Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

On the Generality of Critical Reasons

Author(s): Monroe C. Beardsley
Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 59, No. 18 (Aug. 30, 1962), pp. 477-486
Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2023219 .
Accessed: 24/01/2011 00:15
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jphil. .
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal
of Philosophy.

http://www.jstor.org

VOLUME

LIX, No. 18

AUGUST

30, 1962

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

ON THE GENERALITY OF CRITICAL REASONS

IF

giving reasons for an assertion consists in making other assertions and also asserting that they support it, then critics evidently give reasons for their judgments of art. To doubt this is
to urge a stricter concept of reason-giving, according to which
not every proposition that is alleged to be a reason actually is one.
But then, using the narrower definition, we can still say that
critics wish to give reasons, and think they are doing so, whether
or not they succeed. Whichever way we put it, the critic implicitly makes the same essential claim: namely, that his judgments
can be supported in some way by other propositions.
This claim is challenged by the Critical Skeptic. The form
of his challenge depends on the latitude given to the term 'reason',
but its substance is the same. A few years ago, a colleague of
mine and I engaged in correspondence with an English gentleman,
author of a monograph entitled Shakespeare's Hyphens,' who
pointed out to us that Shakespeare used a great many hyphenated
words and that this practice was also followed by Walt Whitman
and Dylan Thomas. Our correspondent argued at one point:
the more hyphens, the greater the poet. Now, suppose a critic
were to propose the following: This poem is poor, because it is
deficient in hyphens. We may choose to say that this is not a
reason at all, because it is so wildly irrelevant; in this sense of
"reason," the skeptic's position is that no reasons can be given
for critical judgments. On the other hand, we may take a more
charitable view, and call this a reason simply because it is offered
as one; in this broad sense, the skeptic's position is that no good,
or cogent, reasons can be given for critical judgments.
The critical skeptic may remind us of Wordsworth's assurance,
in his 1800 Preface, that he was not "principally influenced by the
selfish and foolish hope of reasoning him [i.e., the reader] into an
approbation of these particular Poems." 2 Now this was a some* This paper was presented at the Northwest Division of the American
Society for Aesthetics, Washington State University, April 20-21, 1962.
1 L. C. Thompson, Shakespeare's Hyphens
(London: Amalgamated
Authors).
2 Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1800), in Complete Poetical Works (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), vol. X, p. 5.

Copyright 1962 by Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

477

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPH1Y

478

what peculiar remark in the first place. The hope of reasoning

someone into an approbation might conceivably be "selfish" (if
Wordsworth were merely aiming to increase his royalties), but
it is "foolish" only if we take 'approbation' in the sheer sense of
liking. "How can anyone be argued into liking Wordsworth's
'We are Seven'?" the skeptic asks. But I should think that the
aim of the reasoner-that is, the critic armed with reasons-is
not to get people to like the poem, but to get them to acknowledge
that it is good. And the question is whether his reasons-or
alleged reasons-are of service to him in this enterprise.
I don't think that the skeptic's position, Cartesian though it
may in some respects appear, can be disposed of by a simple appeal
to paradigm cases. We might try this argument against him:
Granted that the number of hyphens does not make a poem poor
(or good), still that's not the sort of thing critics usually say.
Consider a principle enunciated by Cleanth Brooks:
A poem, then, to sum up, is to be judged, not by the truth or falsity as such,
of the idea which it incorporates, but rather by its character as drama-by
its coherence, sensitivity, depth, richness, and tough-mindedness.3

Now, suppose the critic says, "This poem is poor because it is

incoherent." If that is not a good reason for condemning a poem,
what could be a good reason? Doesn't critical skepticism imply
that the expression 'good reason' has no application at all in
critical discourse? But surely this term must have some application, or we would never have learned how to use it.
If this sort of argument is ever persuasive, I'm afraid that
aesthetics is the last place in which to employ it. Probably a fair
number of philosophers would be quite ready to label the whole
body of critical reasoning a misuse of language. Let us assume
that there must be some examples of good reasons, if we can speak
intelligibly of good reasons; but it might well be that all of the
examples are to be found in other fields than criticism, and that
none of the arguments in, say, The Well Wrought Urn, come near
to meeting the high standards that are exemplified in legal reasoning, or ethics, or the game-theory of nuclear deterrence. Noif we are going to be able to make sense of what the critic does
when he gives reasons, and back him up with a philosophical account of how those reasons really work, we must grapple more
closely with the skeptic's arguments.
I
The general problem of justifying the critic's appeal to reasons
is, of course, large and complex. I propose to deal with only one
3

The Well Wrought Um (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1947), p. 229.

OUNTHE GENERALITY OF CRITICAL REASONS

479

of its parts-but one that has received some attention in the past
few years.
To pass over a number of preliminary matters, let me first say
that I hold that the critic does make value judgments and does
sometimes adequately support them by good reasons. A reason is
some descriptive or interpretive proposition about the work under
consideration-" The poem is incoherent," for example. Thus a
reason always cites some property of the work, and we may say
that this property is then employed as a criterion of value by the
critic who presents that reason. Criteria cited in reasons supporting favorable judgments are merits; criteria cited on behalf
of unfavorable judgments are defects. If the critic says, "This
poem is poor because (among other things) is it incoherent," then
he is treating incoherence as a poetic defect. A critical criterion
is thus a feature that helps to make the work good or bad, better
or worse; it adds to or detracts from its aesthetic goodness.
This is the position that the skeptic rejects. He holds that, in
the sense proposed, there are no criteria of aesthetic value, that is,
of goodness or badness in poems, paintings, plays, music, etc.
Some skeptics like to invoke John Wisdom's distinction, in another
context, between what he called "dull" and "interesting" ways of
talking about art. A book about art, says Wisdom, "is dull when
it tries to set out in general terms what makes a good picture good'"
by giving "rules"' or "canons."'
This, by itself, is something of
an obiter dictum, but it can be given plausible and perhaps rather
convincing support.
If one proposition is a reason for another, in the sense of actually supporting it, then there must be a logical connection of some
sort between them. And, being a logical connection, it must relate
general concepts in an abstract way. Thus, for example, if a
certain degree of sharpness is a merit in knives (we can think of
a particular sort of knife, such as the butcher's), then to say that
a knife has that degree of sharpness must always be a reason to
support the conclusion that it is good, and it must apply to all
knives of the relevant sort. This reason may not be enough to
prove that the knife is good, since the merit may be outweighed
by serious defects, but sharpness to that degree will always make
its contribution to the goodness of the knife. It will, at least,
never be a fault in a knife: that is, we cannot say, "That knife
is poor, just because it is exactly that sharp." And, of two knives
similar in all other respects, if one is sharp and the other is not,
the former will be a better knife than the other. Thus sharpness
is a general merit in knives.
4 See his paper in the symposium on "Things and Persons,"
of the Aristotelian Society, Supplement, 22 (1948): 207.

Proceedings

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

480

Generality of this sort appears to be essential to reasons in the

logical sense, and if critical criteria are defined as features citable
in reasons, then there must be an important sense in which such
criteria are general, too. Thus the view that there are reasons that
support the critic 's judgment entails the view that there are general
criteria of evaluation. Let us call this view the General Criterion
Theory. It is a main target of the critical skeptic's attack.
As my main text for examination, I shall select the very
forthright statement by Mr. William E. Kennick, in his article,
"Does Traditional Aesthetics Rest on a Mistake ? " 5 In this
article, Mr. Kennick holds that there are no "general rules,
standards, criteria, canons, or laws applicable to all works of
art by which alone such critical appraisals can be supported"
(329). And he goes on to say this:
Ordinarily we feel no constraint in praising one novel for its verisimilitude,
another for its humour, and still another for its plot or characterization....
Botticelli 's lyric grace is his glory, but Giotto and Chardin are not to be
condemned because their poetry is of a different order. . . . Different works
of art are, or may be, praiseworthy or blameworthy for different reasons,
and not always for the same reasons. A quality that is praiseworthy in one
painting may be blameworthy in another; realism is not always a virtue,
but this does not mean that it is not sometimes a virtue (331).6

The problem, then, is this: Do critical reasons have a kind of

generality of application, so that it makes sense to try to formulate
principles of criticism? I believe they do. Mr. Kennick, like a
number of other recent writers, believes they do not. Now, if they
do not, there are two possibilities. Some philosophers, including
Mr. Kennick, hold that we can still talk of giving reasons in
particular cases (that is, supporting the judgment that this or that
poem is good or poor), without committing ourselves to any general principles at all. Others, however, hold (and I think with
more reason) that some form of generality is essential to reasongiving and, therefore, that if there are no general criteria, there
can be no critical criteria at all. My aim is to examine the
arguments against the General Criterion Theory.
Before coming to them, however, it may be helpful to remind
ourselves that the issue has two close analogues in other fields of
philosophy, no less troublesome elsewhere than this is here. First,
there is the problem of the universalizability of ethical judgments.
317-334.
"Critical Reasons," Philosophical Quarterly, 11
(1961): 74-79; this is a reply to Dorothy Walsh, "Critical Reasons," Philosophical Beview, 69 (1960): 386-393: "There is no characteristic which is
amenable to independent explanation and which by its presence enhances the
aesthetic value of paintings or of any sub-class of paintings" (77).
5

Mind, 67 (1958):

6 Cf. Mary Mothersill,

ON THE GENERALITY OF CRITICAL REASONS

481

Some writers have contended that it is precisely the difference

between ethical judgment and critical judgment that one is general
and the other is not,7 but there does seem to be a similar problem
in ethics. When we blame a man for not keeping an appointment, are we committed to the universalization of an implicit principle? Most moral philosophers would say we are; and the principle is something like: Anyone else in circumstances that do not
differ in relevant ways from this one would be equally to blame.
The problem is to provide an adequate criterion of relevance,
without circularity. We want to say, for example, that having a
different color skin is not relevant, while having been knocked
down by a truck is relevant. Is there an analogous kind of implicit
commitment involved in criticism? (And I don't mean when we
blame the painter, but when we set a low estimate on his work.)
Second, there is the problem of the relation between singular
causal statements and general laws. According to the traditional
view, singular causal statements (such as, 'Dropping caused that
pitcher to break') are, and must be, applications of universal lawlike statements, even if we cannot formulate the latter completely
('Whenever a pitcher of this sort is dropped in this way, it will
break'). But in recent years some philosophers have suggested
that we may be able to know singular causal statements, without
relying on any general laws. Historical explanations are sometimes alleged to be of this sort. I would be happy to avoid this
broad and complicated issue, but there is more than an analogy between my aesthetic problem and the causal problem: the former
is in fact a special case of the latter. For, speaking very sketchily,
I conceive the peculiar aesthetic goodness of a work of art to consist of its capacity to provide experiences with certain desirable
qualities; and the criteria of critical evaluation are simply features
that tend to contribute to or detract from this capacity. Hence,
according to my theory, there is a causal relationship involved in
the notion of critical criteria. And since I side with those who
think that some generalized lawful relationships are essential to
individual causal actions, by the same token I must suppose that
a criterion can be relevant to the value of a particular work of art
only if some generality of bearing lurks (so to speak) in the
background.
II
A fundamental point alleged against the General Criterion
Theory is that works of art are unique. Frequent repetition has
7 The writer most often quoted is Stuart Hampshire, "Logic and Appreciation, " in William Elton, ed., Aesthetics and Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1954).

482

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

not worn off the oddness of this statement. It can be construed

in several ways-of which the most sensible are the most pointless.
Mary Mothersill and Ruby Meager have analyzed and criticized
it very effectively, and I need not review what they have said.8
No doubt works of art-if we confine our attention to the good
ones-tend to have a comparatively high degree of individuality,
at least as compared with knives and typewriters. Because there
are many human acts that may be called acts of promise-keeping,
we can speak of general moral rules. But perhaps there are no
genuine classes of aesthetic objects, such as poems and paintings
(this seems to be the extreme neo-Crocean view)-or perhaps the
members of each class differ so much from one another that no
features can be found that are desirable in all or most of them.
But there are genuine classes of aesthetic objects, and their
members share important properties. I don't see why we cannot
admit that visual designs vary enormously in many ways, without
denying that certain fundamental laws of perception may be at
work in all of them. I should think that people and their moral
predicaments are at least as different as poems, yet we can say
that courage is a virtue in anyone in whom it may be found.
There is an interesting phrase that turns up here and there.
For example: "A good critic is one who can discern the peculiar
excellence of a particular work."" Now what is meant by 'the
peculiar excellence' of a work? If it means (as I should think
it must) an excellence that no other existing work happens to
have-then of course many works do have peculiar excellences.
(Many also have excellences that are not peculiar to them.) But
the existence of such excellences does not in any way contradict
the General Criterion Theory. On the other hand, if it means
instead a quality that is an excellence in this work, but that, if
it appeared in any other work, could not be an excellence-then I
have seen no convincing proof that there are "peculiar excellences"
in this sense.
Let us now turn back to Mr. Kennick's propositions and examples. I think his paper contains at least four distinguishable
arguments against the General Criterion Theory, each going a little
beyond the previous one.
8 See Ruby Meager, "The Uniqueness of a Work of Art," Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, 59 (1959): 49-70, and Mary Mothersill, " 'Unique'
as an Aesthetic Predicate," this JOURNAL, 58 (1961): 421-437. Cf. Albert
Tsugawa, "The Objectivity of Aesthetic Judgments," Philosophical Review,
70 (1961): 3-22, esp. 11-12.
9See Mary Mothersill, op. cit., 428; this sentence appears in her formulation of the argument for the less radical form of the Autonomy Theory.

ON THE GENERALITY OF CRITICAL REASONS

483

The first argument is this: the General Criterion Theory can't

be true because there are no single features of poetry, for example,
that are either necessary or sufficient conditions of goodness.'0
That no single feature is sufficient I am prepared to grant at once.
That there is no necessary feature I am not prepared to grant
without qualification: for example, I have argued that some degree
of coherence is a necessary condition of being a poem at all, and a
fortiori of being a good poem." I suppose, however, that it could
be replied, by way of putting this qualification in its place, that
no special degree of coherence is necessary to make a poem a
good poem. In any case, I shall waive my objection and concede
for the sake of argument that there are no necessary or sufficient
single conditions of poetic goodness. Does it follow that the General Criterion Theory is wrong?
The answer seems sufficiently obvious. Though a given feature
may be present in some poor poems and absent from some good ones,
so that it neither guarantees poetic goodness nor is indispensable
to it, nevertheless it may contribute to the goodness of any poem
that contains it and, thus, may be citable as a merit wherever it
can be found. A man may be good without being magnanimous,
and he may be magnanimous without being good; but that doesn't
show that magnanimity is not a virtue in anyone who has it, and
to the degree in which he has it. So, too, not every good poem
has " depth, " to recall one of the terms quoted from Cleanth Brooks
above, and not every deep poem is good-yet depth may always be
a good thing, as far as it goes.
The second argument given by Mr. Kennick involves a shift of
ground: What if different features are merits in different contexts?
-humor in one case, he suggests, tragic intensity in another. Or
lyric grace in one painting, heroic strength in another. Does this
refute the possibility of general criteria? I think not. Lyric
grace may nevertheless always be a good thing when it can be had,
and heroic strength likewise-only it may turn out that they cannot both be had in the same painting, or not without being watered
down or confused. The General Criterion Theory certainly need
not deny that there are qualitatively different merits that cannot
always be combined. We admire one person's physical courage
and another person's sensitivity to others, but we find few, if any,
who combine both of these virtues to a high degree. So with two
10 This seems to be the main point of A. G. Pleydell-Pearce, " On the
Limits and Use of 'Aesthetic Criteria'," Philosophical Quarterly, 9 (1959):
29-45.
11 See "The Definitions of the Arts," Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, 20 (Winter, 1961): 175-187.

484

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

of Brooks's criteria-'-"sensitivity"
and "tough-mindedness":
poems that excel in one of these are perhaps not likely to excel in
the other.
The third argument is also Mr. Kennick's-and this time he
belongs to a larger company.12 What if there are features that are
merits in some works, but not merits at all in other works? Take
realism, Mr. Kennick suggests: sometimes it is a merit, sometimes
not. But this does not tell against the General Criterion Theory
if we complicate the theory in an easy and convenient way.
There are features of poems, and there are pairs and clusters of
features. And some contribute value, so to speak, on their own,
while others do so only in combination. This principle has an
application in many walks of life, as G. E. Moore pointed out some
time ago. It's like saying that you don't want butter without
bread, or bread without butter, but only the two together. We can
say that bread is not desirable, and butter is not desirable, but
bread-and-butter is desirable; or we can say that butter is sometimes desirable (namely, when there's bread) and sometimes not
(namely, when there isn't).
Thus we should not be surprised to find specific features that
may be good in one poem but neutral in another: their goodness
depends upon association with other cooperative features. Mr.
Kennick's example, realism, is a broad notion, so it's not clear
exactly what sort of judgment he has in mind when he says that
"Realism is not always a virtue." In some of its senses, I'm
not sure that realism is ever a strictly literary virtue (or, as I
would prefer to say, merit-Mr. Kennick's moralistic terms 'virtue'
and 'blameworthy' do not seem to me appropriate to the eritical
context). But a critic might justifiably cite an author's discriminating ear for four-letter words as a merit in, say, Tropic of
Cancer, where certain types of situation and character are present,
though he would not, of course, wish to say that their introduction
would improve The Wings of the Dove or The Mill on the Floss.
III
The fourth argument against the General Criterion Theory
takes us a little beyond the third-though, in fact, the examples
I have just given would serve for it as well. Suppose there are
features that are merits in one work and actually defects in another. The touch of humor that is just right in one play is just
12 For example, Helen Knight, "The Use of 'Good' in Aesthetic Judgments," in William Elton, ed., op. cit., pp. 155-156; J. A. Passmore, "The
Dreariness of Aesthetics," ibid., 49, 51-52; J. Kemp, "Generalization in the
Philosophy of Art, " Philosophy, 33 (1958): 152.

ON THE GENERALITY OF CRITICAL REASONS

485

exactly wrong in another-and so with the four-letter words.

How then can there be any general criteria, or true propositions
of the form: 'Humor is always a good-enhancing feature'? The
General Criterion Theory can meet this objection by one more
complication that is natural and sensible. Some criteria are subordinate to others, as constituting their perceptual conditions. For
example, suppose the touch of humor (the grave-digger's gags,
the drunken porter at the gate) is a merit in one context because
it heightens the dramatic tension, but a defect in another context, where it lets the tension down. Then we may admit that
the touch of humor is not a general merit, but only because we
also admit that something else is a general merit (in a play, that
is)-namely,
high dramatic tension. Remember that this does
not mean that dramatic tension is either a necessary or sufficient
condition of being a good play, nor does it mean that this desirable
feature can be combined with all other desirable features, nor does
it mean that all plays that lack a high degree of it would necessarily
become better by increasing it, for some plays might thereby lose
some other quality that especially adorns them. The point is that
the General Criterion Theory can easily take account of such variations as the skeptic points out-providing it is allowed to fall
back upon more general and, so to speak, more fundamental
criteria.
We may distinguish two ranks of critical criteria, then, in the
following way: Let us say that the properties A, B, C are the
primary (positive) criteria of aesthetic value if the addition of
any one of them or an increase in it, without a decrease in any
of the others, will always make the work a better one. And let us
say that a given property X is a secondary (positive) criterion of
aesthetic value if there is a certain set of other properties such
that, whenever they are present, the addition of X or an increase
in it will always produce an increase in one or more of the primary
criteria.
Notice that each of these definitions is formulated in such a way
that it contains the word 'always' in an important position and,
therefore, that they both define general criteria in an important
sense. But the secondary criteria are subordinate and conditional:
it is only in certain contexts that, for example, elegant variation
is a fault of style. (However, some of these secondary criteria
are quite broad in their relevance.) The primary criteria, on
the other hand, always contribute positively to the value of a
work, in so far as they are present. And their absence is always
a deficiency, however it may be made up in other ways. Thus I
think that Paul Ziff is precisely correct when he says:

THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

486

Some good paintings are somewhat disorganized; they are good in spite of
the fact that they are somewhat disorganized. But no painting is good
because it is disorganized, and many are bad primarily because they are disorganized.13

Disorganization, by this exact description, is a primary (negative)

critical criterion.
There is a danger that such a discussion as this may unintentionally confirm John Wisdom 's remark that talk about "canons"
and "rules" is "dull." I don 't insist that it is interestingonly that it is possible and reasonable. The act of judging-in
the sense of appraising-works of art is certainly not a purely
intellectual act, and many elements of talent and training are
required to perform it well. But it is, in part, a rational act,
for it involves reasoning.
MONROE C. BEARDSLEY
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE

COMMENTS AND CRITICISM

THE IDENTITY

OF MIND AND BODY

OULD mental states be brain processes?" This is the title

'
question of an article by Jerome Shaffer.* Before attempting to answer this question we should first consider what kind of
question it is. That is, what kind of approach is required in order
to arrive at a satisfactory answer? Is it, for example, an empirical
question? That is, is arriving at a satisfactory answer an empirical
matter? Shaffer seems to think that it is and also claims that those
who hold the Identity Theory, i.e., the theory that mental states
are identical with certain physical processes such as brain processes,
consider the problem expressed by the question to be a matter
of empirical fact. But let us see whether it is or not.
One necessary condition of the identity of mental phenomena
with some kind of physical phenomena is that there be, using
Feigl's terminology, a one-to-one "simultaneity-correspondence between the mental and the physical." However, this one-to-one
correspondence need not be between each mental phenomenon and
some one physical phenomenon. It might be between. each mental
cfc1

13 "Reasons in Criticism," in Israel Scheffler, ed., Philosophy and Eduration (Boston: Allvn and Bacon, 1958), p. 220.
* "Could Mental States be Brain Processes I," this JOURNAL, 58 (1961),
26: 813. Unless otherwise noted, all page references will be to this article.