Aesthetic Judgment

Authors keep speaking and spinning around in my head: Goldman; Plato; Jameson; Adorno and Horkheimer; and Arendt. I am beginning to think maybe we should outlaw all forms of aesthetics. (Wouldn’t Marx be happy?) The discourse concerning aesthetics, and their undermining of society has been going on since 360 B.C.E. In book ten of Plato’s Republic, we are instructed how the arts are detrimental to man’s higher pursuits. My paper is supposed to be on aesthetic judgment, but how can I write about aesthetic judgment if Goldman is correct and “There Are No Aesthetic Principles?” 

I bring Goldman’s article, “There Are No Aesthetic Principles” into this critical essay because he states: Genuine principles for aesthetic evaluation objective, nonevaluative properties of artworks to overall evaluation of the works that would be universally required by the presence of these properties… Ultimately, justifications of aesthetic judgments must appeal to such objective properties and relationships and, when pressed hard enough, this is what the critics do appeal to: structural properties of tones, shapes and colors, or text, and relations between these and similar properties in other works. (Goldman 299) 

 I see in Goldman a possible rebuttal to the other scholars I reference in this paper. In addition, if there aren’t any aesthetic principles then there is room in which some qualified reader or ideal critic could employ aesthetic evaluation to say I may have something to add to the body of work known as literature. While I use words instead of a canvas, I still rely on structural and objective properties that are contained within aesthetic judgments. Where this article is an area of concern for me is that there aren’t any aesthetic principles. There is no definite set of rules that say my work is of worth. No 2+2=4, just the “casual laws” and the critic’s knowledge of the historical relation, thereby suggests that my work echoes a better-known poet’s work. I understand the need for context, that, let’s say Anne Sexton, my favorite female poet, and the critic’s ability, and my relevance to that of Anne’s work, still will not be enough to make my work adhere to a particular set of aesthetic principles. I am fortunate, though, for this lack of principle, in that I would have no need for my aesthetic sensibility. I would just use a poem-by-the-numbers formula. I would be more widely accepted, but the spirit of my work would be non-existent. 

Plato’s Book 10 of The Republic sets the stage for why aesthetics should be banned from society. Book 10 contains some important quotes I would like to include here: …all poetical imitations are ruinous to the understanding of the hearers, and that the knowledge of their true nature is the only antidote to them… And the painter too is, as I conceive, just such another --a creator of appearances, is he not…he was not speaking the truth…And the tragic poet is an imitator, and therefore, like all other imitators, he is thrice removed from the king and from the truth… a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyse the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation… Then must we not infer that all these poetical individuals, beginning with Homer, are only imitators; they copy images of virtue and the like, but the truth they never reach? The poet is like a painter who, as we have already observed, will make a likeness of a cobbler though he understands nothing of cobbling; and his picture is good enough for those who know no more than he does, and judge only by colours and figures… And now we may fairly take him and place him by the side of the painter, for he is like him in two ways: first, inasmuch as his creations have an inferior degree of truth --in this, I say, he is like him; and he is also like him in being concerned with an inferior part of the soul; and therefore we shall be right in refusing to admit him into a well-ordered State, because he awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason. As in a city when the evil are permitted to have authority and the good are put out of the way, so in the soul of man, as we maintain, the imitative poet implants an evil constitution, for he indulges the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less, but thinks the same thing at one time great and at another small-he is a manufacturer of images and is very far removed from the truth… And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other affections, of desire and pain and pleasure, which are held to be inseparable from every action ---in all of them poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled, if mankind is ever to increase in happiness and virtue. (Plato, The Republic) 

Jameson’s “Reification in Mass Culture” reminds me of several pieces I have read or viewed. Another piece that was brought to mind was the article by Adorno and Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: enlightenment as mass deception.” The editor’s note states, “…It offers a vision of society that has lost its capacity to nourish true freedom and individuality” (Horkheimer). The article is, in a sense, proof of Plato’s correct assumption about what happens if the arts are allowed to flourish and take over the minds of its citizens. A movie that brings to mind Jameson’s article is Equilibrium (2002). The premise of the movie is: In a futuristic world, a strict regime has eliminated war by suppressing emotions: books, art and music are strictly forbidden and feeling is a crime punishable by death. Cleric John Preston (Bale) is a top ranking government agent responsible for destroying those who resist the rules. When he misses a dose of Prozium, a mind-altering drug that hinders emotion, Preston, who has been trained to enforce the strict laws of the new regime, suddenly becomes the only person capable of overthrowing it. (Bale) 

Another article that belongs in this critical essay on aesthetic judgment is Adorno’s article, “Cultural Industry Reconsidered.” I wondered where he was from. Not surprisingly, he was from Frankfurt, which was in East Germany. This man lived through WWI and WWII, and the division of his country. I was wondering why Adorno seemed possessed with entertainment, including film. It was his way of figuring out his world, and the changes he witnessed during his lifetime. 

I think he was trying to show the “dummying down” of the people in West Germany. Maybe he was a bit bitter concerning the “easier” life they had there? I do think Adorno's use of media as a vehicle by which to show social change and intellect was ingenious. I sometimes ask my daughter why she chooses the TV programs she does, and her answer is that she wants to stop thinking for a while. I worry it will become a habit and she will become one of the “low informed” citizens that the US has too many of now-a-days. 

I do see the threat of the Cultural Industry setting the bar for society, the “Mass Culture" Adorno writes and warns about. I watch ads on TV for different medications, and realize it is a great marketing ploy to get the customer to do the work of pushing the product by requesting, if not demanding, the product from their doctors. The salesman is, almost, not needed! I was not shocked when I read, “…the masses are not primary, but secondary, they are an object of calculation… the customer is not king…not its subject but its object” (Adorno). 
 I think Adorno was correct to sound the warning of the capitalist using the media as a means of control over the masses. We are plugged in to different devices, yet we are unplugged to what is truly happening around us. I sometimes bring up important world events, my students usually have not a clue, but ask them about Snooky, or some such, and they can talk for an hour. Where I was most worried by Adorno’s article was the insight that “…the transformation of literature into a commodity” (Adorno). I see this in my classes. The classics are becoming lost to the trash that is printed and pushed as “top sellers.” Adorno hits it on the head when he states that, “imposed repression” when what passes for information is all around us in the form of, “pocket novels, films off the rack, family television shows, advice to the lovelorn, and horoscopes” (Adorno). 

In the United States of America, I believe there is a concerted effort to keep the masses pacified by many means, in order to keep us in check and no thought of revolt arises. Not only the aforementioned media, but the welfare system is a “machine” by which the government quells the cries for change. Give the poor free cell phones and food stamps and they won’t march on the White House. Give financial aid to the poor to attend college and they think the government is their friend. The examples go on, but I think I have demonstrated my belief. Arendt’s article, “The Crisis in Culture” echoes Adorno in that she writes of “mass culture/popular” and “mass society.” Arendt writes of the stages of development and “mass society clearly comes about when ‘the mass of the population has become incorporated into society’” (Arendt 198). 

She writes of the “outspoken anti-American attitudes” of American literature and painting. It is a phenomenon I consider worse than “mass culture” in that it is a form of self-loathing which is not only “dummying down” its society, but actively undermining it. Arendt writes of “good society” and the interrelatedness of mass society and mass culture (199). 

She writes of “crowd psychology” and man’s loneliness, adaptability, excitability, his lack of standards, his capacity for consumption, his inability to judge, his egocentricity, and his alienation from the world (199). All these traits lend themselves to the destruction of culture, and the rise of mass culture. The individual is lost and the mass populace found. Thinking becomes dangerous. We enter into a Brave New World. We concern ourselves with “’material values’ and find no use in ‘useless objects and occupations…culture and art” (201). Everything becomes a commodity, including the arts. 

She writes: Perhaps the chief difference between society and mass society is that society wanted culture, evaluated and devalued culture things into social commodities…but did not ‘consume’ them…[they] retained a certain objective character…Mass society…wants not culture but entertainment …consumed by society just like any other consumer good. (205) Arendt warns how, “…culture is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment” (207). She sums up her thoughts by stating, “Culture relates to objects and is a phenomenon of the world; entertainment relates to people and is a phenomenon of the life” (208). Arendt expresses her opinion by saying: …only when we are confronted with things which exist independently of all utilitarian and functional references, and whose quality remains always the same, do we speak of works of art. (210)

She writes of “use-objects” and “use-value,” and I go back to Marx and his idea of commodity and aesthetic value. I hear echoes of Marx again when she writes: The relatively new trouble with mass society is perhaps even more serious…because this society is essentially a consumers’ society where leisure time is used no longer for self-perfection…but for more and more consumption and more and more entertainment. (211) 

Here lies my dilemma: Are we Humanists? Should there even be aesthetics in our society or culture? Whose definition of culture are we adopting? The Greeks, Romans, Americans? Can we truly have “culture” the more we move away from the land? If we still can have culture, what constitutes beauty and art? Are poets and artists really involved in a “childish game”? How could there be aesthetic principles, as Goldman ponders, when the lines between creative arts and mass culture are not only blurred but obliterated. Arendt writes of the “severance of the arts from reality” (203) harkens back to Plato’s view of the arts. I think Marx would laugh at all this debate on mass society, mass culture, and mass media, as he knew with more free time made possible by automation of manufacturing, the masses would turn to something to fill their time, which would in turn cause the dummying down Adorno warns about. 


 
 Works Cited

Adorno, T. "Culture Industry Reconsidered." New Germany Critique (1975): 12-19. Print. 
Arendt, H. The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Its Political Significance. New York: Viking, 1968. Print. 
Eliot, T.S. "Tradition and the Individual Talent." 
Equilibrium. Dir. Kurt Wimmer. Perf. C. Bale. 2002. Film.
Golden, Elden Dale. A Creativity Reader. 2013. 159-164. 
Goldman, Alan H. "There Are No Aesthetic Principles." Matthew Kieran, ed. Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Blackwell, 2006. 306-307. Horkheimer, Adorno &. "The Culture Industry: enlightenment as mass deception." (n.d.). 
Plato. "The Republic." Plato. 360 BCE. Print.