How Marvelous! Toward A Theory of Aesthetic Value

Abstract

Aesthetics is often classified as a branch of value theory. This classification is curious and in some ways objectionable. Many important issues of aesthetics, as traditionally practiced, have no direct connection with notions of value or evaluation. This is as it should be, if aesthetics is the theoretical or philosophical examination of the cultural institution of art. For there is much to the institution besides evaluation, and one might argue that it is far more important to understand and appreciate works of art than to decide how good they are. It is arguable, also, that the interest we do have in evaluating works of art is a somewhat parochial feature of the cultural surroundings of the fine arts in Western society during the last several hundred years, that it is much less important in other contexts. We must not assume that all cultures in which people produce and enjoy or find satisfaction in what we call works of art even recognize anything much like our notion of aesthetic value. But there is no denying that this notion plays an important role in the practices surrounding the fine arts in recent Western culture, and for that reason alone it deserves attention. The notion of aesthetic value can look very questionable when we do attend to it, however. The worries are familiar. There is enormous variety among the works we take to be of high aesthetic quality, and our reasons for praising them, for pronouncing them aesthetically valuable, are astonishingly diverse. Some good or great works stimulate, some soothe, others are disturbingly provocative or upsetting. Some afford intellectual pleasures; others emotional experiences-fulfilling emotional experiences in some instances, distressing ones in others. Some works offer insight or illumination; others catharsis. Some provide escape from everyday cares; others help us to deal with them. Some require careful study and analysis; others wear their charms on their sleeves. Great works can be exuberant or gloomy; they can be intense, or serene, or painful, or funny. "Aesthetic value" appears to be an incredible grab bag. What justification is there for speaking of a single kind of value in cases of all of these sorts? The distinctiveness of aesthetic value, as well as its unity, threatens to evaporate under scrutiny. Formalists such as Clive Bell and Eduard Hanslick who postulate the autonomy of aesthetic value (or musical value) take a heroic course. Much of what we take to be aesthetically valuable about many works of art seems thoroughly intertwined with concerns of everyday life, with "practical" values of various kinds, with cognitive and moral and religious values. It just does not seem plausible that what is so wonderful aesthetically about much great poetry, for instance, has nothing at all to do with the insight we receive from it, or that the feelings one has in appreciating music aesthetically are entirely unlike and irrelevant to everyday emotions-even granting that to be informative or to elicit emotional responses is not thereby to have aesthetic value. Could it be that aesthetic value supervenes on or is otherwise dependent on the capacity to provide practical or cognitive or emotional benefits of various kinds? If so, it may be possible to preserve its unity; a single sort of value might supervene or depend on any of various other kinds of value. And the supervening or dependent value may itself be distinct from the "practical" and other everyday values that it supervenes or depends on. I will propose an account of aesthetic value