Mind Association

A Reply to Mr. EjvegårdAuthor(s): Bernard HarrisonSource: Mind, New Series, Vol. 74, No. 294 (Apr., 1965), pp. 253-254Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2252053 .

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A REPLY TO MR. EJVEGARD

ACCORDING to Rolf Ejvegard,l I hold that a good work of art is one which most competent critics think good. Mr. Ejvegard convincingly demolishes this view, but unfortunately it is not mine: I explicitly reject it, in fact, on the first page (lines 11-25) of the article which he discusses.2 Ejvegard also takes me to task for committing the naturalistic fallacy, but here again I simply do not argue that " When a critic says ' X is good' in the sense of acceptive good he simply means ' X has the definite characteristics K1-Kn' ". Part of the trouble, I think, is that Ejvagard takes me to be offering suc- cessive and unrelated attempts at a definition of " good ", rather than, as I would like to think, describing the diverse but inter- related ways in which " good" functions in critical discourse. For example, the point of distinguishing between " directive " and "appraisive " discourse is not, as Ejvegard appears to think, to provide a verbal smokescreen behind which I can proceed to say simultaneously both that aesthetic value is determined by a majority vote of critics and that asserting a work of art to be aesthetically valuable amounts simply to saying that it possesses certain deter- minate characteristics. What I want to suggest is, roughly, that although the possibility of distinguishing between " objective " critical judgments and " subjective " likes and dislikes depends on the logical character of the directive use of good rather than on that of the appraisive use, directive discourse itself would be a sham, i.e. an elaborate form of snobbery, if critics never succeeded in getting their audiences to share their (appraisive) insights. A directive judgment functions, in a sense, as a signpost, and it is important to remember that we judge the merits of signposts not by reference to other signposts but by seeing whether the paths which they point out really do lead to villages or peter out in bogs.

Ejvegard finds my account of what I call the " acceptive " use of "good " unconvincing because " If we accept a two-value logic saying that if a quality is not bad it is good and vice-versa, then we must say that a book which is not a failure is in some respect a success and in this way you could from Harrison's negative art theory con- struct a positive art theory ". Of course if we accept a work as worth serious discussion then we are accepting it as in some sense a success: my point was simply that this sense of " success " is a very attenu- ated one. To say that a work is worth serious attention is not necessarily to say that such attention will reveal it as having great aesthetic value. It may after all turn out to be competent and nothing more. Certainly it is not to specify what aesthetically valuable qualities mature contemplation will discover in it. Very

1 " A Note on Harrison's 'Some Uses of "Good" in Criticism' ", MIND, July 1962, pp. 392-394.

2 MIND, April 1960, pp. 206-222.

253

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254 B. HARRISON: A REPLY TO MR. EJVEGARD

often all that we mean when we say this sort of thing is that the work avoids the grosser forms of incompetence: it is not just a daub or a piece of doggerel; but how much more than these is it? Reflection on the criteria by reference to which we ascribe success in this sense is hardly likely, therefore, to provide us with a general account of the nature of aesthetic value. Perhaps it is worth pointing out also that Ejvegard wrongly assumes me to be concerned in Section IV of my article with " success " in the sense of critical acclaim, accept- ance by museums and dealers, etc., rather than, as I had hoped p. 212, lines 21-36 would make clear, in the sense in which one might speak of the success or failure of " the artistic enterprise ", or success or failure in fulfilling " the true function of art ". Ejvegard's mis- interpretation, which appears to form the basis of his first six para- graphs, makes nonsense of my argument in this section, so that it is not altogether surprising that he finds my account of the acceptive use of " good " puzzling.

Lastly, Ejvegard objects to what I say about the comparative uniformity of critical development in different individuals. He points out that it is not logically necessary that the musical tyro should begin by liking Swan Lake and go on to liking Bach partitas: " We can very well go the opposite way... ." This is quite true: however, all that I want to say is that, as a matter of empirical fact, the critical development of different individuals does tend to follow a regular pattern, although no doubt with many exceptions and irregularities; and that if it did not we should simply have no use for certain patterns of discourse about art. I took it that this phenomenon was a matter of common observation, but everyday experience on this point does seem to be confirmed by the experience of psychologists.'

BERNARD HARRISON

University of Sussex 3 Cf. C. C. Pratt, " Aesthetics " entry in Annual Review of Psychology,

Vol. 12, 1961.

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