Axiology and Subjectivity

     Should any reader turn to this page expecting a philosophical discussion, I wish to declare at the outset that I am not competent to paraphrase leading ideas in axiology, far less to comment on them or to criticize. Indeed, that inability is in a way my point, for I wish to suggest that value of all sorts is, like other aspects of reality, always and inevitably subjective, though that fact does not mean that value judgments are arbitrary or without significance.
     In pragmatic decision-making, some, however, may seen hardly disputable: if one wishes to turn a screw, a screwdriver is good, because it does the job efficiently; a city map is good if one wishes to find the train station; food is good since it is required for life. Yet even these include an implied subjectivity. One cannot assume that turning the screw is desirable, or finding the train, or even continuing to live. Each of these consequences is a concrete result. When no such observable cause and effect is involved as in theoretical ethics and even more so in aesthetics, a demonstration of value becomes exceedingly obscure.
     If a critic prefers the novels of Samuel Richardson to those of Henry Fielding (as Leavis does), he may provide ample reasoning and bolster his arguments with supporting evidence from the books in question, yet he cannot, like a scientist, present a compelling “objective” case. Literature and criticism have histories, to be sure, yet it is difficult to conceive of those histories as recording incremental progress over the centuries. The same might be said for all aesthetic judgments. To one individual opera provides the most moving and powerful experience of beauty while another may react only with snores in the manner of George McManus’s comic strip character Jiggs.
     Indeed the situation is no different with all acknowledged matters of taste. Not only art, but food, clothing, style in general is highly subjective. Is Greek retsina wine tasty? Are tattoos becoming? Is a huge SUV beautiful? There is no reasonable way to convince either opponents or proponents to change their attitudes.
     While some would be willing to concede that aesthetic judgments are not subject to proof, many would consider moral and ethical decisions a different matter. Most commonly, due to religious teachings which specifically resist rational investigation, requiring instead faith, people of various traditions claim an absolute, “revealed” certainty in their ethical precepts. Here is a clear case of the power of subjectivity. For internal intuitive reasons that cannot be conveyed to an unbeliever, the faithful accept dogmatic teachings.
     The fact is that, contrary to the claims of some religionists, an entirely adequate system of morality can be elaborated from a simple principle of self-interest. By a secular application of the Golden Rule the entire legal code can be constituted. But my own preference to shrink from theft in order not to worry about my neighbor’s thieving from me, while compelling in practical terms to govern my behavior, is not in fact universal. A considerable share of people do, in fact, steal. Plenty of medieval knights went campaigning for booty. Big businessmen steal from us all while thinking they are exemplary and “successful.” Further, these last examples point out the fact that individuals, ages, and cultures may have significant differences in their definition of theft. Even such an apparently self-evident and natural conclusion as the evil of slavery was never recognized by Moses, Plato, Aristotle, or Christ.
     Furthermore, ethics is clearly a matter between human beings, a social issue, not one related to Ultimate Reality in any way. The cosmos is indifferent to my conduct and any view that looks beyond the human sphere will see that morality does not exist in the Milky Way, only magnificent grandeur. The regulation of human behavior, though a critical element in making life livable, is wholly functional; it exists to accomplish a purpose and not for its own sake.
     Yet, if I might be considered in some ways to display “good behavior,” my motive is not to protect myself. In fact my actions are most generally shaped by a desire to look good if only in my own eyes. Base behavior is ugly; to act in a degraded fashion diminishes oneself. Generous-hearted and compassionate behavior, on the other hand, is beautiful; to act nobly is to become more comely. With eyes open to the phantasmagoria of this world, I selfishly seek to spend my time in the best possible way, keeping myself healthy, learning constantly, bathing in art, trying to deal sympathetically and magnanimously with the people I encounter. And for no other reason than that it feels right to me, it seems the more beautiful choice. I feel as though I react spontaneously and naturally to each choice. While I am quite aware that I have been taught a code of moral response to various situations, I nonetheless experience each decision as a fresh mover expressing my nature. Awareness of my earlier training does not eliminate or invalidate it, though I experience my moral, aesthetic, and culinary decisions as expressing myself, not replicating a formula.
     This should be hardly surprising. It is impossible to escape the subjectivity of our experience of reality. The images on my retina are transformed by strange and elaborate codes translating the activities of all those sub-atomic particles hovering in my office and looking so settled and inert as desks and books and rugs. It means nothing to ask what is real when one’s human consciousness cannot escape setting the parameters of the investigation.
     So we muddle on, making constant value judgments, almost always without conscious consideration, making fallible predictions, feeling our way through the darkness of our general ignorance. If one acquits oneself well, the reward must be in the performance, a graceful turn, a beneficent influence, a settled sense of self at day’s end. Just as some people define themselves through their postings of products on Pinterest, others may turn to Homer, but who is to say which is “best”? We can object if a stranger treads on our toes, but we cannot prescribe a code of morality as though it had absolute value.
     In this way ethical, gastronomic, and aesthetic decisions have much in common. Should a constellation formed of caritas and Beaujolais and Charlie Parker, one evening at a dinner party, cross that of mind-your-own-business and IPAs and Verdi, the two might cross-fertilize like the joyful reshuffling of genes or the vast drifting of galaxies and produce wholly new configurations.

The Question of Literary Value

     I know of no satisfactory theory of literary (or indeed, any artistic) value. One might feel that the Divine Comedy is surely of greater value than an episode of Breaking Bad, but the proof of such discernment is elusive. For many years it was only too easy to blame the television fan for self-evident obtuseness while competing with other cognoscenti in appreciating the subtleties of Dante. In the past critics had no difficulty with the idea of the canon itself whatever negotiable differences they may have had over the exact list. The Romantics elevated Spenser, the Imagists liked Chinese lyric , and twentieth century found a worthy anticipation of metafiction in Tristram Shandy, but such adjustments occurred within a largely unquestioned structure. The critics of this bygone era were not wholly unlike religious scholars who, having settled on what to include in scripture, could then spend millennia commenting, interpreting, and interpreting the interpreters.
     Though it worked well, this assumption was vulnerable. The acceptance of a canon was convenient, since the question of literary value seems ultimately like other matters of taste to lack much foundation apart from subjective impression. One may praise a wine with an elaborate flight of descriptors, while another finds the same taste unexciting. Two people may perceive the same characteristics and yet assign them different values. What may make a sauce seem elegant and subtle to one diner may be considered bland and boring to another. Tokay that once excited the highest praise from kings and popes now holds little interest for many drinkers. No one thinks that values in cuisine are nonexistent or wholly arbitrary, though food critics will differ among themselves after the broadest distinctions are made, and the more refined judgments may depend on extraordinary competence developed from experience. Criticism and comment are subsequent to impressions. Surely the situation is similar in literature.
     Critics in the sense of the writers of reviews consider their primary responsibility to evaluate, to advise those who have found opportunity to read their remarks whether they would be well-advised to read the work under consideration. Such critics are necessarily free with value judgments, but their concern is not to present tightly reasoned proofs. This avoidance serves them well, since literary judgments,, like the first cause, are susceptible to the logical flaw of an infinite regress. [1] One may say a poem is great because of its concrete, specific imagery, yet whence comes the value of concreteness? Further, an ill-written poem may also passes the same sort of images, though clumsily phrased and ineptly utilized. A novel may be praised for its formal structure, yet use of analogous structure does not guarantee the success of another work of fiction. Surely the reader, no matter how knowledgeable, records a subjective impression and then cooks up a convincing basis for it.
     One of the most acute critics of his generation, Northrup Frye came close to mystifying value with his emphatic statement: “The sense of value is an individual, unpredictable, variable, incommunicable, indemonstrable, and mainly intuitive reaction to literature.” [2]
     Through history many critics have valued literature not so much for the aesthetic experience, the thrill of that “mainly intuitive reaction,” as for its extrinsic benefits. Its readers are thought by some to enjoy salutary effects such as a closer approach to truth, greater moral sensitivity, heightened social conscience, or some sort of vague increase in humanity. These judgments are wholly innocent of supportive reasoning or data. It may well be that few incarcerated felons have read Paradise Lost, but no one would regard the association between ignorance of Milton and committing crimes to be simply causal. This is unsurprising, given the fact that writers are expert in nothing other than the effective use of language; they are not specialists in religion or morality or politics, nor are they predictably more humane than most people, and the same can be said for their readers. Having studied a thousand Elizabethan sonnets, one will be familiar with the poetic form, language, and images, but will not necessarily be in any degree a better lover for his acquaintance with the poetry.
     The fact is that literary value is dependent on the encounter of the individual reader with the text. No text can invariably produce a certain reaction in all readers, but such reactions are nonetheless quite real. A work will be called good or great if one is taken with its beauty (or, on the lower peaks of the Parnassian range, if one is amused or moved or entertained or thrilled or titillated). Over the centuries certain works have accumulated a record of admirers that reasonably suggest a new reader might likely be rewarded as predecessors have been. [3] When I left a performance of King Lear with tears in my eyes, my reaction was similar to countless viewers before me, though it may not have been shared by the person in the next seat. Thus literary value may be most rationally assigned, as indeed it has often been, by a consensus of competent consumers. Reasons may be detailed, but the judgment rests on the initial subjective reaction. The process is dynamic with minority opinion and idiosyncratic reactions always lobbying and jockeying like politicians for higher poll numbers.
     As critics comment on a text, its significance grows. Eliot famously reminded readers of how comment can change the meaning of a work for the future and then his point was illustrated by his successful championing of the Metaphysicals. His appreciation for Donne gave new value to poems that had long been neglected. The Bible, an almost random miscellany of texts written over a long period of time, offers an example of a work which has gained value due to being closely read for millennia, resulting in richly developed interconnections and implications. What is more, they have yielded an immense hermeneutic harvest while being read (albeit only by Christians) as a unified work. The value is clearly constituted in the consumption.
     The issue of value has a particular value in the present era since “cultural criticism” and the like have largely exiled considerations of value from the academy. [4] Yet who can read without value judgments? From my youth until today, my study was motivated by the intention to spend my time in contemplation of the best writing (and the second-best). Something of the same motive must be common to virtually all devotees of literature. The fact that the basis for such distinctions may be elusive and that estimates of worth may never elicit unanimous agreement does not invalidate them.
The chief difference between taste in poetry and in other areas is that art is so subtle a carrier of meaning, so dense a pattern of signification, that it conveys far more precise and detailed a record of human consciousness than can taste in food or clothing or home décor. Apart from fabulous complexity, different works may have widely varying aims. For one author human psychology is the focus, while another may aim to present lovely landscapes lushly sketched; a third may seek to convey some insight into lived experience, a fourth to pipe the most captivating melody, the fifth to evoke laughter, and on and on. Each must be judged by its aims, but none is inherently superior or inferior to others. Each presents a separate case and can only be evaluated on the basis of the encounter of an author and reader, each unique but sharing much as well. While judgments of taste can never be proven, they are nonetheless the starting point of literary studies. Just as the Greeks considered praise and blame the very basis of considering people’s lives, literary value is at once the motive (in prospect) and the end (in experience) of considering the literature people produce.



1. The general philosophical problem is well-formulated by Sextus Empiricus, part of Agrippa’s trilemma according to Diogenes Laertius.

2. From “On Value-Judgments,” Contemporary Literature Vol. 9, No. 3, Summer, 1968, 311-318. The essay was later reprinted in The Stubborn Structure 1970. Frye’s direct engagement of the issue and his forthright statement exemplify his practice. He was a pioneer in the systematic analysis of literature, and his Anatomy of Criticism earns its title. Apart from theory, his work is full of brilliant specific comments. Frye is uneasy here, however, and he hedges this apparently unqualified characterization of literary value by saying in the same essay that greater knowledge can produce more accurate judgments. But what is the standard of accuracy?

3. This strikes me as similar to the way physicists tell us physical reality is best considered “a wave of probability.”

4. For an energetic response see James Seaton’s Literary Criticism from Plato to Post-Modernism: The Humanistic Alternative. My review “On the Proper Ends of Literary Study” appears on this site.