What is the Value of Work of Art - The Human Person | PHL 151, Papers of Philosophy

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Are artistic judgments subjective?

PHL 151

Anh Nguyen

Dr. Hank Dmochowski

October 9, 2008

Tastes cannot be disputed QUESTION #3 (page 553) Why can’t beauty be proved by appeal to technical principles? Discuss this in terms of our personal reasons for disliking something, established canons of beauty, and the validity of professional opinion. Beauty cannot be proved by appeal to technical principles because beauty is a question of individual preference. Judgments of beauty are based on the subjective feelings of a particular person, whether or not he or she is a professional. We may like certain things, and because we already like them, we feel that they are beautiful, while others don’t feel the same way. There is no certain principle of beauty. Everybody has his or her own taste. Whenever we feel that something is beautiful or not, it is just the matter of what our feelings are; we don’t have an appropriate explanation to why we feel that way. However, we demand or require agreement from others; we think that others should share our judgments. We may say “I think Y is beautiful” and we intend to show our uncertainty. But we always tend to think that our judgments are correct and hence, the opposite judgments are incorrect. Doesn’t that mean we assume that there is no such appropriate judgment of beauty? There are experts in drawing brilliant paintings and in knowing which paintings will look good. But they just know what will look good for a certain kind of artists’ eyes. And that means there are only paintings that look better than others, and there are judgments that are better than others. There are no such things that are correct or incorrect, no judgments that are right or wrong.