I was reading Sen's Idea of Justice today. In the second chapter of the book there is a section where he asks whether a theory of justice like Rawls' or Kant's (which he calls a transcendental theory of justice (which basically means it deals with a perfect conception of justice and is not entirely concerned with day to day ongoings of justice)) is necessary or sufficient for giving answers about comparative questions of justice (like whether one country's political economic system is more just than another). He thinks that the answer is no for both. In talking about whether a transcendental theory of justice is necessary for doing comparative justice he brings up a thought experiment that uses aesthetics. The thought experiment runs "imagine you have decided that the best painting in the world is the Mona Lisa. Now you have to choose whether a Van Gogh or a Picasso is a better painting. He says it is crazy to go back to the Mona Lisa, determine what makes it the best painting and then apply whatever those criteria are to determine whether the Van Gogh or the Picasso is better.
I think Sen might be playing loose and fast with our intuitions about aesthetics to serve his point, but I think he is right anyways that many transcendental theories do not give specific or analytic entailing ways of comparing theories only based on a perfect conception of justice.
Anyways. I had an interesting thought thinking about aesthetics. If one were going to come up with an theory of art here is the question I think they would need to answer: "What makes what you value in a specific piece of art more valuable than what another person values when looking at a specific piece of art." The possible answers to this question could be that 1. there is nothing that makes what you value any better than what anyone else values (complete relativism about art). 2. You could say that there is a plural amount of good things to have reasons for liking about some specific piece of art (for example it reminds you of the past, or it depicts something that you value in other parts of your life (like returning to nature or intellectual abstractions or how wonderful and beautiful your country is) 3. Finally you could say that there is really only one acceptable reason for liking some piece of art work (I don't think this kind of theory is plausible, but it might say something like "art that is more symmetrical is better" "or only art that produces a huge emotional response is really good") On 3, you could possible get vague enough such that you would capture all the values that are listed in 2, but then you just have a vague theory. Identifying all the reasons that people have for valuing some particular kind of art seems like a worthy pursuit.
A question that arises out of this is whether there are unreasonable reasons for liking some particular piece of art. This is possible. Sometimes people get mocked for liking some kind of art because they don't have a wide enough taste. For example, young kids are mocked for liking Justin Bieber. Is there anything particularly bad about Justin Bieber? No it is the reason that people like Justin Bieber that that we can criticize them for. If they like Justin Bieber because it is all they have ever heard then we are right to criticize them for not having a discerning taste. Or if they like Justin Bieber only because all their peers like Justin Bieber. This is where one can get critical in art. Are there good reasons for liking Justin Beiber? Sure, if someone likes Justin Beiber because they can emotionally relate to a high school romance, then that seems like a valid reason for enjoying that song.
So without going into too much more detail, here is what I want to say about where any theory of art should start. It should start with reasons. What are the reasons that someone likes some particular piece of art? I have pointed to a few things which might serve as exemplar cases of good and bad reasons for liking some particular piece of art, and I have not identified exactly what makes some reason a good or bad reason for liking or disliking some piece of art. Finding out exactly what what makes something a good or bad reason for enjoying a particular piece of art I think would be the end to a theory of aesthetics.
A final thought. What does this say about pieces of art themselves. If it is whether or not we have good reasons for liking some piece of art that matters, does this mean we can say that if some piece of art gives someone no reason for liking it, then it is a bad piece of art. And conversely, is it true that if some piece of art gives people lots of good reasons for enjoying it, then that piece of art is a better piece of art?
Food for thought.
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