Enjoyment and Beauty - Chicago-Kent College of Law



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 beauty-making 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,

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 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-person-authoritative 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 reason-providing 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 well-played 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 motivational-justificatory 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 motivational-justificatory 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 motivational-justificatory 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 first-person-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 first-person 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 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 b-enjoy 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, b-enjoy 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 b-enjoyment 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 b-enjoy 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 non-Platonic 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

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[1] 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.

[2] Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, James Creed Meredith, trans. (Oxford 1952) 284 – 85.

[3] Meredith, p. 115.

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