beardsley - beauty and value (1962)

7/30/2019 Beardsley - Beauty and Value (1962)

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Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

Beauty and Aesthetic ValueAuthor(s): Monroe C. BeardsleyReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 59, No. 21, American Philosophical AssociationEastern Division: Symposium Papers to be presented at the Fifty-ninth Annual Meeting, NewYork City, December 27-29, 1962 (Oct. 11, 1962), pp. 617-628Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2023283 .

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BEAUTY AND AESTHETIC VALUE 617is not metaphysical; it is a metaphysically contingent condition ofspiritual absoluteness. In this aesthetic situation the dualitiesand transitivities that characterize the life of practice and sciencehave been surmounted. Nothing happens for the sake of any-thing-which is the same as to say, perhaps, that everything hap-pens for the sake of everything. Nothing is examined for itstestimony regarding something else that is absent. One existsvalidly in perceiving the valid form, and one perceives the validform in existing validly. It is the same condition in both. Here,at this stage, a human being solves the basic problem of force andright in perfecting the activity of perception itself.

The limitation of art to its medium makes possible the relativeisolation in which the artist can solve the problem of valid beingthrough valid form. Despite the fact that words have meaningsand that through their meanings the poet can bring within thecompass of his work all things mentionable, it remains the casethat the poet's solution of the problem is restricted to his creationof a valid form in words. All the meanings are also stuff, and thevalidity of a poem lies not in its truth to life or its truth to philoso-phy, not in the profundity of what it says, but in its truth tobeing, the profundity of what it is, that is, in its rightful powerand powerful rightness as language, which reveals the union ofpower and right in the spirit whose language it is. Seen in thislight, no art is higher or lower than another. The validity pos-sible in music or architecture is no less and no greater-and inthe end no different-than that possible in painting or poetry.Unless the artist's task was restricted to his medium, he wouldnever solve it.ALBERT HOFSTADTER

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

BEAUTY AND AESTHETIC VALUE *M R. Hofstadter's rich and trenchant paper t is a firm challengeto present tendencies in aesthetics and a stern call to returnto the high road from which he believes its current practitionershave strayed. Since I do not agree either that present tendenciesare mainly in the wrong direction, or that this direction differssharply from that of much classic aesthetics, it can be seen that* To be presented in a symposium on "Validity versus Value in AestheticPhlenomenology" at the fifty-niinth annual meeting of the Amerie:'In Philo-

sophical Association, Eastern Division, December 29, 1962.t First paper of this symposium, this JOURNAL, 59: 607.

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618 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHYthere is something of a gap between us. I look across it, however,with great respect, and with the hope that it can be narrowed ifnot closed.First, let us draw together those sentences in which Hofstadterpresents his primary themes. "Genuinely aesthetic judgment,however-which is not to be identified with the judgment of thecritic-is not a judgment of appraisal" (614)-that is, it is nota value judgment. Hofstadter does not deny that various valuejudgments can be made about works of art or that various groundsmay be had for them (610), but he regards it as "not so much falseas it is absurd . . . to say that works of art have aestheticvalue" (608). Judgments of beauty are genuine aesthetic judg-ments; these, however, are not judgments of value, but judgmentsof "validity." "Only beauty constitutes a fundamental philo-sophical subject matter calling for a special branch of philosophy"(610).

I, on the other hand, think that there is a particular class ofvalue judgments involved in art criticism (whether or not bythe professional critic) and plenty of justification for the existenceof a branch of philosophy to examine their meaning and groundand, if possible, to clarify and improve our reasoning aboutthem. This is, I think, the most fundamental difference in ourpositions.I. VALUE

The normative remarks that people make about works of artcharacteristically (and perhaps largely) consist of statements inwhich the word 'good' (together with its derivatives and nega-tives) is used in an attributive way: there is superb music, goodmusic, poor music, better and worse music. Since these state-ments purport to tell how good a work of art is, let us agree tocall them "judgments of artistic goodness." That such judgmentsoccur, that they have the function of appraising or (in a roughway) rating particular works of art, and that they possess a logicthat can be inquired into by metacritical theory-these points, Ibelieve, are not disputed by Hofstadter. But he does deny thatsuch judgments are the genuinely or centrally aesthetic judgmentsand that the study of their meaning and grounds is the propertask of aesthetics.Questions about genuineness and about proper tasks are notori-ously difficult to raise in a non-question-begging manner. I thinkit not irrelevant to observe, on the first point of disagreement,that to utter a judgment of artistic goodness is the niatural andusual way to point out the worth of a work of art-and not its



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BEAUTY AND AESTHETIC VALUE 619worth as propaganda or anything else, but its worth (or its suc-cess) as art. To call something "good music" must be to judgeit by essentially musical criteria; for when we say it is good musicwe are saying that it is good qua music, good music-wise, or inthe manner of music. Thus there must be a manner in which musicis good, considered simply as music, if there is such a thing as goodmusic.

And surely judgments of artistic goodness are aesthetic judg-ments. I don't quite know how this proposition is to be supported,when challenged-except that I do not see how any other formof statement could have a better claim to be an aesthetic judgmentthan the sort of statement that judges a work of art as a workof art. To say that music is good music is certainly not to makeany other kind of judgment, moral, political, financial, medical,or whatever.

As regards the other disputed point, about the proper task ofaesthetics, Hofstadter apparently thinks the subject has been per-verted from its true tradition. Perhaps so-though I think it is alittle odd to imply that Aristotle was not writing aesthetics in hisPoetics, which he sums up in his last sentence in a way that plainlyacknowledges the importance of judgments of artistic goodnessand the need to examine their meaning and grounds.' But sinceHofstadter concedes that there is work available for aesthetics inmy sense (metacriticism), though he does not regard it very highly,the question at issue (apart from the appropriation or misappro-priation of labels) is whether there is another job to be done byaesthetics in his sense.If it be granted that there are judgments of artistic goodness,whether or not they are genuinely aesthetic judgments, the nextquestion is what sort of judgment they are; and I say that they arejudgments of aesthetic value. Here again I collide with Hof-stadter 's position. It seems to me that to call a sequence ofsounds "good music" is to attribute to it a comparatively highdegree of a special sort of value, which might be called "musicalvalue. " And I take the general term 'aesthetic value ' to berelated to the specific term 'musical value' in this logical fashion:anything that has musical value has aesthetic value. Musicalvalue, poetic value, dramatic value, painting value, sculptural

1 " So much for tragic and epic poetry, their characteristics, . . . andthe causes of their being well [done, made] or not" (in terms of their specialartistic function, which is to produce their "proper pleasure," oikeia hedone).Butcher translates: " the causes that make a poem good or bad "; Fyfe:"the causes of success and failure '; G. F. Else: "the causes of artistic ex-cellelnce and the opposite. "



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620 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHYvalue, etc., are thus species of aesthetic value, just as aestheticvalue is a species of value in general.If there is something inherently faulty in the concept of aes-thetic value, I want to know what it is. We commonly discriminateamong various roughly defined species of value by terms like'medical (or therapeutic) value', 'nutritional value', 'economicvalue', and with the help of slightly awkward expressions, coinedfor certain purposes, I believe we can make sensible references toinnumerable other species of value: can-opening value, hair-part-ing value, oyster-opening value, etc. Aesthetic value seems to mean equally legitimate (and much more important) concept, namely,the capacity to provide valuable experiences of a certain sort(this definition does not, of course, show how to eliminate theterm 'value', and so is not strictly a naturalistic definition, but acontextualistic one). That is what we value works of art for,and why we are justified in valuing them. That is the end inview when we evaluate them or declare their value, and thecritic's plainest, most comprehensive, and incisive formula ofevaluation is precisely the judgment of artistic goodness.As far as I can see, Hofstadter's objection to the term 'aestheticvalue' is that its use involves a "confusion category" (608).And, if I make out his argument correctly, the confusion consistsin treating something as aesthetically valuable "because it con-duces to values that are themselves nonaesthetic" (609). I don'tsee any category confusion in this, any more than in ascribing medi-cal value to a drug because it is capable of restoring health, thoughhealth itself is not properly said to have medical value. True, mydefinition of aesthetic value makes it derivative or instrumental,and this may be a mistake, but it appears to me reasonable, andeven fairly innocuous, to say that works of art are, and shouldbe, highly prized on account of the experiences they afford. In-deed, I do not see how Hofstadter himself can escape it: whateverreasons he could give for his own normative statements about worksof art would certainly have to refer to what they can do to andfor those who have commerce with them.

II. " VALIDITY'The term "aesthetic validity" at first sounds a little strange tothose of us who are accustomed to the word 'valid' primarily inlogical and legal contexts ("a valid syllogism" or "a valid pass-port"). Mr. Hofstadter explicates it ihf a way close to Webster's"now rare"l sense: validity is a combination of force and fitting-ness: "a rightful power or a powerful right" (608 n). This

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BEAUTY AND AESTHETIC VALUE 621degrees, and to ascribe this property to them is to judge them inthe bessentially aesthetic way.

Hofstadter's theory of aesthetic validity has two aspects, onephenomenological, the other epistemological and semantic. Theyare closely connected, but distinguishable, and call, I think, fordifferent estimates of success.

Taken as a phenomenological description of aesthetic experi-ence, Hofstadter's theory has much to commend it. The rightful-ness aspect of aesthetic validity lies in the relations between theparts of the work, in their "fitness" for each other, so that theexperience evoked is an experience that they are, in some sense, theway they ought to be (612-614). Thus, to be aesthetically valid isto be "valid in and for intuitive feeling" (612). Certainly it istrue that in a good work of art there is this sort of rightness (thoughI think we should say, not that it is felt or intuited, but that it isperceived-heard or seen). The power aspect of validity has, forHofstadter, two phases: there is the power of spirit in the workitself, finding or creating its rightful form, and the power of thework itself to move the beholder-it "grips" us by its "cogency"(611). If we ask, then, in phenomenological terms, whether thereis such a thing as aesthetic validity, in this sense, the answer mustbe Yes: we experience it, and Hofstadter has called our attention,in fresh ways, to some of its important features.

But the theory goes beyond phenomenological description. ForHofstadter says that the aesthetically valid work of art has a"valid form" that "shows itself as the form of a content whichis a living spiritual power that exists in a condition of spiritualvalidity itself; the validity of the form thus constitutes the out-ward relevation of an inner validity of spiritual being" (610).Again, "What we discover through the revelation of aestheticallyvalid form is the union of power and right in spiritually validbeing" (616).

Here a revelation theory of art is imported into the concept ofaesthetic validity: the work becomes a manifestation, a symbol(615 n), of one ideal human condition-that in which man experi-ences the absoluteness of spiritually valid existence. Whetherthere is such a human condition is a question that goes beyond thepresent context; Hofstadter clearly has in mind a fully devel-oped philosophy of human life. But some questions must be raisedabout the connection between art and reality. The objectionsthat can be brought against revelation theories in general do notseem to have been taken into account in this version, though someof them are quite serious. Two are particularly pertinent here:



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622 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHYI believe that this revelation theory is both too abstract and toogeneral.The theory is too abstract in this way: what all beautiful worksof art reveal is, in the end, the same thing, namely spiritual validity.But it will not be enough to say this unless we then go on toexplain the difference between works of art. What is it that KingLear reveals and Macbeth does not? How does one work becomegreater, or more beautiful, than another-by being more powerful,more rightful, more revelatory, or revelatory of different things?And, finally, are there not many forms of life revealed in worksof literature-in different plays and poems, even in the same play,and not only through the characters and events, but in the verymeter and diction and structure? Some forms of life are lessvalid, presumably, than others, even among the great works:Dante's, Homer's, Lucretius's. What distinctions can the theoryprovide?The theory is also too general. I don't see how every workof art can be a revelation. I will grant that a tragic drama makesa direct allusion to the human condition, but can the same be saidfor a string quartet? It is always possible to achieve generalityof revelatory content by ascending to higher levels of abstraction:the string quartet exhibits order, and so reveals the order of theuniverse, etc. But if 'spiritual validity' has a more concrete andsubstantial meaning, then it does not seem extendable to everybeautiful work of art. Of course it may be said that the stringquartet does not contain references to reality, but is itself, as awhole, a reference-or a kind of symbol. But this view raisesdifficult problems.

For how does it come about that the work of art reflects "ex-istential validity" -how do we know that beauty is "truth regard-ing validity of (spiritual) being " (615 n) ? A work cannot becomea symbol without some symbol-making or symbol-forming process.It will not do, I think, to try to sink the epistemological or semioticquestion into the phenomenological one, with the help of an am-biguous word like 'show'. The fullest phenomenological descrip-tion of the aesthetic experience will give us only what is in theexperience; it will not justify our attributing to the work a ref-erence beyond itself to human life (which is implied in 'showing'),and still less will it justify our deriving from the work a truthabout human life (which may be implied in 'revealing'). Takenin its fullest and richest sense, Hofstadter's account of spirituallife working itself out in valid form is a fine description of whatwe may hear in music or see in painting, but it remains meta-phorical. Music has a life of its own, it moves and grows, it finds



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BEAUTY AND AESTIETIC VALUE 623its way, overcomes obstacles, resounds in exultant joy, comes to anlend'that suits its nature well, and so on. But these apt and vitalmetaphors do not warrant our taking the music as a manifestationof something else.I sympathize very much with Hofstadter's aim to show how artcontributes in a fundamental way to all our life. I am drawntoward those passages in his paper that indirectly remind me ofDewey-for example, of Dewey's idea that in aesthetic experiencethe incorporation of means into ends gives us a sort of modelof what life at its best can be. I would like to believe one verypregnant statement. After asserting that "one exists validly inperceiving the valid form, and one perceives the valid form in ex-isting validly. It is the same condition in both," Hofstadter says,"Here, at this stage, a human being solves the basic problem offorce and right in perfecting the activity of perception itself "(617). Granted that many of our social problems can be summedup as the problem of "rightful power" -how to make force sub-servient to justice-and that the subtle problems of the creativeartist can also be summed up as the problem of "rightful power"-how to harmonize the elements of an intense experience-I donot see how these problems can really be called one. And it maybe dangerous in the extreme to think that one of them can be"solved' or even partially solved, by solving the other.

III. BEAUTYWhat, finally, are we to make of the judgment of beauty? Is

beauty a "form of validity," or is it not'? I have had my momentsof impatience with such questions-utterances about beauty mustbe among the least rule-governed of all verbal behavior. Anyonewith enterprise and strength of mind can adopt the word andadapt it to his own purposes. So: what is beauty? It is pleasureobjectified, or unity in variety, or the ideal in sensuous form, orsuccessful expression, or the rightful power to make the innervalidity of spiritual life also valid for intuitive perception-orsomething else. And if one should say, No, beauty is not any ofthose things, and not anything like them, how would one makeone's case any more convincing than these-give it any less theappearance of being a verbal fiat? For it is easy enough to showthat people often apply the word 'beauty' very loosely andcapriciously, in a hit-or-miss fashion, according to momentarywhim, and quite inconsistently with one another.I think the explanation for this confusing usage is a simpleone. Suppose a person who is looking at the sea early one morn-ing, under special weather conditions, observes upon it a certain



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624 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHYpeculiar quality-it has that sort of look, then and there-andgives it a name or description. Let us say that it pervades thescene, but only for a short time; it returns, but often less intense;it appears unexpectedly and often very briefly; it must be lookedat with some attention to be seen, and perhaps few persons arepresent when it appears or have the inclination to attend or canrecall it very distinctly afterward or describe it with great ac-curacy. One can imagine a particular adjective coming, but gradu-ally and insecurely, to designate that quality among those who areacquainted with it, but we can be sure that such an adjective willhave all the vagaries of 'beautiful': it will often be misapplied bythose who think they are talking about the same quality when theyare not; there will be frustrating disputes between those who haveeyes to see its evanescent presence on a particular morning andthose who are less perceptive, or between those whose mood on thatoccasion opens them to a response and those who are in a contraryor unsuitable mood. More importantly, the adjective may com-monly be applied to a range of similar though distinct qualities;and efforts to agree upon a set of necessary and sufficient condi-tions for its application will be frustrated. It will no doubt evenbe argued with some cogency, once it is realized that those whoclaim to have seen this quality have found it precious, and cherishtheir recollection, that there was no quality at all, but that intalking about it, they have merely been expressing their emotions-another way of carolling "Oh, what a beautiful morning !"

If beauty is such a perceptual quality, similarly variable inintensity and sometimes difficult or impossible for some people toperceive, then judgments of beauty can be expected to have all thepeculiarities they do in fact have. This explanation seems to methe best one available; moreover, I believe it can be supported inde-pendently. To set out more points of disagreement for discussion,I shall state some propositions about beauty and defend thembriefly. Except for the last one, it is not so much their truth astheir importance (or interest) that Hofstadter would question; butif they are true they have a bearing on the nature of aestheticjudgment. To sum them up, I shall argue that beauty is a simpleregional perceptual quality, which is a sufficient but not a neces-sary condition of aesthetic value.

1. Beauty is a perceivable quality. We use the adjective'beautiful' most normally in response to questions like "How doesit look?" "How does it sound?" The beauty of the sculpture isseen in it; of music, is heard. (I do not think that it can besmelt or tasted.) We may be able in an indirect way to persuade



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BEAUTY AND AESTHETIC VALUE 625someone by argument that a sculpture contains a beauty he cannotsee (by adducing the testimony of others, for example), but weregard this as somewhat futile unless we can point it out tohim, make him see it for himself. It follows that any property ofart (including "validity"?) that cannot be perceived-but mustbe felt or inferred-is something quite different from beauty.2. Beauty is a regional (or emergent) quality, that is, a qualityof a complex: of a melody or visual design. A single sound cannotstrictly be beautiful, I think, though it can be pleasing. I say thisdespite the famous passage in which Plotinus 2 argues that sym-metry cannot be the essential perceptual condition of beauty be-cause in that case simple qualities, like a color, a star, or gold,could not be beautiful. Perhaps Plotinus was right-then at leastI would claim that beauty cannot appear in a very intense degreeexcept when it is a regional quality. (I don't see, by the way,how there would be beauty in, say, a single tone on Hofstadter'sview, either; a single tone could not have "rightness," since it hasneither parts nor context.)

3. Though it is a quality of a complex, beauty is itself a simplequality. I don't know how to prove this convincingly, but cer-tainly beauty can be present in various degrees, and on occasionwe can observe its increase. Take an amateur pianist practicingthe slow movement of a Mozart sonata. At first he is inaccurate,then accurate but mechanical, then freer and more expressive inphrasing. As we listen, his successive performances become moreand more beautiful-and if we were given tape recordings of themall, jumbled up, we could rearrange them in order of beauty. Thissuggests to me that we are going by a single quality to establisha single dimension.Plotinus, in the passage mentioned above, was replying to atheory that was in his time principally maintained by the Stoics. Ithink it noteworthy that these classical philosophers, in discussingthe question of the relation between beauty and symmetry,s wereusually clear about the sort of question they were asking. Plotinusdoes not ask, for example, "What is beauty?" or "Is beauty simpleor complex'?" He asks, "What is it that gives comeliness tomaterial forms?" He answers that an object becomes unified byparticipation in the Ideal (Platonic) Forms, and "on what hasthus been compacted to unity, Beauty enthrones itself, giving itselfto the parts as to the sum. . . ." He means, I take it, not that

2 The Enneads, trans. MacKenna and Page, 2d ed. rev. (London: Faberand Faber, 1956), I, vi, 1 (p. 56).

3 Plato in the Philebus; Aristotle in the Poetics (briefly); Plotinus inEnnead I, Tractate vi.



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626 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHYbeauty can be defined as unity or as participation in the Forms,but that unity (whether of the homogeneous or the heterogeneous)is the perceptual condition of supervenient beauty.4. A fairly high degree of beauty is a sufficient condition of afairly high degree of aesthetic value. Anyone who can say thatthis is a beautiful piece of music can also say that it is a good pieceof music. I admit that a comparatively uncomplicated poem maybe quite beautiful, without ranking among the best poems, but ifit is quite beautiful then it is quite good. Note that, with certainassumptions, this point and the previous one might be used tosupport point 2 above. The argument would be this: The con-ditions of being a good poem are multiple-it must have not only apervasive quality (like beauty), but also coherence and complete-ness, in some measure, and a degree of complexity, in the formof subtlety and richness of meaning. But beauty is simple.Therefore, if beauty in a poem is sufficient to make it good, thatmust be because beauty has itself complex conditions that are alsoconditions of poetic goodness. But the conclusion does not neces-sarily follow, because some degree of complexity is necessary, notonly for being a good poem, but for being a poem-and similarlyfor other aesthetic objects. If a single note on a flute or Frenchhorn can be beautiful, it nevertheless cannot be beautiful music,for it is not music.

5. Beauty is not a necessary condition of aesthetic value. Thisproposition is strongly objected to by Hofstadter, whose charitableimpulses are aroused when he observes "how homeless an orphanbeauty has become in contemporary aesthetic terminology" (609).I thought that I had provided adequate shelter for beauty when Isaid that it was one ground of aesthetic value, but evidently itcraves to be an only child. (In any case, I believe I treat beautyno more harshly or slightingly than the British aestheticians of theeighteenth century). In my view, other qualities besides beautyare grounds of aesthetic value. For example, there is the sublime,which is something different. Expressiveness-that is, the posses-sion of intense regional qualities-I take to be broader than beauty.I realize that Hofstadter may reply that what many people callexpressiveness is really part of what he means by 'beauty'. Howmuch of the issue here is verbal is a subtle question. But for mypart I believe that the gradual recognition of expressiveness (notexpression-a different thing) in the past few centuries has in-volved not a mere narrowing of the term 'beauty' but a widehingof the scope of the aesthetic.



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BEAUTY AND AESTHETIC VALUE 627But I am afraid that this is not enough to let me escape from thetrouble into which I am plunged by Hofstadter's attack-and byhis charge that I confuse "the stuff of the work and the workitself ' (609). When I try to give examples of excellent (or, ifHofstadter prefers, highly successful) works of art that are never-

theless not properly called "beautiful," his answrer s that, thoughthe "stuff" (or subject) may not be beautiful, the work itselfnevertheless is. At the risk of some unorthodoxy, I would like tosay whv I do not wholly accept this criticism. There are threetypes of case to consider.

First, consider nonrepresentational works of visual or auditoryart. In these, we cannot confuse the subject with the work itself,since there is no subject. Yet I would say, for example, thatBeethoven's Great Fugue (Op. 133) should not be called "beauti-ful, though it is a tremendous piece of music, a great and excellentwork. Parts of it have beauty, but as a whole it glories in itspower, its dramatic intensity, its drive and pent-up energy. Asto visual art, let me invoke the support of Henry Moore, in apassage quoted by Harold Osborne:For me a work must first have vitality of its own. I do not mean a reflectionof the vitality of life, of movement, physical action, frisking, dancing figuresand so on, but that a work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life ofits own, independent of the object it may represent. When a work has thispowerful vitality we do not connect the word Beauty with it. Beauty, in thelater Greek or Renaissance sense, is not the aim of my sculpture.4

Second, consider literary works of art. In these, I cannot beconffusing the subject with the work itself, since what is true of thesubject is true of the work. How can we distinguish between thedrama Oedipus Rex and the fate of (Sophocles') Oedipus ?5 Forthat fate is what the play is about, and thus it is what the play(in part) is. "Oedipus discovers his crimes and blinds himself"describes what is going on in the play; it is the play's tragicsubstance. If the events that make up a play are tragic, or comic,or farcical, how can the play fail to be tragedy, comedy, or farce?

4Theory of Beauty (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), p. 14.This fassage illustrates one of the two senses of 'beauty' distinguished byOsborne. which I hold to be the usual and useful one. One example from acritic: Bernard Berenson (Italian Painters of the Renaissance, Oxford:Clarendcon Press, 1930) uses the word 'beauty' nine times in his two pagespraising Simone Martini (pp. 162-163), but in his six pages praising Giottomuch more highly (pp. 64-65, 69-73) he does not once attribute beauty toGiotto 's paintings.

,"We can of course distinguish between Euripides's story of Medea andthe traditional one, since he invented Medea 's murder of her children, butthe murder is then part of the subject of the play.



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628 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHYAnd it seems to me peculiar to say that Oedipus Rex is a beautifulplay, even thougyh t is a great play.

Third, consider representational paintings. Certainly we maydistinguish between the subject and the painting, or at any ratebetween what is depicted and the design that depicts it.6 Andthere are some nice questions about the connection between them.A visual design can depict certain things without actually havingthe properties depicted: for example, a picture of a 100-foot towerneed not itself be 100 feet high. But a picture of a red dress hasto be red. And in the example given by Henry Moore, it seems tome that a work could not go far toward representing a physicalaction that has vitality unless it presented vitality as a quality,though of course it could be vital as a design without representinganything at all. Now, what is the logical connection between "Xis a beautiful picture" and "X is a picture of a beautiful object"?To show the object as beautiful, the depicter must assemble linesand areas that will look to some extent beautiful, as the objectitself would presumably look (because of its lines and shapes) ifwe were to see it; and the lines and shapes that depict an uglyobject can do so only by being themselves ugly.

Suppose, then, that in offering the Griunewald example I hadmade this inference: "Since the Crucifixion as depicted by Grune-wald is not beautiful, the painting is not beautiful." Would suchan inference really be fallacious? I don't say that one cannotpaint a beautiful picture of the Crucifixion-other painters havedepicted that event as far less terrible than Griunewald-but onlythat, to do so, one will either have to depict a beautiful Crucifixionor else bring into the picture other areas than those that depictthe Crucifixion. However, I did not mean to legitimize this ex-ample by an inference, fallacious or not, from subject to painting,but rather to appeal to the careful observer's reflective judgment.Do we not wish to praise this painting in some way other than bysaying that it is beautiful? I do. Possibly that is because mynarrower use of the term tempts me to miss something in thepainting that is more easily seen by one who uses Hofstadter'sterms. Possibly it is because the narrower use makes room forthe recognition that there is no one character that stamps allgreat works of art, but an unlimited variety of aesthetically valu-able qualities.

MONROE C. BEARDSLEYSWARTHMORE COLLEGE6 I use the term 'depict' in the slightly technical sense (distinguished from

that of 'portray') assigned to it in Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophyof Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958), ch. 6.

beardsley - beauty and value (1962)

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