GoodEnoughForMe's Blog

Back to GoodEnoughForMe's Blog

This is an older write-up of mine, and one that could be incredibly much more detailed and longer, not to mention refined, as I have read more on this subject. But what the hell...


Often times we struggle with the idea of art; be it literature, cinema, music, a painting, as being quantifiably "good." In our debates surrounding the like, we often times fall back on the line "it's all subjective."

This is only partially true.

Immanuel Kant is generally regarded in high esteem by analytic philosophers, and he made several statements equatable to judging the quality of art (I linked his Wiki page, but it should be noted that Wikiepdia is pretty bad for philosophy, I simply wanted to create a way to see who he was quickly).

When we say art is "good," we are often oversimplifying what makes it good. We have to break down art into, in my opinion, two major facets; the aesthetic and moral. Kant himself named four "reflective judgements" in his Critique of Judgment, the agreeable, the beautiful, the sublime, and the good.

Saying that "this chair is comfortable" is an aesthetic judgement. There is no moral substance. Someone might say "that chair is not comfortable." As an aesthetic judgement, there is no objectivity; what is comfortable to one person may not be to the other, and all the same, it has no effect on someone being more moral or ethical. Saying "this chair is comfortable" doesn't make you a "better" person, so to speak, than someone who says the chair isn't.

In this regard, aesthetic judgements are always subjective. Let me quote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

1. The Judgment of Taste

What is a judgment of taste? Kant isolated two fundamental necessary conditions for a judgment to be a judgment of taste — subjectivity and universality (Kant 1928). Other conditions may also contribute to what it is to be a judgment of taste, but they are consequential on, or predicated on, the two fundamental conditions. In this respect Kant was following the lead of Hume and other writers in the British sentimentalist tradition (Hume 1985).

1.1 Subjectivity

The first necessary condition of a judgment of taste is that it is essentially subjective. What this means is that the judgment of taste is based on a feeling of pleasure or displeasure. It is this that distinguishes a judgment of taste from an empirical judgment. Central examples of judgments of taste are judgments of beauty and ugliness. (Judgments of taste can be about art or nature.)

This subjectivist thesis would be over strict if it were interpreted in an ‘atomistic’ fashion, so that some subjective response corresponds to every judgment of taste, and vice versa. Sometimes one makes a judgment of taste on inductive grounds or on the basis of authority. A more holistic picture of the relation between response and judgment preserves the spirit of the subjectivist doctrine while fitting our actual lives more accurately. The subjectivist doctrine needs to be refined in order to deal with the cases of induction and authority. But it must not be abandoned. The doctrine is basically right.

Whether or not you find a painting beautiful or a song moving is subjective. This is a Judgement of Taste.

But often times there is more to art than simply looking beautiful. Some of the most well-regarded works of literature are regarded as such because of a layer of intellectual depth and inquiry that causes us to think, or brings about new revelations. This is the moral aspect of art. Immaneual Kant had this as one of his four reflective judgements; he called it "the good" and regarded it as a judgement if something is ethical or not.

If we assume that most modern philosophers are correct in that there are certain moral absolutes, then there is a way for a piece of art to be moral or immoral. A film espousing the belief that killing children wholesale is a good idea can be considered a immoral/unethical film. On the other hand, a piece of art espousing a belief in personal freedom can be considered a moral/ethical film. In this regard, I believe that there are qualities that can make art "good," but these can be entirely seperate from how much someone enjoys that art.

For instance, I enjoy the first Pirates of the Caribbean film. It's not a super favorite of mine, but I've seen it half a dozen times and enjoyed it a lot each time. In this regard, I find the film "nice" from a Judgement of Taste. However, in looking into whether or not the film is good, morally and/or ethically, I find that there is little to go on. The movie doesn't contain any intellectual discussion or inquiry. Because of this, if Bob Barker told me tomorrow that the movie is a bad movie, I wouldn't necessarily disagree. I might argue that Depp did a good job acting, but even that is mostly a Judgement of Taste, and as such, a subjective aesthetic judgement.

In another example, if someone told me that "Zombie Lesbians" is a better piece of art than "Blade Runner" I would staunchly disagree. Blade Runner is a morally positive film, one that explores areas such as environmentalism and what makes us human (a gross oversimplification, but it will do). If they said they enjoyed "Zombie Lesbians" more, that is fine, but I don't think that they can quantifiably say that it is better art, as there is little to no moral or ethical value in a movie about lesbian zombies. Nobody should ever tell someone they can't enjoy, say, Transformers, but I will say I wish we had better movies.

For that, I say there are two major parts of art. The aesthetic (subjective) and the moral (objective). Kant spoke of two more reflective judgments, "the beautiful" and "the sublime" and I find them interesting. They essentially occupy a space between the moral and the aesthetic. Kant called them "subjective universal" judgments. I find them to be a perhaps important part of art too. They are not tied to absolutes, but are made with the belief that other people should agree with them. An example would be a good acting job. Generally a Judgement of Taste at first glance, but events like the Academy Awards attempt to quantify acting a bit. This may also be important; as it is what separates a two minute film that simply says "freedom is cool" from a moving, well-scripted feature length film describing the same thing in a more "mature" way. However, because of the inherently subjective quality to this, it is hard to form a standard of "good art" simply on the beautiful and the sublime.