aesthetic value
10. Aesthetic Value
I have found it impossible (though not for want of trying) to find a way of avoiding commitment to a concept of aesthetic value. The general theory of value remains in an unsatisfactory state; and aesthetic value in particular presents various unsettled questions. But, as in the first edition, I find myself always driven back to the idea that in calling an artwork a good one -- or a good poem or good choreography -- we must be ascribing some form of (nonmoral) value to it, and that this must be a distinctive and special form, properly labelled "aesthetic." Moreover, it seems evident, once we take this step, that this value must consist in, or essentially include, a potentiality to afford experiences of some especially interesting and desirable sort. So I have, over the years, tried different ways of formulating an adequate concept of aesthetic value along these lines. Setting aside the more general and basic problems about value as such, and assuming that there is such a thing and that we can sometimes know when objects or events or states of affairs have value, we can narrow our focus here to the species that concerns us. And we may say that "the aesthetic value of anything is its capacity to impart -- through cognition of it -- a marked aesthetic character to experience" ("In Defense of Aesthetic Value") -- on the necessary presupposition that such a character is itself worth having, i.e., valuable. "And to say that X has greater aesthetic value than Y is to say that X has the capacity to afford an experience that is more valuable, on account of its more marked aesthetic character, than any experience that Y has the capacity to afford" -- assuming, again, that such a character is good.
The analysis of aesthetic value just sketched is not without its difficulties, at least some of which ought to be acknowledged. Jerome Stolnitz, who defends well what he calls an "objective relativist" account of aesthetic value that is in its most
I have found it impossible (though not for want of trying) to find a way of avoiding commitment to a concept of aesthetic value. The general theory of value remains in an unsatisfactory state; and aesthetic value in particular presents various unsettled questions. But, as in the first edition, I find myself always driven back to the idea that in calling an artwork a good one -- or a good poem or good choreography -- we must be ascribing some form of (nonmoral) value to it, and that this must be a distinctive and special form, properly labelled "aesthetic." Moreover, it seems evident, once we take this step, that this value must consist in, or essentially include, a potentiality to afford experiences of some especially interesting and desirable sort. So I have, over the years, tried different ways of formulating an adequate concept of aesthetic value along these lines. Setting aside the more general and basic problems about value as such, and assuming that there is such a thing and that we can sometimes know when objects or events or states of affairs have value, we can narrow our focus here to the species that concerns us. And we may say that "the aesthetic value of anything is its capacity to impart -- through cognition of it -- a marked aesthetic character to experience" ("In Defense of Aesthetic Value") -- on the necessary presupposition that such a character is itself worth having, i.e., valuable. "And to say that X has greater aesthetic value than Y is to say that X has the capacity to afford an experience that is more valuable, on account of its more marked aesthetic character, than any experience that Y has the capacity to afford" -- assuming, again, that such a character is good.
The analysis of aesthetic value just sketched is not without its difficulties, at least some of which ought to be acknowledged. Jerome Stolnitz, who defends well what he calls an "objective relativist" account of aesthetic value that is in its most