a name for the
type of enjoyment characterized in the last section; thus, where one enjoys
an item as having an organized array of features, and, in doing so, meets
conditions (1) – (4), let us say that one b-enjoys the item as having those
features.
We claim: to judge that something is beautiful is to judge that
others will, other things being equal, b-enjoy the item as having the
organized array of features, provided that they form the relevant firstperson-authoritative belief that the item has the array. The reason for the
judgment is one’s own b-enjoyment. That reason is required because to
judge that something is beautiful is not merely to assert that others will
enjoy as one does, it is to declare that one’s own enjoyment is an adequate
reason for the assertion. The following example illustrates the account.
Carol is looking at Michelangelo’s David. She b-enjoys the statute for
the way the sensuous harmony of the naked form expresses composure,
confidence, and readiness for action, and for this reason judges it beautiful.
It follows that she regards her belief that the David exhibits those features as
a belief-universal underived normative reason to enjoy the item as having
those features. This attitude toward is built into the enjoyment itself;
however, when Carol judges that the David is beautiful, she adds an
additional claim about others: she asserts that those who form the same
first-person-authoritative belief will b-enjoy the David as having the same
array of features, and hence that their enjoyment will reveal to them that the
relevant normative reason exists. These others will have the same reason
Carol does to judge the David beautiful, and, since Carol regards that reason
as adequate, she assumes they will judge accordingly.
The key step in motivating this account is to explain why one would
assume that relevant others will b-enjoy as one does. Carol’s b-enjoyment is
ground for attributing a like enjoyment to others only if she assumes they
are relevantly similar to her, and the question is what ground she has for
such an assumption. One might appeal to a shared human nature: one can
expect other to enjoy as one does because others share the same human
nature. This is scarcely plausible given the considerable disagreement over
judgments of beauty among different cultures as well as within the same
culture, and, if shared-human-nature proponents respond that it is only
certain key aspects that are shared, one is owed not only an explanation of
what they are, but of how everyone who makes a judgment of beauty knows
what they are. We think this demand cannot be met.
This may seem to land us in a difficult position. We insist that, when
one judges something beautiful, one takes one’s b-enjoyment to be an
adequate reason for the judgment. But, without some assumption of a
shared nature, how can it serve as adequate reason? To see the problem,
consider that one who b-enjoys an item is convinced that the relevant the
first-person-authoritative belief as a belief-universal underived normative
reason to enjoy the item as having certain features.
That is, one believes
that anyone who forms the belief will recognize the reason. But this
conviction simply arises in one as a causal product of one’s enjoyment.
Absent some assumption of a shared nature, how can one have a reason for
it? And, even if one did, having a reason to believe others will recognize the
reason is not the same has having a reason to think that the will b-enjoy the
item. They might acknowledge the reason in the absence of the enjoyment.
So, absent some assumption of a share nature, how can one’s b-enjoyment
possibly be an adequate reason to judge that others will b-enjoy as one
does?
It cannot. That is, it cannot be an adequate reason for the empirical
prediction that others will b-enjoy as one does.
It can, however, be an
adequate reason for the hypothesis—advanced for future confirmation or
disconfirmation—that others will so enjoy. To see the idea, recall a point we
emphasize earlier: it is a fundamental fact about beauty that it commands
enjoyment. We interpreted this command as the conviction, caused by the
enjoyment itself, anyone who formed the relevant first-person-authoritative
belief would recognize, as one does, the existence of an underived normative
reason to enjoy the item. One sees forming the belief as sufficient in and of
itself for the recognition of the reason and hence does not see the
acknowledgment of the reason as depending in any other way on
idiosyncratic wants, aspirations, dreams, values, and the like. To judge that
something is beautiful is to advance the hypothesis that one is right about
lack of dependency. It is to formulate, for confirmation or disconfirmation,
the hypothesis that others will b-enjoy as one does and hence, through their
own enjoyment, agree that the normative reason exists. One’s enjoyment is
an adequate reason to formulate this hypothesis, as we will explain more
fully shortly.
A continuation of the David example is helpful. Suppose Carol
expresses her view that the David is beautiful to her companion, Mason;
Mason, who does not b-enjoy the statute, replies, “Sadly, not for me.” Carol
first assumes that Mason simply fails to find in the statute the sensuous
harmony expressive of composure, confidence, and readiness for action, but
she is quickly corrected. Mason, an art historian, offers a description of the
David that elaborates on the sensuous harmony theme in ways that Carol
finds illuminating and that deepens her b-enjoyment; in offering the
description, Mason is not merely reporting the views of other experts; he
sees what he is describing with his own eyes and is articulating his own firstperson-authoritative belief. Carol is now even more puzzled. She cannot
understand how Mason can see the statute as he does and not find it
beautiful. She suggests to him that a homophobia-induced inability to enjoy
looking at a naked male body prevents him from b-enjoying the statue and
on that basis finding it beautiful. Mason, who is gay, responds that he is
certain that homophobia is not the problem. He nonetheless does not benjoy 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 judgment that the statue is beautiful.
He makes no such
judgment; his agreement merely acknowledges the view of the majority of
others. Mason is not a member of that community.
As the example illustrates, there are two dimensions to Mason’s failure
to b-enjoy the David: it falsifies Carol’s assumption that he would do so, and
it excludes him from a community b-enjoyers. We focus on the latter
dimension, for the moment. The assumption that others will b-enjoy as one
does need not be seen as an ungrounded empirical prediction but as a step
toward a community of like b-enjoyers, a beacon that may attract others who
agree. We have any number of reasons to seek the agreement of others on
any number of points, and, in the case of beauty, one is typically concerned
to discover whether one’s unsupported conviction that there is a beliefuniversal normative reason to enjoy really is belief-universal; that is, is it
really true that anyone who forms the relevant belief will also acknowledge
the existence of the normative reason? The agreement of others confirms
that, despite the subjectivity of one’s attribution of the relevant features to
the item, one’s vision transcends the contingent limitations of one’s particular
situation and reveals something valid for all other similar believers. We
suggest that, given our many and varied reasons to seek the agreement of
others, one’s b-enjoyment of an item is sufficient reason for one to judge it
beautiful, to advance, for confirmation or disconfirmation, the claim that
those who form the same first-person-authoritative belief will b-enjoy the
item as one does, and hence will acknowledge that the relevant normative
reason exists.
Now let us turn to the other dimension of Mason’s failure to b-enjoy
the David. The failure is a counter instance to Carol’s judgment that others
will, other things being equal, b-enjoy the David as having the relevant
organized array of features, provided that they form the first-person
authoritative belief that the item has that array. How is Carol to revise her
judgment? She has three options. First, she can leave her judgment
unrevised. It is an “other things being equal” judgment, and, her position
can be that other things are, for some unknown reason, not equal in Mason’s
case. Some disagreements over beauty are plausibly disagreements over
whether “other things” are “equal.” Consider feminists who deny the Taj
Mahal is beautiful because they regard it as a monument to male domination.
One who judged the Taj beautiful might dismiss the feminists’ denial on the
ground that other things are not equal: their feminists’ views distort their
judgment of the Taj in the way homophobia might distort one’s judgment
about the David. The feminists would hardly agree! And that is precisely our
point: some controversies over beauty are plausibly represented as
controversies over whether other things are equal.
The claim that other things are not equal is, course, not a plausible
defense if one encounters widespread disagreement with a judgment of
beauty. This is not to deny that it is possible for “other things” not to be
“equal” across the board; evil space aliens may have the responses of almost
everyone. Such eventualities are extremely unlikely, however.
So what
could Carol do if, implausibly, almost everyone disagreed with her judgment
that the David was beautiful. She might decide—and this is the second of
the three options—that she had not identified the relevant organized array of
features with sufficient precision and detail. Perhaps she could count on
agreement from those who form the first-person-authoritative belief that the
David has a certain richer, and more complex array of features. Consider
another illustration. Suppose Mason finds beautiful the opening lines of the
poem in Nabokov’s Pale Fire (a waxwing is a robin):
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.
Mason first-person-authoritatively believes that the lines capture the
situation of a self-consciousness that identifies itself only with its own selfconscious thoughts and imaginings, not with any contingent circumstance in
which that self-consciousness happens to be embodied. Carol forms the
same first-person-authoritative belief, but she 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, she finds their adolescent indulgence
unpleasant. Grant, for the sake of argument, that the vast majority of
readers agree with Carol. Mason could respond by attempting to reformulate
his first-person-authoritative assessment of the lines in a way that sidestepped the charge of adolescent indulgence. He 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”). We suggest
that debates over beauty exhibit just this sort of criticism and redefinition.
The third, and final, possibility is one is just wrong. If most who form
the relevant belief do not b-enjoy the item, it is misleading to describe the
item as beautiful. In such a case, one might say, “Well, I think it is
beautiful!”, but one misleads if one invites someone home to view the item
on the assurance that it is beautiful. We defer to the next section the
question of the size of a b-enjoyment community needed to support a
judgment of beauty that is not misleading.
A final point: in the David example, we implicitly assumed that Carol’s
judgment of beauty was cotemporaneous with her b-enjoyment. Similar
remarks hold when one’s b-enjoyment is in the past or expected in the
future. Past b-enjoyments raise no particular issues, but the expected benjoyment is worth an example. Imagine that, as you rush through the
museum, a sculpture catches your eye, and I think “Beautiful; if I had time, I
would enjoy it.” Your prediction of enjoyment is based on your first-person
authoritative belief that the painting has a certain array of features. You
know yourself well enough to reliably predict that you would enjoy the
sculpture in a way that fulfills (1) – (5).
So far we have focused heavily on why one would expect others to benjoy as one does, and we have emphasized the role of communities of
similar b-enjoyers. In doing so, we emphasized that the agreement of others
confirms that the way in which one apprehends the things one finds beautiful
transcends particular situation and reveals something valid for all other
similar believers. We conclude this section by noting that this aspect of the
account of beauty provides a satisfying explanation of the claim, often made,
that beauty involves the display of the “universal” in the “particular.” Our
purpose is just to underscore the fact that to judge that something is
beautiful is to claim that one’s subjective assessment of an item nonetheless
provides a basis for a claim valid for others. We begin with Plato, who
advances a version of the universal in the particular claim. For Plato, the
Form of Beauty (the “universal”) shines through the particulars in which it is
instantiated (or better, reflected) with such power that the enjoyment of
beauty has a unique power to awaken in us a memory of our prior perception
of, and love for, the eternal Form itself. The “universal in the particular”
retains its appeal even when one abandons the metaphysics of the Forms.
Wallace Stevens offers a distinctly non-Platonic formulation of the claim:
Beauty is momentary in the mind—
But the fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
The body dies, the body’s beauty lives.
Stevens’ lines seem to express a deep truth about the display of universality
in transient particulars. But what truth? When we try to articulate it, we
seem to produce only disappointing banalities. This is especially true in the
case of literary works. Novels, for example, contain a wealth of detail about
particular characters in particular contingent circumstances. How is someone
who judges one of the novels to be beautiful supposed to find “the universal”
in the midst of the mass of contingencies? Of course, the novel will almost
certainly contain “universal themes,” themes found throughout literature:
for example, people may fall in love, or mistakenly think they fallen in love,
but may or may not realize it until it is, or is not, too late. But surely the
insight that beauty consists in the display of the universal in the particular
does not reduce to the banality that literary works tend to contain common
themes. The problem also arises with visual works. Michelangelo’s David is
often offered as an example of masculine beauty, but what is the “universal”
displayed in the particular statute? Surely it is not just that other exemplars
of masculine beauty sometimes have similar features. There is more than
that to the idea that beauty is immortal in the flesh. Those who assert the
universal in the particular claim mean to offer a deep insight, not make an
obvious empirical generalization.
We suggest the following way to rescue the insight. In the case of
items one deems beautiful, the “universal” in the particular consists in one’s
regarding the first-person authoritative belief that the item has a certain
array of features as an underived normative reason to enjoy the item has
having those features. When one finds a statue or a novel beautiful, the
features which figure in one’s belief may be unique to the statute or novel.
One may cite the particular way in which Michelangelo’s David portrays both
calm composure and immediate readiness for action, or the particular way in
which characters interact in a novel. The claim to universality is the claim
that, unique though the features may be, an underived normative reason to
enjoy the statute or novel as having those features exists for anyone who
forms the relevant belief.
IV. Objections and Replies