## 1. The Judgment of Taste



What is a judgment of taste? Kant isolated two fundamental necessary
conditions for a judgment to be a judgment of
taste--*subjectivity* and *universality* (Kant
1790/2000). Other conditions may also contribute to what it is to be a
judgment of taste, but they are consequential on, or predicated on,
the two fundamental conditions. In this respect Kant followed the lead
of Hume and other writers in the British sentimentalist tradition
(Hume 1757/1985).


### 1.1 Subjectivity



The first necessary condition of a judgment of taste is that it is
essentially *subjective*. What this means is that the judgment
of taste is based on a feeling of pleasure or displeasure. This
distinguishes judgments of taste from empirical judgments. Central
examples of judgments of taste are judgments of beauty and ugliness.
Judgments of taste can be about art or nature.



This subjectivist thesis would be over-strict if it were interpreted
in an "atomistic" fashion, so that some subjective
response corresponds to every judgment of taste, and vice versa.
Sometimes one makes a judgment of taste on inductive grounds or on the
basis of authority. But these cases indirectly rely on judgements made
on the basis of subjective responses. A more holistic picture of the
relation between response and judgment would preserve the spirit of
the subjectivist doctrine while fitting our actual lives more
accurately. The subjectivist doctrine needs to be refined in order to
deal with the cases of induction and authority. But it must not be
abandoned. The doctrine is basically right.



However, it is not obvious what to make of the subjectivity of the
judgment of taste. We need an account of the nature of the pleasure on
which judgments of beauty are based.



Beyond a certain point, this issue cannot be pursued independently of
metaphysical issues about realism, for the metaphysics we favor is
bound to affect our view of the nature of the pleasure we take in
beauty. In particular, we need to know whether or not pleasure in
beauty represents properties of beauty and ugliness that things
possess. If not, does it involve the cognitive faculties that we
deploy in understanding the world, as Kant thought? Or is it not a
matter of the cognitive faculties, but a matter of sentimental
reactions, which are schooled in various ways, as Hume and others
thought? These are very hard questions. But there are some things we
can say about the pleasure involved in finding something beautiful
without raising the temperature too high.



Kant makes various points about pleasure in the beautiful, which fall
short of what we might call his "deep" account of the
nature of pleasure in beauty, according to which it is the harmonious
free play of the cognitive faculties, of imagination and
understanding. According to Kant's "surface" account
of pleasure in beauty, it is not mere sensuous gratification, as in
the pleasure of sensation, or of eating and drinking. Unlike such
pleasures, pleasure in beauty is occasioned by the perceptual
representation of a thing. (In contemporary terms, we would put this
by saying that pleasure in beauty has an intentional content.)
Moreover, unlike other sorts of intentional pleasures, pleasure in
beauty is "disinterested". This means, roughly, that it is
a pleasure that does not involve desire--pleasure in beauty is
desire-free. That is, the pleasure is neither based on desire nor does
it produce one by itself. In this respect, pleasure in beauty is
unlike pleasure in the agreeable, unlike pleasure in what is good for
me, and unlike pleasure in what is morally good. According to Kant,
all such pleasures are "interested"--they are bound
up with desire. This is discussed in section 3 below. This is all
important as far as it goes, but it is all negative. We need to know
what pleasure in beauty *is*, as well as what it *is
not*. What can be said of a more positive nature?


### 1.2 Normativity



In order to see what is special about pleasure in beauty, we must
shift the focus back to consider what is special about the judgment of
taste. For Kant, the judgment of taste claims "universal
validity", which he describes as follows:



> 
> 
> ... ... if [someone] pronounces that something is beautiful,
> then he expects the very same satisfaction of others: he judges not
> merely for himself, but for everyone, and speaks of beauty as if it
> were a property of things. Hence he says that the *thing* is
> beautiful, and does not count on the agreement of others with his
> judgment of satisfaction because he has frequently found them to the
> agreeable with his own, but rather *demands* it from them. He
> rebukes them if they judge otherwise, and denies that they have taste,
> for he nevertheless requires that they ought to have it; and to this
> extent one cannot say, "Everyone has his special taste".
> This would be as much as to say that there is no taste at all, i.e. no
> aesthetic judgment that could make a rightful claim to the assent of
> everyone. (Kant 1790, 5: 212-213 [2000: 98]; see also 2000:
> 164-166-139)
> 
> 
> 



Kant's idea is that in a judgment of taste, we demand or require
agreement from other human beings in a way we do not in our judgments
about the niceness of Canary-wine, which is just a question of
individual preference. In many cases, in matters of taste and beauty,
we think that others *ought* to share our judgment, and we
blame them if they don't. This is because the judgment of taste
has this aspiration to universal validity that it seems "*as
if* [beauty] were a property of things".



Now, if the above quotation were all that Kant had to say by way of
elucidating the judgment of taste, then he would not have said enough.
For the following question is left hanging: *why* do we require
that others share our judgment? We might *want* others to share
our judgment for all sorts of strange reasons. Maybe we will feel more
comfortable. Maybe we will win a bet. And if we say that they
*ought* to judge a certain way, we need to say more. In what
sense is this true? What if someone cannot appreciate some excellent
work of art because they are grief-stricken? What if it would distract
someone from some socially worthy project? Of what nature is this
"ought"?



We can recast the point about how we ought to judge in austere terms
by saying that there is a certain *normative* constraint on our
judgments of taste, which is absent in our judgments about the
niceness of Canary-wine. The most primitive expression of this
normativity is this: some are *correct*, others
*incorrect*. Or perhaps, even more cautiously: *some
judgments are better than others*. We do not think that something
is beautiful merely *to me*, in the way that we might say that
some things just happen to give *me* sensuous pleasure. Of
course, we might well say "I *think* *X* is
beautiful", because we wish to express uncertainty, but where we
judge confidently, we think of our judgment as being *correct*.
And that means that we think that the opposite judgment would be
incorrect. We assume that not all judgments of beauty are equally
appropriate. "Each to their own taste" only applies to
judgments of niceness and nastiness, which Kant calls "judgments
of agreeableness" (see Kant 1790, 5: 212-213,
291-292 [2000: 97-98, 171-172]).



Of course, some people just *know* about food. There are
experts and authorities on making delicious food and in knowing what
will taste good (Kant 1790, 5: 213 [2000: 98]). But what these people
know is what will taste pleasurable to a certain kind of palate. In a
sense, some things just do taste better than others, and some
judgments of excellence in food are better than others. There is even
a sense in which some are correct and others incorrect. Still, this is
only relative to "normal" human beings. There is no idea
of correctness according to which someone with very unusual pleasures
and displeasure is at fault, or according to which the majority of
human beings can be wrong. (Kant says that judgments of agreeableness
have "general" but not "universal" validity;
1790, 5: 213 [2000: 213].) But in the case of judgments of taste or
beauty, correctness is not hostage to what most people like or judge.
We may say that it is a mistake to use much salt or sugar but that is
only because it swamps the flavors that are enjoyed by most
people.



To say that a judgment of taste makes a claim to correctness might
seem merely to shift from the problematic "ought" that is
involved in a judgment of taste to a problematic
"correctness" or "betterness". This may be
inevitable. We are dealing with a normative notion, and while some
normative notions may be explainable in terms of others, we cannot
express normative notions in non-normative terms.



In *some* cases, the correctness of a judgment of taste may be
impossibly difficult to decide. We may even think that there is no
right answer to be had if we are asked to compare two very different
things. But in many *other* cases, we think that there
*is* a right and a wrong answer at which we are aiming, and
that our judgments can be erroneous. If we do not think this, in at
least some cases, then we are not making a judgment of taste--we
are doing something else.



It is true that there is a popular idea that is sometimes expressed by
saying that no judgments of taste are really better than others.
People sometimes say, "There is no right and wrong about matters
of taste". Others express a related thought by saying that
beauty is "relative" to individual judgment or preference,
or that it is "socially relative". Such skeptical views
have some following outside the academy, as well as in certain of the
humanities. Many even express distaste for the idea that judgments of
taste have a normative claim, as if that would be uncouth or
oppressive. However, if we are describing our thought as it is, not
how it ought to be, then there is no getting away from the fact that
normativity is a necessary condition of judgments of taste or beauty.
Two points should embarrass the skeptic: firstly, people who express
anti-normativist skeptical views are *merely theorizing*. In
the case of judgments of beauty, anti-normativist skepticism is out of
step with practice, especially their own practice. As with moral
relativism, one can almost always catch a professed skeptic about
judgments of beauty making and acting on non-skeptical judgments of
beauty--for example, in their judgments about music, nature and
everyday household objects around them. Skeptics do not practice what
they preach. Secondly, one thing that *drives* people to this
implausible skepticism, which is so out of line with their own
practice, is a perceived connection with tolerance or
anti-authoritarianism. This is what they see as attractive in it. But
this is upside-down. For if "it is all relative" and no
judgment is better than any other, then relativists put *their*
own judgments beyond criticism, and they cannot get it wrong. Only
those who think that there is a right and wrong in judgment can
modestly admit that they might be wrong. What looks like an ideology
of tolerance is, in fact, the opposite. 



Some so-called "experimental philosophers" have questioned
the thesis that judgments of taste aspire to correctness on the basis
of empirical evidence about those who make judgments of taste (Cova
& Pain 2012). But it is not clear that the empirical evidence
cited supports that skeptical thesis. For the evidence is just that
that the experimental subjects tick boxes that ask directly about
correctness in judgment. But in psychological experiments there is a
requirement of opacity of the point of an experiment to the
experimental subjects (Hughes 2016). Furthermore, people often wax
philosophical in a way that is out of step with their actual
conceptual practice. For example, some beginners in introductory moral
philosophy classes inconsistently claim that all moral views are
equally correct, and that it is very bad to think otherwise. People
who think in a certain way may be defective in self-knowledge, just as
those who take part in social rituals may not be able to describe
those rituals (see Zangwill 2019 for critical discussion). We should
also bear in mind that the skeptical thesis would also be very
surprising given that it departs from not just centuries but millennia
of reflection on our aesthetic lives. The answers to questionnaires
about correctness in judgment do not reveal the deep nature of
people's thoughts.


### 1.3 Recasting Normativity



In the normative claim of judgments of taste, as formulated above,
*other people* do not figure in the account. This is an
*austere* explanation of what Kant meant, or perhaps of what he
ought to have meant, when he said that the judgment of taste claims
"universal validity", by contrast with judgments about the
niceness of Canary-wine. *Given* this account, we can
*explain* the fact that we think that others ought to share our
judgment. They ought to share it on pain of making a judgment which is
incorrect or inappropriate. And this would be *why* we do in
fact look to others to share our judgment; we do not want them to make
incorrect judgments. It seems that Kant's reference to other
people in characterizing the normativity of judgments of taste has
dropped out of the picture as inessential.



However, it is not clear whether Kant would go along with this, for he
characterizes normativity in a way that ties in with his eventual
*explanation* of its possibility. Kant expresses the normative
idea in a very particular way. He writes:



> 
> 
> [we] demand such assent universally (Kant 1790, 5: 214 [2000: 99])
> 
> 
> 



And Kant says that the judgment of taste involves



> 
> 
> its validity for everyone. (Kant 1790, 5: 212 [2000: 97])
> 
> 
> 



By contrast, Kant thinks that although we sometimes speak *as
if* our judgments of the *agreeable* are universally valid
("Lamb tastes better with garlic"), in fact they are not:
judgments of the agreeable appeal only to *most* but not to
*all* people (Kant 1790, 5: 213 [2000: 98]).



However, the austere characterization attempts to catch a more basic
idea of normativity--one that might serve as the target of rival
explanations. In order to explain how subjectively universal judgments
are possible, Kant has a complicated story about the harmonious
interplay of the cognitive faculties--imagination and
understanding--which he thinks constitutes pleasure in beauty
(Kant 1790, 5: 219 [2000: 104]). This "deep" account of
pleasure in beauty is highly controversial and not particularly
plausible (see Budd 2001). But we can see why Kant gives it. For Kant,
the normative claim of the judgment of taste has its roots in the more
general workings of our cognitive faculties, which Kant thinks we can
assume others share. Thus, we have the beginnings of an explanation of
how such a pleasure can ground a judgment that makes a universal
claim. However, Kant does not have much to say about the nature of the
"universality" or normativity that is being explained by
such a speculative account of pleasure in beauty. It is no accident
that Kant phrases the obligation in interpersonal terms, considering
where he is going. And it is no great fault on his part that he does
so. But for our purposes, we need to separate what is being explained
from its explanation. For if Kant's explanation does not work,
we want to be left with a characterization of the normativity he was
trying to explain. We need to separate Kant's problem from his
solution, so that the former is left if the latter fails. There may be
alternative solutions to his problem.


### 1.4 Normativity and Pleasure



As described, normativity attaches to *judgments of taste*
themselves. What does this imply for *pleasure* in beauty?
Since judgments of taste are based on responses of pleasure, it would
make little sense if our judgments were more or less appropriate but
our responses were not. The normative claim of our judgments of taste
must derive from the fact that we think that some *responses*
are better or more appropriate to their object than others. Responses
only license judgments which can be more or less appropriate because
responses themselves can be more or less appropriate. If I get
pleasure from drinking Canary-wine and you do not, neither of us will
think of the other as being *mistaken*. But if you don't
get pleasure from Shakespeare's *Sonnets*, I will think
of you as being in error--not just your *judgment*, but
your *liking*. I think that I am *right* to have my
*response*, and that your *response* is
*defective*. Someone who thinks that there is, in Hume's
words, "an equality of genius" between some inferior
composer, on the one hand, and J. S. Bach, on the other, has a
defective *sensibility* (Hume 1757 [1985: 230]). Roger Scruton
puts the point well when he says:



> 
> 
> When we study [the Einstein Tower and the Giotto campanile] ...
> our attitude is not simply one of curiosity, accompanied by some
> indefinable pleasure or satisfaction. Inwardly, we affirm our
> preference as valid.... (Scruton 1979: 105) 
> 
> 
> 



This is the reason *why* we demand the same feeling from
others, even if we do not expect it. We think that our response is
more appropriate to its object than its opposite. And, in turn, this
is *why* we think that our *judgment* about that object
is more correct than its opposite. The normativity of judgment derives
from the normativity of feeling.



But how *can* some feelings be better or worse than others? To
answer this question, we need to ask: how far does the normativity of
judgments of taste inhere in the feeling itself? The realist about
beauty will say that the feeling has normativity built into it in
virtue of its representational content; the feelings themselves can be
more or less veridical. Pleasure in beauty, for example, has as its
object the property of beauty; we *find* the beauty
pleasurable. A Humean sentimentalist will probably say that
normativity is something we somehow construct or foist upon our
pleasures and displeasures, which have no such content. And Kant has
his own account, which appeals to cognitive states that are not
beliefs. The issue is controversial. However, what we can say for sure
is that it is definitive of pleasure in beauty that it licenses
judgments that make claim to correctness. Beyond this, there will be
theoretical divergence.



This normativity is definitive of the judgment of taste, and is its
second defining characteristic, which we should add to the fact that
it is based on subjective grounds of pleasure or displeasure.


### 1.5 Judgments of Taste and the Big Question



We can sum things up like this: judgments of taste occupy a mid-point
between judgments of niceness and nastiness, and empirical judgments
about the external world. Judgments of taste are like empirical
judgments in that they have universal validity, but they are unlike
empirical judgment in that they are made on the basis of an inner
subjective response. Conversely, judgments of taste are like judgments
of niceness or nastiness in that they are made on the basis of an
inner subjective response, but they are unlike judgments of niceness
and nastiness, which make no claim to universal validity. To cut the
distinctions the other way: in respect of normativity, judgments of
taste are like empirical judgments and unlike judgments of niceness or
nastiness, but in respect of subjectivity, judgments of taste are
unlike empirical judgments and like judgments of niceness or
nastiness. So, we have a three-fold division: empirical judgments,
judgments of taste, and judgments of niceness or nastiness. And
judgments of taste have the two points of similarity and dissimilarity
on each side just noted.



As Kant recognized (more or less following Hume), all this is a point
*from* which to theorize. The hard question is
*whether*, and if so *how*, such a subjectively
universal judgment is possible. On the face of it, the two
characteristics are in tension with each other. Our puzzle is this:
what must be the nature of pleasure in beauty if the judgments we base
on it can make claim to correctness? This is the Big Question in
aesthetics. Kant's problem was the right one, even if his
solution was not.



However, our hope thus far has been to get clearer about what it is
that is under scrutiny in this debate. Once we are armed with a modest
account of what a judgment of taste is, we can then proceed to more
ambitious questions about whether or not judgments of taste represent
real properties of beauty and ugliness, and if not, how else the
normativity of aesthetic judgment is to be explained. We can even
consider whether or not our whole practice of making judgments of
taste is defective and should be jettisoned. But first things
first.


## 2. Other Features of Aesthetic Judgments



There is more to aesthetic judgment than just subjectivity and
normativity, and this should be described more fully. The following is
a survey of a number of other candidate features of aesthetic
judgments: truth, mind-independence, nonaesthetic dependence, and
lawlessness.


### 2.1 Aesthetic Truth



The normativity of aesthetic judgments *can* be recast in terms
of a particular conception of aesthetic truth. For some purposes, it
is useful to do this. It might be thought that deploying the idea of
*aesthetic truth* commits us to the existence of an aesthetic
reality. But this springs from the assumption that a strong
correspondence conception of truth is all there ever is to truth in
any area where we might employ the notion. In many
areas--scientific and psychological thought, for example--a
strong correspondence conception of truth is likely to be in question.
However, the conception of truth applicable in aesthetics might be one
according to which truth only implies the sort of normativity
described above, according to which there are correct and incorrect
judgments of taste, or at least that some judgments are better than
others.



If we deploy the notion of truth, we might express the normative idea
by saying if a judgment is true then its opposite is false. Or we
might say that the law of non-contradiction applies to aesthetic
judgments: there are some aesthetic judgments such that they and their
negations cannot both be true. This principle need not hold of all
judgments of taste, so long as it holds of a significant proportion of
them.



Such a normative conception of truth is stronger than a notion of
truth which is merely a device for "semantic assent"; that
is, normative truth is more than thin "disquotational"
truth, according to which the notion of truth is merely a device for
semantic ascent. Thus we can say "x is beautiful' is true
if and only if x is beautiful. Even judgments of the agreeable, about
the niceness of Canary-wine, can have access to an inconsequential
disquotational conception of truth. We can say "Canary-wine is
nice' is true if and only if Canary-wine is nice" without
raising the temperature. However, judgments about the niceness of
Canary-wine do not aspire to a normative conception of truth. There
are no right and wrong answers to the question of whether Canary-wine
really is nice. And so, of neither the judgment that it is nice nor
the judgment that it is not nice can it be said that if it is true
then its opposite is false. But this is what we do say of some
aesthetic judgments.



However, although we *can* cast aesthetic normativity in terms
of truth, we need not do so. Aesthetic "truth", in fact,
adds little to the notion of correctness that we have already
encountered. We can do without the word "true". We can say
that something cannot both be beautiful and ugly (in the same respect
at the same time), and that if something is beautiful then it is not
ugly (in the same respect at the same
 time).[1]



### 2.2 Mind-dependence and Nonaesthetic Dependence



Given an understanding of the normativity of judgments of
taste--which we might or might not express in terms of aesthetic
truth--we can and should add some further normative features.



One such feature is *mind-independence*. Mind-independence is
best expressed as a negative thesis: whether something is beautiful
does not depend on my judgment. Thinking it so does not make it so.
This can be re-expressed in conditional terms: it is not the case that
if I think something is beautiful then it is beautiful. This is common
sense. For example, most of us think that our judgments have improved
since we were younger. We think that some of our past judgments were
in error. Thinking it so, at that time, did not make it so. Perhaps
some more complicated, sophisticated mind-dependence thesis holds; but
a simple mind-dependence claim flouts common sense.



We also think that beauty, ugliness and other aesthetic properties
*depend* on nonaesthetic properties. Dependence contrasts with
mind-independence in that it says what aesthetic properties
*do* depend on, as opposed to what they *do not* depend
on: the aesthetic properties of a thing depend on its nonaesthetic
properties. This dependence relation implies (but is not identical
with) the supervenience relation or relations: (a) two aesthetically
unlike things must also be nonaesthetically unlike; (b) something
could not change aesthetically unless it also changed
nonaesthetically; and (c) something could not have been aesthetically
different unless it were also nonaesthetically different. These are,
respectively: cross-object supervenience, cross-time supervenience,
and cross-world supervenience. ("Supervenience" has often
been discussed under the heading of "dependence" but they
are distinct relations, related in a complex way.) Sibley's
papers "Aesthetic Concepts" and
"Aesthetic/Nonaesthetic" were pioneering discussions of
the dependence of the aesthetic on the nonaesthetic (Sibley 1959,
1965). (It is interesting that he never described the dependence in
modal terms.)



This claim is very intuitive, but let us try to say something more in
support of it. It seems to be a deep fact about beauty and other
aesthetic properties that they are inherently "sociable";
beauty cannot be lonely. Something cannot be barely beautiful; if
something is beautiful then it must be in virtue of its nonaesthetic
properties. Furthermore, knowing this is a constraint on our judgments
about beauty and other aesthetic properties. We cannot just judge that
something is beautiful; we must judge that it is beautiful in virtue
of its nonaesthetic properties. We usually do so, and not to do so is
bizarre. (Even in cases of testimony, we think that the aesthetic
properties of a thing hold in virtue of nonaesthetic properties that
the aesthetic expert knows.) Of course, we might not have in mind
every single nonaesthetic property of the thing, nor know exactly how
the nonaesthetic properties produce their aesthetic effects. But we
think that certain nonaesthetic properties are *responsible*
for the aesthetic properties and that without those nonaesthetic
properties, the aesthetic properties would not have been instantiated.
Beauty does not float free, and recognizing this is constitutive of
aesthetic thought. Our aesthetic thought, therefore, is fundamentally
different from our thought about colors, with which it is often
compared. Perhaps colors are tied in some intimate way to intrinsic or
extrinsic physical properties of the surfaces of things, such as
reflectance properties. But color thought does not presuppose this.
Someone might even think that colors are bare properties of things.
But one cannot think that beauty is bare; it is essential to aesthetic
thought to realize that the aesthetic properties of a thing arise from
its nonaesthetic properties.



The principles of correctness, mind-independence and dependence can be
phrased in the property mode or in terms of truth. We can cast them
either way. We can say that whether something is beautiful does not
depend on what we think about it, but it does depend on its
nonaesthetic features. Or we can equally well say that the truth of
aesthetic judgments is independent of our aesthetic judgments but it
is dependent on nonaesthetic truths. Semantic ascent changes
little.


### 2.3 On Which Non-aesthetic Properties Do Aesthetic Properties Depend?



Some have argued that what aesthetic properties depend on (their
"dependence base") extends beyond the intrinsic physical
and sensory features of the object of aesthetic assessment (for
example Walton 1970), who follows Gombrich 1959, especially p. 313).
On this view, the nonaesthetic dependence base always includes
"contextual properties"--matters to do with the
origin of the work of art, or other works of art. Others dispute this
(Zangwill 1999). This is one aspect of debates over formalism in many
domains. These issues are both central theoretical commitments as well
as reflecting substantive aesthetic differences in the approach to
making and appreciating various arts, as well as the aesthetics of
nature. But such debates all presuppose that *some* dependence
thesis holds. The controversial questions are about the
*extent* of the dependence base of aesthetic properties, not
*whether* aesthetic properties have some nonaesthetic
dependence base.



One view is that aesthetic properties depend on the
*appearances* of things--the way things look or sound, for
example (see Mitrovic 2013, 2018). If so, there is *a*
sense in which aesthetic properties are mind-dependent, since
appearances are appearances to some observer. However, some say that
there can be aesthetic properties of abstract objects such as
mathematical or logical proofs or structures. Others say that ideas or
concepts in conceptual art may be the bearers of aesthetic properties.
(Schellekens 2007). *Those* aesthetic properties would be
mind-independent. The question of the aesthetic properties of abstract
objects is a controversial one (Kivy 1991, Barker 2009).


### 2.4 Dependence and Lawlessness



Thus far we have been making positive claims about features of
aesthetic judgments. Let us now consider the claim that there are no
interesting nonaesthetic-to-aesthetic laws or principles, and the
claim that an aesthetic/nonaesthetic dependence relation can obtain,
even though there are no such interesting laws or principles. Here
"interesting" laws or principles means generalizations to
the effect that anything of such and such a nonaesthetic kind is of
such and such aesthetic kind, *and* these generalizations can
be used to predict aesthetic properties on the basis of knowledge of
nonaesthetic properties. In this sense, many find it plausible that
there are no laws of taste and aesthetic properties are anomalous.



The problem of the source of correctness in aesthetic judgment is
independent of the question of whether there are laws, rules or
principles of taste. There is no reason to think that the possibility
of correct or true judgments depends on the existence of laws, rules
or principles from which we can deduce our correct or true
 judgments.[2]



Nevertheless, the anomalousness of aesthetics is worth thinking about
in its own right. Many aestheticians agree that the aesthetic is
anomalous in the above sense. But they are not agreed on the
*explanation* of anomalousness.



A notable exception to this consensus is Monroe Beardsley, who
claims--heroically and extraordinarily--that there are
exactly three aesthetic principles: things are aesthetically excellent
either by being unified or intense or complex (Beardsley 1958: chapter
XI). However, Beardsley's "trinitarian" position
faces difficulties similar to those faced by moral philosophers who
appeal to "thick" concepts. If Beardsley insists on a
lawlike connection between his three thick substantive aesthetic
properties (unity, intensity and complexity) and aesthetic value, he
can only do so at the cost of conceding anomalousness between the
three thick substantive aesthetic properties and nonaesthetic
properties. There are three layers and one can hold onto laws between
the top and middle layers only by losing laws between the middle and
bottom layers. Maybe intensity is always aesthetically good, but there
are no laws about what makes things intense.



Granting the anomalousness of aesthetic properties, then, we need to
explain it. There is much plausibility in Hume and Kant's
suggestion that what explains the anomalousness of the aesthetic is
the first feature of judgments of taste--that judgments of taste
are essentially subjective, unlike ordinary empirical judgments about
physical, sensory, or semantic properties (Hume 1757 [1985:
231-232]; Kant 1790, 5: 213-216, 281-286 [2000:
99-101, 136-142, 162-167]). This is why the two
sorts of concepts are not "nomologically made for each
other" (as Donald Davidson [1970] says about mental and physical
concepts). How can we bring an essentially subjective range of
judgments nomologically into line with a range of empirical judgments?
The two kinds of judgments answer to quite different sets of
constraints. Frank Sibley observed that aesthetic concepts are not
positively "condition-governed" (Sibley 1959). And Mary
Mothersill claimed that there are no laws of taste. But neither did
much to explain those facts. The appeal to subjectivity explains what
Sibley and Mothersill notice and describe. Indeed, Mothersill writes
of her "First Thesis" (FT) that there are no genuine
principles or laws of taste: "...FT is central to
aesthetics, and there is nothing more fundamental from which it could
be derived" (Mothersill 1984: 143). But it seems that it
*can* be derived from the subjectivity of judgments of
taste.



This kind of anomalousness is one thing, dependence or supervenience
another. Even though aesthetic properties are anomalous, they depend
and supervene on nonaesthetic properties. Many find such a combination
of relations uncomfortable outside aesthetics, such as in moral
philosophy and the philosophy of mind. Yet there seem to be good
reasons to embrace both principles in aesthetics. Both are firmly
rooted in ordinary aesthetic thought.


### 2.5 The Primacy of Correctness



Aesthetic judgments have certain essential features, and corresponding
to those features are certain principles. We can group correctness,
mind-independence, and nonaesthetic dependence together. However, it
does no harm to focus on the feature of correctness or universal
validity for this is the most basic of the features. If aesthetic
judgments did not claim correctness or universal validity, they could
not claim the other features. If explaining correctness or universal
validity is a problem, then so is explaining mind-independence and
dependence. But clearly there *is* a problem about explaining
all three features. Why does our aesthetic thought have these three
features and thus operate according to these three principles? And
what is the source of the *right* of aesthetic judgments to
them? Hume and Kant spend much mental effort on these questions. These
presuppositions of aesthetic judgments need to be explained and
justified. Given that our aesthetic judgments have these commitments,
we need to know how such judgments are possible, how they are actual,
and how they are legitimate. Having described and analyzed, as we have
done here, we need to explain and justify. But, as noted earlier, we
first need a good description of what we are trying to explain and
justify.


## 3. Disinterestedness


### 3.1 Disinterestedness: More and Less Ambitious



An idea that plays a large role in Kant's discussion of the
subjective universality of the judgment of taste is that of
disinterestedness; and the idea has appealed to many. Kant makes two
claims: (a) that pleasure in the beautiful is
"disinterested"; and (b) that only pleasure in the
beautiful is "disinterested" (Kant 1790, 5: 204-210
[2000: 90-96: 42-50]). These claims are important for
Kant's project, for Kant connects disinterestedness with the
claim to universal validity of the judgment of taste. Before we go any
further, it is important to recognize that the German word
"*interesse*" has a special meaning in eighteenth
century German, and it should not be confused with similar sounding
English words or contemporary German words. For Kant, an
*interesse* means a kind of pleasure that is not connected with
desire; it is neither grounded in desire, nor does it produce it.



We should distinguish Kant's more ambitious thesis that
*only* pleasure in the beautiful is disinterested from his less
ambitious claim simply that pleasure in the beautiful *is*
disinterested--for it seems that there could in principle be
other disinterested pleasures. The less ambitious claim, however, is
controversial enough.



A relatively uncontroversial part of the less ambitious claim is that
pleasure in the beautiful is not *grounded* in the satisfaction
of desire. It is plausible, surely, that when we take pleasure in
something that we find beautiful, this is not pleasure in the thought
that we have got something that we desire. Kant wants pleasure in the
beautiful to be open to all (so there should be no "aesthetic
luck"), and if desires vary from person to person, it seems that
we could not *require* that pleasure from everyone, as the idea
of universal validity requires. The claim to universal validity would
be lost if pleasure in beauty were not disinterested in the sense of
not being based on desire. This part of the idea of disinterestedness
has much plausibility.


### 3.2 Problems with Disinterestedness



However, it is not so clear that pleasure in the beautiful does not
*produce* desire, which Kant also requires for a pleasure to be
disinterested. The issue here is whether the pleasure can produce
desire *from itself*. Kant admits that we have certain general
concerns with beauty that mean that desire may follow from a judgment
of beauty, but according to Kant, such desires do not have their
source solely in pleasure in the beautiful (Kant 1790, sections 41 and
42, on "empirical interest" and "intellectual
interest). It may be that we have desires concerning beautiful things,
as Kant allows in sections 41 and 42 of the *Critique of
Judgment*, but so long as those desires are not intrinsic to the
pleasure in beauty, the doctrine that all pleasure in beauty is
disinterested is undisturbed. (Critics of Kant sometimes miss this
point.)



The less ambitious thesis is controversial because of the second
component. An opponent of Kant might claim, not implausibly, that
pleasure in beauty *can* produce desire by itself. It is not
clear who is right on this point.



Moreover, whether *only* pleasure in beauty is disinterested,
and no other kind of pleasures are disinterested--the ambitious
thesis--is also controversial. These are live issues.
Kant's views have much to be said for them. But we can also
sympathize with those who are doubtful.



Hume would probably deny Kant's separation of pleasure in beauty
from the motivations that lead us to act. Like other British
sentimentalists, Hume thinks that sentiment and passion both fall on
the active side of the human mind. So, sentiments are active in
themselves. However, this aspect of the British sentimentalist views
looks like a general weakness since they have no convincing place for
a faculty of practical reason, and that means, in turn, that they lack
any intelligible conception of human action (Korsgaard 1996, 2009).
Hume's psychology has no plausible understanding of human
agency; we are pushed around by our passions.



In his *Genealogy of Morals*, Friedrich Nietzsche targets
Kant's separation of pleasure in beauty from desire, a
separation that is designed to make beauty *available* to all
human beings (Nietzsche 1887 [1998], book 3, section 6, the first
page, but not what follows, which targets Schopenhauer). This
criticism is distinct from criticism of the idea that judgments of
beauty are *valid* for all human beings. Nietzsche protests
that the idea of pleasure in beauty is cut-off from the
particularities and idiosyncrasies of our passionate lives is
unrealistic and undesirable. It is not clear who is right here. The
nub of the issue is the nature of pleasure in the beautiful. Does it
have its source in what Human beings share, or in what distinguishes
them? Kant might argue, against Nietzsche, that seeing pleasure in
beauty as springing from what varies between people, not only places
people at the mercy of their good or bad aesthetic upbringing, but
also makes untenable the normative claims to correctness or universal
validity that are part of judgments of beauty, as we ordinarily
conceive of them. "Ought", in this case, seems to imply
"can". If we lack what it takes to appreciate a certain
beauty, then it cannot be required of us, and the normativity of the
judgment of taste would be lost. Or so it seems. If judgments of
beauty were based on variable pleasures or displeasures, then it seems
that the claim to correctness is fraudulent.



But this only follows if we follow Kant in locating pleasure in
beauty, and our right to make judgments of beauty, in faculties that
all human beings share. Perhaps there are rarefied beauties that only
Nietzsche's elite special souls can appreciate. For Kant, there
is an aesthetic "ought" that binds all human beings only
because we share the cognitive faculties that it takes to have the
pleasure in question. But this is not the only conceivable source of
the aesthetic "ought". One non-Kantian suggestion would be
to locate the source of normativity of the judgment of taste, in the
world, not in what human beings share. This would be to invoke a kind
of "aesthetic realism", whereby beauty and ugliness are
genuine properties of the world, which make our judgments better or
worse. That view might seem metaphysically extravagant. The trouble,
though, is how to understand the aesthetic "ought" without
that kind of view. Not easy! On a realist view, beauty need not be
universally available. But if so, it seems that the rationale for
Kant's doctrine(s) of disinterestedness falls away. The Kantian
and perhaps Humean view locates the source of normativity in what we
share. But Nietzsche would ask: is there, and should there, be
something that humans share in their responses to beauty? Do we want
aristocratic or democratic
 aesthetics?[3]


## 4. The Notion of the Aesthetic


### 4.1 Some Terminological Remarks



Let us now turn to the contemporary notion of the aesthetic. The
predicate "aesthetic" can qualify many different kinds of
things: judgments, experiences, concepts, properties, or words. It is
probably best to take *aesthetic judgments* as central. We can
understand other aesthetic kinds of things in terms of aesthetic
judgments: aesthetic properties are those that are ascribed in
aesthetic judgments; aesthetic experiences are those that ground
aesthetic judgments; aesthetic concepts are those that are deployed in
aesthetic judgments; and aesthetic words are those that have the
function of being used in the linguistic expression of aesthetic
judgments.



The most common contemporary notion of an aesthetic judgment would
take judgments of beauty and ugliness as paradigms--what we
called "judgments of taste" in part 1. And it excludes
judgments about physical properties, such as shape and size, and
judgments about sensory properties, such as colors and sounds.
However, in addition to judgments of beauty and ugliness, the
contemporary notion of an aesthetic judgment is typically used to
characterize a class of judgments that also includes judgments of
daintiness, dumpiness, delicacy and elegance. In this respect, the
contemporary notion seems to be broader than Kant's, since he
focused just on judgments of beauty and ugliness. However, there is
also a respect in which the contemporary notion seems to be narrower
than Kant's notion. For Kant used the notion to include both
judgments of beauty (or of taste) as well as judgments of the
*agreeable*--for instance, the judgment that Canary-wine
is nice (Kant 1790, 5: 203-204, 214 [2000: 89-90 and 99]).
But the modern notion, unlike Kant's, usually *excludes*
judgments of the agreeable. Moreover, the contemporary notion usually
excludes judgments about pictorial and semantic content of a work of
art. For example, the judgment that a painting represents a flower
might be "relevant" to an aesthetic judgment about it, but
it is not itself an aesthetic judgment.


### 4.2 The Problem



There are worries: is the contemporary classification
"aesthetic" arbitrary? What is it that distinguishes
judgments as aesthetic? What do they have in common? How do they
differ from other kinds of judgment? Do these judgments form a
well-behaved kind?



It may be worth mentioning in passing that the notion of an aesthetic
judgment should obviously not be elucidated in terms of the idea of a
work of art; we make aesthetic judgments about nature and we make
nonaesthetic judgments about works of art.



The articulation and defense of the notion of the aesthetic in modern
times is associated with Monroe Beardsley (1958, 1982) and Frank
Sibley (1959, 1965). But their work was attacked by George Dickie, Ted
Cohen and Peter Kivy among others (Dickie 1965, Cohen 1973, Kivy
1975).



As noted in Section 2.4, Beardsley claimed, heroically, that aesthetic
experience is distinguished by its unity, intensity and complexity.
Dickie argued, in reply, that such characteristics were either not
plausibly necessary conditions of aesthetic experience, or else that
Beardsley's description of them was inadequate. Part of
Dickie's attack was beside the point, since he confused
aesthetic experiences with the experiences of works of art; the fact
that some experiences of works of art are not as Beardsley describes
is irrelevant. But it cannot be denied that Dickie was right that even
if the problems with characterizing the three features were resolved,
it would still not be plausible that the three Beardsleyian features
are necessary (or sufficient) conditions of aesthetic experience.
Nevertheless, all that would show would be that
*Beardsley's* account of the aesthetic is inadequate.
That Beardsley's extraordinary and heroic trinitarian doctrine
cannot be maintained does not mean that the notion of the aesthetic
should be abandoned. That would be a flawed induction from a single
instance.



Sibley claimed that the discernment of aesthetic properties requires a
special sensitivity, whereas the discernment of nonaesthetic
properties could be achieved by anyone with normal eyes and ears.
Furthermore, Sibley claimed that it was distinctive of aesthetic terms
or concepts that they were not "condition-governed", in
the sense that they had no nonaesthetic positive criteria for their
application. He thought of the faculty of taste as special mental
faculty, possessed by people with a distinctive sensitivity. This
account of the aesthetic was inadvisable, since it allowed critics
like Cohen and Kivy to argue that ascribing many aesthetic properties
did not in fact require a special faculty, since anyone can
distinguish a graceful line from an ungraceful line. Moreover, some
aesthetic ascriptions, such as elegance, do seem to be
nonaesthetically "condition-governed", in Sibley's
sense. Nevertheless--once again--that
*Sibley's* positive account of the aesthetic is
implausible should not lead us to despair about the aesthetic. On the
other hand, a pessimistic induction, now with two instances under its
belt, is perhaps looking a little less unhealthy--especially
given two such distinguished exponents.



Despite this, Sibley was surely minimally right to think that
ascribing aesthetic properties to a thing requires more than merely
knowing its nonaesthetic properties. Whether or not the extra
something is distinctively difficult, erudite, sophisticated or
non-condition-governed, it is something over and above nonaesthetic
understanding. So perhaps we should keep on trying to articulate the
notion of the aesthetic, or at least a useful notion of the
aesthetic.


### 4.3 A Hierarchical Proposal



One strategy is the following: begin with the account of what it is to
be a judgment of taste, or of beauty and ugliness, that was outlined
in part 1, and then use that to elucidate a broader notion of an
aesthetic judgment. To recall, it was argued that Kant was right, with
qualifications, to think that the crucial thing about the judgment of
taste is that it has what he calls "subjective
universality"; judgments of taste are those that are (a) based
on responses of pleasure or displeasure, and (b) claim universal
validity, where that can be minimally interpreted as a normative
aspiration. The present strategy is to use this Kantian account in
order to ground a wider category of the aesthetic, which includes
judgments of taste along with judgments of daintiness, dumpiness,
delicacy, elegance, and the rest.



Let us call judgments of taste, or judgments of beauty and ugliness,
"verdictive aesthetic judgments", and let us call the
other aesthetic judgments (of daintiness, dumpiness, elegance,
delicacy, etc.) "substantive aesthetic judgments". The
idea is that these substantive judgments are aesthetic in virtue of
some special close relation to verdictive judgments of taste, which
are subjectively universal. We can assume that judgments of beauty and
ugliness coincide with judgments of aesthetic merit and demerit.
However, even if beauty were taken to be a substantive aesthetic
notion, like elegance, delicacy or daintiness, there would remain some
other overarching notion of aesthetic merit or excellence, and we
could take that notion as central.



On this approach, judgments of daintiness, dumpiness, delicacy and
elegance stand in some special and intimate relation to judgments of
beauty and ugliness (or aesthetic merit and demerit), and it is only
in virtue of this intimate relation that we can think of all these
judgments as belonging to the same category. This is a hierarchical
rather than an egalitarian conception of aesthetic notions



Now, what exactly is this special intimate relation between verdictive
and substantive aesthetic judgments? One suggestion is this: first,
substantive judgments describe *ways of being beautiful or
ugly* (Burton 1992, Zangwill 1995). It is part of what it
*is* for a thing to be elegant, delicate or dainty that it is
beautiful in a particular *way*. And second, it is part of the
*meaning* of substantive aesthetic judgments that they imply
verdictive aesthetic judgments. This is the hierarchical proposal.



Remark: this claim need not be one about all *words* like
"dainty" and "delicate", but it is about the
particular substantive *judgments* that we linguistically
express in such words on particular occasions. Both Beardsley and
Sibley seem to have made the mistake of casting these issues at the
linguistic level rather than at the level of thought; they focused not
on aesthetic words instead of aesthetic judgments and responses.
Sibley did say in footnote 1 of Sibley 1959 that he was concerned with
"uses" of aesthetic words, but he and everyone else
ignored that qualification.



Let us now see how this hierarchical proposal works. Consider an
abstract pattern of curving lines, which is elegant. It might be
*necessary* that that pattern is beautiful. This is because the
beauty *depends on* or *is determined by* that specific
pattern. But it is not part of what it is to *be* that pattern
that it is beautiful. That is, the pattern is necessarily beautiful
but it is not essentially beautiful. (On the general distinction
between necessity and essence, see Fine 1994.) Furthermore, we can
think of that pattern without thinking of it as beautiful.



By contrast, it is *both* necessary *and* essential that
something that is elegant is beautiful. And this is reflected in our
concepts and judgments. We can think of the pattern without thereby
thinking of it as beautiful, but to think of the pattern as elegant is
to think of it as beautiful, at least in certain respects. Hence
elegance is an aesthetic concept.



The hierarchical proposal thus seems to characterize a non-arbitrary
and useful notion of the aesthetic. If so, the contemporary broad
notion of the aesthetic can be vindicated.



To see how this works, consider representational properties. Are they
aesthetic properties? Suppose that a painting represents a tree and is
a beautiful representation of a tree. It is not merely beautiful
*and* a tree representation but beautiful *as* a tree
representation (Zangwill 1999). Of course, that the painting
represents a tree is "relevant" to whether it is beautiful
because it is part of what its beauty depends on. But being beautiful
is not part of what it is to be a representation of a tree or even
that representation of a tree. Moreover, to think that the painting
represents a tree is not thereby to think that it is beautiful. Being
beautiful is not an essential property of the representation, and
thinking of the representation does not mean thinking of it as
beautiful, even though it may be necessary that it is beautiful. Hence
representational properties are not aesthetic properties.



The proposal faces a challenge, however. Jerrold Levinson has argued
that not all substantive properties have evaluative valence (Levinson
2001). One of his examples is of "starkly grim". Being
starkly grim seems not always to be a way of being beautiful or ugly.
The defender of hierarchy could reply that it is specific uses of
these words, in context, that pick out features that have evaluative
valences. If so, the particular instance of stark grimness might be a
valuable aspect of a thing however it is with other instances of stark
grimness. But it might be replied that particular instances of stark
grimness may be value-neutral? The issue is a difficult one, and I
leave the issue here.



If the hierarchical suggestion fails, then we lack one way of
vindicating the modern broad notion of the aesthetic. Maybe there are
other ways to give unity to the notion of the aesthetic. However, it
is not clear that there is another feasible way in the literature.
Levinson thinks of aesthetic properties as a certain kind of
appearance properties. We might note that this will immediately rule
out the aesthetic properties of abstract objects by fiat. More
importantly, there remains the question of what kind of appearance
properties aesthetic properties are. Even if we are happy with
indefinite boundaries of the aesthetic, we need some sense of what the
sub-class is, and its relation to pleasure and beauty. (We might
compare the difficulties in characterizing a notion of the aesthetic
with the difficulties characterizing a notion of logic.)


### 4.4 Beauty and Sublimity



One notion that is hard to place among other aesthetic notions is that
of sublimity. There is a long and venerable tradition of thinking that
beauty and sublimity share equal status as fundamental aesthetic
categories. Sublimity comes in different varieties. Kant distinguishes
"mathematically" and "dynamically" sublime,
roughly, corresponding to our sense of the enormity and power of
things. The fundamental question about beauty and sublimity is whether
they exclude each other. According to the long and venerable
tradition, if something is sublime then it is not beautiful and vice
versa. Many have conceived of sublimity such that it excludes beauty.
But this is questionable.



If we conceive of beauty narrowly, where it merely means a certain
elegance and prettiness (as Levinson does in Levinson 2012), then that
narrow concept of beauty would be a substantive aesthetic property.
*That* notion of beauty may exclude sublimity. However, it is
not clear that there is reason to restrict beauty in this way. If, on
the contrary, beauty (or at least *a* concept of beauty) is a
generic over-arching aesthetic value, then one suggestion would be
that sublimity should be understood as a *kind* of beauty. In
that case, it would turn out that it is *sublimity* that is a
substantive aesthetic concept, not beauty. On that view, beauty and
sublimity are not opposed to each other. Instead sublimity is a kind
of magnificent beauty or a spectacular or extraordinary way of being
beautiful.



Edmund Burke links sublimity with pain as well as pleasure, perhaps
drawing on Aristotle's idea of "catharsis" (Burke
1757). The idea seems to be that judgments of sublimity are grounded
on both pleasure and pain, whereas judgments of beauty are grounded
only on pleasure. While this may fit the aesthetic experience of wind
and rain in a storm at sea or up a mountain, it does not fit the
sublimity of the stars in the sky and sublime delicacy of a
spider's web, where there is no exciting terror. So the pain
account is not generally true of the sublime.



Richard Wagner claimed that there was musical sublimity in
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and that was its great innovation,
to take us beyond the merely musically-beautiful to the sublime
(Wagner 1870, contrast Hanslick 1950, 1986). Many musicologists follow
Wagner, (such as Richard Taruskin [1989, 2019]). But on that view, if
sublimity is associated with danger and extremity, it is not clear
that we have a plausible story of why people seek out the sublime in
music. Is it a kind of thrill-seeking, like fairground rides or rock
climbing, where people believe themselves to be in danger or at least
cannot help imagining that they are? Is their experience of
Beethoven's Ninth mixed with pain in this way? This seems
unlikely. Pain and fear have natural expressions on the human face,
but the human faces of audiences listening to Beethoven's Ninth
are not noticeably different from the human faces listening to Mozart,
Chopin or Tchaikovsky. Their faces are unlike those of those on
fairground rides or rock climbers who have to make difficult moves.
Furthermore, the audience of the Ninth are not motivated to flee from
the concert hall. Do they have to be strapped into their seats to
prevent escape as on a fairground ride (contra McClary 1991)? By
contrast, on the substantive view of the sublime as a kind of beauty,
there is a distinctive kind of pleasure that characterizes the
experience of the sublime, on which judgments of the sublime are
based. It is an intense pleasure, to be sure. But intensity does not
entail a mixture with pain.



Sublimity in a representational art, such as painting, is a different
matter. John Martin's wonderful painting *Apocalypse*,
for example, does evoke a kind of terror, at least imagined terror. We
might plausibly say that this sublimity is not a kind of beauty, even
though it is certainly a kind of *artistic* excellence. What
this suggests is that we should avoid a unitary theory of the
sublime. Some sublimity is a way of being beautiful, and some is
not.



The main downside of this view is that it breaks with one major strand
of the intellectual tradition in thinking about the sublime in
opposition to beauty. But it is hard to know much to weigh that
if we are seeking a useful concept for organizing our experiences of
art and nature.


### 4.5 Aesthetic Morals



Substantive aesthetic judgments attracted much attention in the latter
half of the twentieth century. If the hierarchical proposal is right,
they cannot be studied in isolation, for the role of such judgments is
to serve verdictive aesthetic judgments of beauty and ugliness. Beauty
and ugliness are the primary aesthetic notions, which give sense to
the wider class that contemporary aestheticians include as
"aesthetic". The broad notion of the aesthetic can be
fixed by what it is to judge that something is beautiful or ugly, or
that it has aesthetic merit or demerit. By seeing beauty and ugliness
as the preeminent aesthetic notions we can make sense of a unitary
category of the aesthetic, which includes the dainty and the dumpy,
elegance and sublimity, and which excludes physical, sensory and
representational properties of things, as well as their agreeableness.
The hierarchical proposal seems to allow us to make the
aesthetic/nonaesthetic distinction in a useful way and answer
Beardsley and Sibley's critics. Perhaps in this way the notion
of the aesthetic can be defended. However, some may think that
Levinson is right about substantive aesthetic concepts and judgments,
in which case the notion of the aesthetic has a question mark hanging
over it.