Enjoyment and Beauty
Beauty is powerful. It compels our attention and appreciation andunites us in shared visionsand divides us with 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. Second, the enjoyment is a special kind: one does not enjoy in that way items one does not find beautiful. Third, to believe that something is beautiful is to believe, on the basis of the special kind of enjoyment, that others will, other things being equal, enjoy the item in that special way. The arguments for the second characterize beauty’s power to compel attention and appreciation; the arguments for the third claim address its power to unite and divide. The first claim is an essential preliminary. The inspiration for this approach is Kant’s Critique of Judgment, in which 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 judges beautiful? Yes and no. Imagine 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, however, does not enjoy the Taj. He is not cognitively or affectively impaired; he attends to features that people generally regard as making the Taj beautiful and makes a good faith effort to enjoy looking at the building, but he simply does not enjoy it. He agrees with you because he knows that the received opinion is that the Taj is beautiful, and his agreement acknowledges that the Taj belongs with that diverse collection of items that people generally take to be beautiful. Compare believing that Beijing is densely populated. One can form that belief based in entirely on the reports of others; similarly, one can, as Jones does,judge that the Taj is beautiful on the basis of others’ reports.
Call judgments of beauty based solely on the reports of others derivative judgments. Not all judgments of beauty can be derivative, of course. Your “Beautiful, isn’tit?” illustrates a non-derivative judgment. Such judgments are grounded in one’s experience of the object in question; one’s enjoyment, not others’ reports, supplies the reasons for one’s judgment of beauty. The reasons consist in the features of the object one enjoys. Suppose, for example, that Jones asks you why you think the Taj is beautiful. He is not merely asking for an explanation of why you respond to the Taj as you do; he is asking you to justify your judgment. You do so by identifying the features of the Taj that you enjoy (a symmetry that is at once simple and complex, and so on). In general, one defends one’s judgment that, for example, a face, painting, statue, or poemis beautiful by indicating the features one enjoys. To avoid misunderstanding, we should emphasize that we are not claiming that, when one gives reasons for a judgment of beauty, one expects others to infer on the basis of these reasons that the item is beautiful. The role of reasons is not to compel agreement by providing evidentiary grounds. We assign a far different role to reasons.
A. Enjoyment and the Judgment of Beauty
Our account of the judgment of beauty rests on three observations about the enjoyed features one would cite in giving reasons for a judgment of beauty. The first observation concerns enjoyment generally; the other two are specific to the enjoyment of beauty. The first point is one we implicitly assumed in the immediately preceding discussion: one does not simply enjoy an item; one enjoys it as being some way. One enjoys it, as we will say, as having certain features. This may seem false. Suppose that one is enjoying an ice cream cone. Why can’t one just enjoy the whole cone, not any particular aspect of it? To begin the reply, note first that, typically, when one enjoys something there is an answer to the question, “What do you enjoy about it?”, where that answer specifies the features one enjoys the item as having. 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. Indeed, in the purported “enjoy the whole cone” counterexample, the description of the description of the example itself specifies the relevant feature: one enjoys the cone as a whole, where presumably what is meant is that one enjoys the whole experience of eating the cone from beginning to end. We offer the following argument to show that there must always be an answer to the question, “What do you enjoy about it?” Imagine Carol claims to have enjoyed dining out in a restaurant, but sincerely denies that there is anything she enjoyed about it. She insists she did 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, and we would be strongly inclined to describe Carol as just self-deceptively believing she enjoys it. To enjoy something is to enjoy it as having certain features. Enjoyment thus always has a cognitive component since to enjoy something as having a certain features, one must believe it has those features.[1]
The second point is that, as we will argue more fully in Section IV, when one enjoys something one judges beautiful, the enjoyed features typically form an organized arrayare typically enjoyed in relation to one another and to the features of other objects in a variety of ways. The beautiful item’s parts, qualities, internal and external relations present themselves to the enjoyer as an organizedinterconnected whole. Even with the simplerelatively less complex beauties of flowers and geometrical designs, the eye ranges over the form, appreciates the variations in color, calls to mind perhaps other beautiful flowers. Even apparently simple beauties, like the beauty of a particular shade of red, only stand out as beautiful because of the relation of that red to its surroundings (visual or conceptual) and our ability to compare it to many other closely similar shades. Beauty exhibits a perceived unityis articulate. The point is commonplace in discussions of beauty; Kant, for example, emphasizes that one regards the items one judges beautiful as exhibiting the unity of the objects to which the concepts of the Understandingapply (even though, in the case of beauty, the Understanding does not actually supply any relevant unity-creating concept).We paraphrase this point by claiming that the enjoyed features of a beautiful object form an organized array.
We can summarize the first two points as follows: enjoying x as having this or that feature requires believing that x has the feature; hence, where one judges beautiful, the associated enjoyment of x as having an organized array A of features requires believing that x has A. The third point is that this belief is 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.[2]
It is a fundamental fact about beauty that one does recognize the “authority of persons in the realm of cognition” in the ascription of enjoyed features to items judged beautiful, as the following example illustrates. When Brian asks Brianna why she thinks the Mona Lisa is beautiful, Brianna describes the organized array of features she perceives the painting as having. In doing so, she is not merely repeating what she has read or otherwise acquired from others; 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. When Brian complains that the two paintings are relevantly the same, that both have the specified array of features, Brianna responds by pointing out relevant differences—“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.
Could Brianna be making a mistake about a matter of objective fact when she denies that the faux Mona Lisa lacks the relevant organized array? She could be—if she were, for example incorrectly reporting the results of imposing a grid over a digitized image of the painting and analyzing the color distribution. But she is doing no such thing. She is (perhaps incompletely) specifying the array of features she enjoys, and which she would identify in giving a reason for her judgment of beauty. In such a case, she cannot be making a mistake about a matter of objective fact. Suppose the opposite; then it would follow from the objective fact that the two paintings have the same specified features, that Brianna, on pain of inconsistency, must judge the faux Mona Lisa beautiful. There cannot, however, be an objective fact that entails that she must judge the faux Mona Lisa beautiful. As Kant notes,
If any one reads me his poem, or brings me a play, which all said and done, fails to commend itself to my taste, then let him adduce . . . critics of taste, with the host of rules laid down by them, as a proof of the beauty of his poem; let certain passages particularly displeasing to me accord completely with the rules of beauty (as . . . universally recognized) . . . I take my stand on the ground that my judgment is one of taste . . . This would appear to be one of the chief reasons why this faculty of aesthetic judgment 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 judgment according to their verdict.[3]
Brianna is deaf to Brian’s arguments and passes judgment according to her own tastes. Her rejection of the faux Mona Lisa as beautiful even though it has all the specified features merely reveals that specification as incomplete.
As we will express it, Briannafirst-person-authoritatively believes that the Mona Lisa has a certain array of features, and, as a consequence, she is authoritative with regard to whether the faux Mona Lisa shares that array. It is essential to be clear about just what sort of “authority” is involved.
B. First-Person-Authoritative Beliefs
The first step in clarifying the nature of such beliefs is to note that the features that concern the way the item appears to the person enjoying it. When, on the basis of one’s enjoyment, one judges something beautiful, one enjoys the item for the way it appears, for the way in which it manifests an organized unity through the presented array of features. One may, for example, enjoy the way the colored squares in the abstract painting appear to dance;the way the (real or painted) ship’s gently full sails mirror the tranquility of the sea; the way the washerwoman has the face and bearing of a Madonna;the way the statue of Aphrodite presents the goddess’s flesh as at once marble-hard and humanly soft; the waythat the strong diagonal elementsare broken up to just the right degree, just short of being mechanical, in a painting, building, face, or body.
In all the above examples, an item sensuously appears to one as having an organized array of features. Compare cases involving an appearance albeit not a sensuous one.There are also non-sensuous examples. Consider Stephan’s first encounter with Cantor’s diagonal proof that there are uncountable sets; after an initial moment of incomprehension, the light dawns and the proof makes a powerful impression. The elements of the proof organize themselves for one with an astonishing simplicity and clarity, making it seem to Stephan that the proof has invested him with the power to tame the infinite. The proof makes an impression which, although it is non-sensuous, has a force and immediacy analogous to a sensuous appearance. We will call such impressions non-sensuous appearances. The first-person-authoritative beliefs with which we are concerned are beliefs that an item sensuously or non-sensuously appears to one as having a certain organized array of features. One isIndividuals are authoritative about whether the item appears to them in that way. The critical question is, What is it to have such authority?
We answer by distinguishing two ways in which one may fail to know: failures due to lack, impairment, or misuse of a recognitional ability; and failures due to, as we will say for the moment,“other sources.”[4] One has the ability to recognize instances of F if and only if one can, in normal circumstances, reliably identify instances of F. We will ultimately define a first-person authoritative belief as one that can be false only through lack, impairment, or improper use of a recognitional ability. To motivate and explain this definition, we compare and contrast two claims to know: the claim to know by sight that the animal in the field is a fox and the claim to know that the cloud looks like the Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków. We begin with failures to know because of lack, impairment, or improper use of the relevant recognitional ability. Such failures can occur in the case of both examples. We then turn to failures from “other sources.” We will argue that such failures can occur only in fox-type examples.
Lack of ability. Ignorant of the color, size, and shape of a fox, you do not have the ability to recognize a fox by sight and hence do not know that the animal is a fox. You believe the animal is a fox because you mistakenly believe you have the ability to recognize foxes by sight. For a joke, we told you that the only small, pointyeared animals around were foxes, when in fact the area is full of small, pointyeared dogs. The same thing can happen in the case of the claim that the cloud looks like the Wawel castle. You have never seen or even heard of the castle, and, for a joke, your friends show you a picture of the Janowiec castle and convince you that it is the Wawel castle. When you look at the cloud you believe that it looks like the Wawel castle. When your friends latter reveal their deception, you respond, “So I was wrong. I thought the cloud looked like the Wawel castle, but it really looked like the Janowiec castle. I just did not realize it.”
Impaired ability. You have the ability to recognize foxes by sight; however, the ability is impaired. An impairment is an interference with the operation of a recognitional ability that makes the belief-formation process unreliable. There are various possibilities; for example: you are very drunk, or you have been drugged or given a relevant post-hypnotic suggestion; or have a neurological disorder. There are various “interfering somethings” that interfere in various ways, and one may not have any detailed picture of just how the interfering factors disrupt the recognitional process. One knows that people who are drunk enough make misidentifications, but one may not have any idea of the underlying psychophysiology that explains why this happens; nonetheless, the accusation, “You’re too drunk to tell whether that is a fox,” can show that you do not know. The same points hold for the cloud’s looking like the castle. Suppose you are quite drunk when you look at the cloud. You think it looks like the Wawel castle, but, the next day, when you recall the way the cloud looked, it is obvious to you that it did not really look like the castle. You just thought it did.
Improperly used ability. You have the unimpaired ability to recognize foxes by sight, but you merely glance for a second at the animal—not nearly long enough to see what you need to see to determine if it is a fox; nonetheless, because you are being careless, you form the belief that it is a fox. Given the way in which you employed (or tried to employ) your recognitional ability, you domay not know that the animal is a fox. Improper uses arise from various forms of lack of careful attention—carelessness, overhastiness, distraction, and so on. Similarly, lack of careful attention can lead you to mistakenly believe that the cloud looks like the castle.