Aesthetic Judgment: It’s All About How Much

Making an aesthetic judgment—trying to decide which works of art are better or more valuable than others—has a long and not particularly distinguished history. The reason I say this is because although art world members (anyone either professional or amateur interested in art either for a short or long term) have freely expressed their opinions about what is good about a particular work of art, nevertheless they have had no sound or empirical justification for those opinions. As things stand today, one who contemplates making an aesthetic judgment faces something of a dilemma. On the one hand, one faces the problem of deriving aesthetic concepts from nonaesthetic concepts; this is a variation of the well-worn is/ought problem. On the other hand, one faces the problem of qualitative hedonism, which according to some critics is intellectually bankrupt. Both of these critiques of aesthetic judgment suggest that aesthetic judgment has reached an impasse, that the hope of establishing a rational foundation for the justification of aesthetic judgment is hopeless. In this article, I will first examine the dilemma, and then I will argue that there is a solution to establishing a rational foundation for aesthetic judgment; that rational foundation is to be found in the closely connected ideas of quantitative hedonism, consequentialism, and the test of time.

Frank Sibley’s essay “Aesthetic Concepts” is rightfully considered among the classic short pieces in twentieth-century philosophy of art. In that essay in the tradition of David Hume, Sibley challenges, among other things, the traditional logical and naturalistic basis of aesthetic judgment, that is, the necessary and sufficient conditions to establish what the value of a work of art is. In the crisp and no-nonsense prose typical of Sibley, he says at the beginning of his essay: “What I want to make clear in this paper is that there are no non aesthetic features which serve in any circumstances as logically sufficient conditions for applying aesthetic terms. Aesthetic or taste concepts are not in this respect condition-governed at all.”¹ By “aesthetic terms,” Sibley means, for example, “unified, balanced, integrated, lifeless, serene, somber, dynamic, powerful, vivid, delicate, moving, trite, sentimental, tragic,” and so on.² In the same spirit in which Hume admonishes us not to derive ought from is, Sibley argues that no description of a work of art, no matter how exhaustive, will result in a rationally legitimate assessment of its value. Consequently, art critics function merely as tour guides—they highlight points of interest. As Sibley suggests, critics will (1) point out nonaesthetic features in a work; (2) mention qualities they want people to see; (3) make remarks linking aesthetic and nonaesthetic qualities; (4) make use of metaphors for rhetorical effect; (5) make use of contrasts, comparisons, and reminiscences; (6) repeat and reiterate their claims; and finally, (7) make use of appropriate tones of voice, expressions, nods, looks, gestures, and so on.³ What Sibley says about aesthetic concepts reminds me of what A. J. Ayer and Charles L. Stevenson say about moral concepts, again in the tradition of Hume. One might even say contemptuously that the art critic is just a propagandist.

As one can imagine, the literature on the question of aesthetic concepts, and by implication aesthetic judgment, is enormous, although not quite as large as the is/ought scholarship. Furthermore, the literature on the question of aesthetic concepts and aesthetic judgment continues to grow. One obvious reason why a literature is large and continues to grow is that the problem with which it is concerned has yet to be resolved. Of course, this is the case in respect to aesthetic concepts and aesthetic judgment. Notwithstanding Sibley’s strong argument, it is still an open question whether or not, in principle, one can provide reasons for saying that such and such a work of art is good in any qualitative sense. Again, going back to Hume, given that beauty is not a quality found in things, it might be or might come to be common sense (contrary to Hume’s intuitions and argument) that Ogilby and Milton...