Enjoyment and Beauty
Beauty is powerful. It compels our attention and appreciation, unites
us in shared visions, and divides us through profoundly different ones. Our
goal is to describe beauty in a way that illuminates its power. The
description consists of arguments for three claims. First, one enjoys the
items one judges to be beautiful (enjoyment and judgment need not be
cotemporaneous; one may have enjoyed the item, or expect to do so in the
future). 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 tat special way. The
arguments for the second claim and third claims characterize beauty’s power
to compel attention and appreciation and address its power to unite or
divide. 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 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 the 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, that, 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. The first is illustrated by Jones: a judgment of beauty, the
reasons for which consists 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 has having those features; and (3) one’s reason for the judgment is
one’s enjoyment. We will call this second type of judgment a personal
judgment of beauty. We argue for (2) in Section II; for (3), in Section III.
We devote the rest of this section to explaining and defending (1).That
discussion assumes that a judgment of beauty is something for which one
typically has reasons. We defend this assumption and then turn to (1).
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 beautymaking features. You answer by citing the features you enjoy; your belief
that the Taj has these features (and your enjoyment of them, as we will
argue) is your reason for thinking the Taj beautiful. 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. We should
emphasize, however, that we are not claiming that when one expects other
to infer on the basis of these reasons that the item is beautiful. The role of
such reasons is not to compel agreement by providing evidentiary grounds
for a judgment. 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.1
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,
Science and Subjectivity (Indiana: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), p. 1. The "criteria" need
not, of course, be precisely formulated or even precisely formulable; they may range
from explicit methodological injunctions to shared, but not fully formulated, problem
solving procedures employed in experiments and in the applications of theories to
facts.
1
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.2
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 Sections II and 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 the Taj is beautiful merely
based on the reports of others. You—we may assume—form a first-person
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, James Creed Meredith, trans. (Oxford
1952) 284 – 85.
2
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 true 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.
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. The explanation is, we suggest, that
reasons for a first-person-authoritative judgment that something is beautiful
are provided by a special kind of enjoyment.
II. The Second Claim
The distinguishing feature of the relevant kind of enjoyment is the
presence of a certain type of reason, 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 for action. Given the weight we will place on that notion,
the clarification is an essential preliminary.
A. Reasons for Action
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 motivational-justificatory 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 wellplayed 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 do not,
however, need to 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. When worked out,
each view tends in the direction of the other. Plausible Humean views
interpret “desire” broadly to include such diverse sources of motivation as
values, ideals, needs, commitments, personal loyalties, and patterns of
emotional reaction; plausible Kantian views 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 difficult is that a state can be a reason even if it does
not, and would not, play the characteristic motivational-justificatory role of a
reason. Thus: Robert is a gourmet who works as a restaurant reviewer for
newspapers and magazines. His doctor informs him he has gout and must,
on pain of destroying his health and ultimately his life, stop eating the rich
French food 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 gourmet delights; 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 to act
when one thinks that belief should not play the motivational-justificatory role
of a reason. Consider the shaman who believes that sacrificing a chicken will
help cure a disease that we know to be measles, and for whom the belief
plays the motivational-justificatory role of a reason. The observing
anthropologist 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 is to acknowledge that we use “reason” to describe both
“does play” and “should play” and cases. The shaman illustrates the former.
The shaman’s belief plays a reason’s motivational-justificatory role even
though—in the opinion of the anthropologist, at least—it should not do so.
We will call such reasons active reasons. They “should play” cases divide
into two. Those in which an active reason should play the role it in fact
plays, and those in which a belief should be an active reason but is not (the
situation in the Robert example). We will call such reasons normative
reasons.
There are of course competing accounts of when normative reasons
exist. Some treat the existence as relative to various factors—values, ideals,
needs, commitments, and the like. People who differ in regard to the factors
the theory regards as relevant may not be disagreeing about any objective
fact; they may simply have rationally unresolvable disagreement. On such
views, Robert’s values (or whatever) may be sufficiently different than our
values (or whatever) that there is a normative reason from our 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 an item
as having an organized array of features F, where:
(1) one first-person-authoritatively believes that the item has the
organized array of features F;
(2) that belief is a—a certain type of—active reason for one to enjoy
the item has having the organized array of features F;
(3) one regards the belief as a—certain type of—normative reason to
enjoy the item as having the organized array of features F;
(4) one’s enjoyment causes (or causally sustains) (3).
The next section motivates conditions (2) and (3) by characterizing the
relevant type of reason.
B. Reasons to Enjoy
An example is helpful. Suppose you and Jones are looking the Taj
Mahal. You both enjoy it, and you find it beautiful, but Jones does not. After
an hour, Jones has had enough; 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 the reason motivates and justifies 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 the relevant
organized array and hence a more complex and detail active reason. Jones
is unmoved 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.
The second difference between you and Jones it that you see yourself
as having a reason that he does not. You regard your belief that the Taj has
the relevant array of features as an underived normative reason to enjoy the
Taj. That is, not only does the belief serve as an underived active reason for
you, you also think it should do so. You think this because—to put the point
somewhat inaccurately—you regard the mere fact that the Taj has the
features you enjoy as sufficient in and of itself to establish the belief should
serve as an active reason. This inaccurate because the Taj’s having the
organized array is not a matter of objective fact. There is just your firstperson-authoritative belief that the Taj has those features. In your eyes, Taj
reveals itself as possessing an array of features sufficient to establish an
underived normative reason to enjoy it. There is, however, a danger of
being too subjective here. Beauty claims that it is to be enjoyed, and one
does not regard the claim as merely a claim on oneself, but on others as
well. 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. We first formulate our
suggestion in the context of the Taj example: you regard any instance of the
belief-type “believing the Taj has the relevant organized array of features” as
sufficient for that instance being an underived normative reason to enjoy the
Taj as having that array. In general, suppose one judges an item beautiful;
then, one forms the first-person-authoritative belief that the item has an
organized array of features, where: one enjoys the item as having that
array, and regards any instance of the first-person-authoritative belief-type
that the item has the array as sufficient in and of itself to establish that the
belief should serve as an active reason to enjoy the item as having the array.
To avoid repeating this rather lengthy formula, let us say that one regards
the first-person authoritative belief as a belief-sufficient underived normative
reason.
Now why think this is characteristic of the enjoyment of beauty? To
see why, consider Jones again. When he looks at the Taj, he does not find
any belief-sufficient underived normative reason to enjoy the Taj. His
reasons to enjoy the Taj are 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 believing that the
chocolate is bittersweet is a belief-sufficient reason underived normative
reason to enjoy the chocolate as bittersweet. That would be ludicrous. To
think that there is a belief-sufficient underived normative reason to enjoy an
item as having a certain feature is to think that the normative reason exists
for anyone who believes that the chocolate is bittersweet. One regards any
instance of the belief-type as sufficient for the existence of the reason. This
of course is clearly false. Suppose Sally believes that the piece of chocolate
before her is bittersweet. She happens to find bittersweet chocolate
disgusting. No normative reason exists for her to enjoy the piece of
chocolate.
The enjoyment of beauty differs in precisely this way from the
enjoyment of chocolate. One who finds an item beautiful sees it as making a
claim on everyone that it should be enjoyed—with one qualification. The Taj
example illustrates the point. You believe that that your first-person
authoritative belief that the Taj has certain features is a belief-sufficient
underived normative reason to enjoy the Taj as having those features. This
commits you to thinking that anyone who forms a relevantly similar belief
has a relevantly similar reason and hence, in this sense, should enjoy the Taj
in the relevant way. Thus, one who finds an item beautiful sees it as making
a claim on everyone that it should be enjoyed by anyone who forms the
relevant first-person authoritative belief. One of course sometimes also
thinks that everyone should form the relevant belief. Many seem to 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 form the relevant belief. There are,
however, many examples in which such an attitude merely reveals one’s lack
of appreciation of the ways in which others may be different. 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 first-person authoritative belief that
the poem has these features as a belief-sufficient 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-person-authoritative
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. Guanglei is so far removed from such an understanding that it
would be unreasonable to think that he should perceive the poem as Vicki
does. Our view is that the question of who should form the relevant firstperson authoritative belief is virtually always a contested matter.
To summarize, we restate the suggested characterization of the
relevant type of enjoyment. One enjoys an item as having an organized
array of features F, where:
(1) one first-person-authoritatively believes that the item has the
organized array of features F;
(2) that belief is an active underived reason for one to enjoy the item
has having the organized array of features F;
(3) one regards the belief as a belief-sufficient normative reason to
enjoy the item as having the organized array of features F;
(4) one’s enjoyment 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-sufficient
normative reason to enjoy the item as having that array. This claim resolves
an otherwise awkward puzzle. The difficulty is belief-sufficiency. Recall the
definition: to regard a belief as a belief-sufficient normative reason is to
regard any instance of the belief-type as sufficient to establish that the belief
should serve as an active reason for anyone with the belief. The difficulty is
that we do not typically regard normative reasons as belief-sufficient.
Imagine, for example, that 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 make 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 js 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 a belief-sufficient 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 a belief-sufficient underived reason to enjoy the item. In fact, we
propose an even stronger condition: one’s enjoyment of the item as having
F is not only the cause of one’s regarding the belief as a belief-sufficient
reason, the enjoyment is also the effect of one’s so regarding the belief.
That is: one enjoys an item as having an organized array of features F,
where
(1) one first-person-authoritatively believes that the item has the
organized array of features F;
(2) that belief is an active underived reason for one to enjoy the item
has having the organized array of features F;
(3) one regards the belief as a belief-sufficient normative reason to
enjoy the item as having the organized array of features F;
(4) one’s enjoyment causes (or causally sustains) (3), and (3) causally
sustains one’s enjoyment of the item as having an organized array of
features F.
Beauty captures us in a feedback loop: the enjoyment causes the belief,
which causes the enjoyment, which causes the belief, which causes the
enjoyment, and so on ad infinitum—or, in reality, until some natural limit is
reached. When we enjoy items we find beautiful, our enjoyment unceasingly
testifies to its own justification by continuously causally sustaining the belief
that there is an underived normative reason to enjoy. This provides at least
a partial explanation of beauty’s power to hold us captive, to compel our
attention and appreciation. The feedback loop makes it hard to tear our eyes
away.
Contrast a case in which this is not true. Consider an elderly museum
curator looking at his favorite Gauguin. He enjoys it in a way that fulfills
conditions (1) – (4): he forms the first-person authoritative belief that the
painting has a certain—to him long-familiar—array of features; the belief
serves as an active reason; and, as result of his enjoyment, he regards the
belief as a belief-sufficient underived normative reason. But all this quick
fades away. His consciousness is flooded with memories of his youth
combined with an attention-consuming awareness of the comparative
shortness of the rest of his life. His enjoyment of the painting cannot hold
these thoughts at bay; he knows the painting too well. His knowledge of its
every leaves him nothing new to discover that will hold his attention and
sustain his enjoyment. The feedback loop has been broken, and his
enjoyment is a pale reflection of what it once was. We by no means deny
that he can, on the basis of this enjoyment, properly judge the painting
beautiful; however, we take the paradigm case of enjoying beauty to be the
robust enjoyment sustained by the feedback loop, not the curator’s pale
refection characterized by the broken loop.
We conclude with some brief remarks about causation. 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.
III. The Third Claim
The third claim is that to personally judge that something is beautiful
is to judge that others will enjoy the item in the way just characterized. Our
elaboration and defense of this account is premised on the following
assumption: the claim that something is beautiful includes a claim that
others (at least some others) will agree. Kant makes a similar claim, noting
for example, that if “I regard an individual given tulip as beautiful, [I] regard
my delight in it as of universal validity.”3 Kant repeatedly emphasizes this
point, and rightly so. The judgment that something is beautiful differs in just
this way from, from example, the judgment that chocolate has an enjoyable
taste. At first sight, this may seem wrong. When one enjoys a piece of
chocolate, one may judge, on the basis of one’s enjoyment, that chocolate
has a taste the others will also enjoy; however, if others do not enjoy the
3
Meredith, p. 115.
taste, we do not think that they should. They just do not enjoy the taste,
and that is the end of the matter. One has a much different attitude toward
disagreements with one’s judgments of beauty. Consider: “You don’t think
she is beautiful? What’s wrong with you?” When one judges something
beautiful, one thinks others—at least some others, sometimes—should agree.
We offer an account of the judgment of beauty that motivates and explains
this attitude.
To do so, 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 the organized array of features.
We claim:
to personally 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 first-person authoritative
belief that the item has the array. The reason of the judgment is one’s own
b-enjoyment. We contend that this reason is required to count as making a
personal judgment of beauty. To judge that something is beautiful is not
merely to predict that others will enjoy as one does, it is to declare that one’s
own enjoyment is an adequate reason for the prediction. 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 that organized
array of features a belief-sufficient normative reason to enjoy the item as
having that array. The belief-sufficiency of reason means that it is not just a
reason for her but for anyone who shares the same belief. This attitude
toward others is built into the enjoyment itself; however, when Carol
personally 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 assumption that
others have an adequate reason to agree distinguishes judging something
beautiful from the judgment that chocolate has an enjoyable taste.
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.
Judgers of beauty nonetheless often do assume relevant others will
agree. One often thinks, “You can’t see that and not enjoy it; I don’t care
who you are!” To see why, it helps to consider a case in which the
assumption turns out to be false. 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 first-person
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 personal 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 from a community b-enjoyers. For the moment, focus on the
latter dimension. When one makes the judgment that others will b-enjoy as
one does, one’s concern is more with seeking community than with
tabulating true/false statistics. The judgment is a beacon that may attract
relevantly similar others. We offer this as an explanation of our willingness
to take our b-enjoyments to be the basis of a like enjoyment in others who
form the relevant first-person-authoritative belief. Our assumptions that
relevant others will b-enjoy as we do are not over-optimistic empirical
prediction, they are ways to establish communities of like b-enjoyers.
Falsity does matter, however. Mason’s response to the David is a counter
instance to Carol’s judgment that others will, other things being equal, benjoy 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. This is, of 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. The third possibility is
of course that she 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.
In the David example, we implicitly assumed that Carol’s personal
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. We conclude this section by focusing on another aspect
of our account of the judgment of beauty: namely, that those who agree in
the judgment that an item is beautiful all share the conviction the conviction
that a normative reason exists to enjoy the item.
This feature of the
account provides a satisfying explanation of the claim, often made, that
beauty involves the display of the universal in the particular. Plato advances
a version of the 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 nonPlatonic 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 a belief-sufficient 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