This is a rich and wonderful book, written in a lucid, straightforward, gritty style. The basic vocabulary is that of present-day academic philosophy. But rather often Kivy tosses in an old-fashioned word or a contemporary colloquialism, thereby giving to the whole a distinctive personal character. I know what ‘anon’, ‘anent’, and ‘aver’ mean; but it's been years since I have used them, or seen or heard them used. There they are in Kivy's text, along with ‘from the get-go’ and ‘the only game in town’. The rhythm of Kivy's prose is also distinctive, a sort of jagged, stop-and-go, rhythm, luxuriant in commas. I open the book at random to page 45. My eye falls on the second sentence:
It seems, indeed, that Kant was going beyond the mere empirical claim that, in fact, people engage in what I have called, to avoid making any commitment yet to its possible content or logical status, ‘disagreement behavior,’ or, as I shall sometimes call it, ‘argument behavior.’
The book is a wonderful-to-behold, single-minded pursuit of the answer to the question, why do we dispute over matters of artistic taste, as obviously we do. Kivy remarks that philosophers have seldom addressed this question head on. I know of none who has done so. Some books are game-changers. This is a game-starter. Kivy has forcefully posed a new question and with great subtlety and imagination worked out an answer to that question.
He begins with Hume, Kant, and Reid. He prefaces his discussion of Kant with the self-deprecating remark that he is ‘singularly unqualified’ for ‘getting deeply into complexities of serious Kant interpretation’ (10). Perhaps. But I found his analyses of Hume, Reid, and Kant insightful and illuminating, brief though they are.
He then moves on to the twentieth-century emotivists, using A.J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson as his principal examples. Though Ayer and Stevenson focused their attention on ethics, they both made clear that they were anti-realists with respect to values in general, aesthetic included.
Ayer argued that we use the language of ethics to express our attitudes toward actions and persons; he remarked, rather glibly, that the same is true for our language of beauty. Kivy's response is that this analysis gives us no explanation of why we debate ethical and aesthetic matters. Expressing one's attitude or feelings about some action, person, or work of art has nothing to do with debating and arguing.
Stevenson's analysis was more complex. Ethical language, he held, has not only an expressive function but also a quasi-imperative function. We use it not only to express our attitudes toward actions and persons but also to influence the actions of those with whom we are debating. Kivy agrees with Stevenson that ethical language has a quasi-imperative function in addition to its expressive function; this, he says, goes at least some way toward explaining why we debate matters of ethics. A pervasive feature of human life is debating our fellows with the aim of influencing how they act. If the language of ethics also functions to state moral facts – which Stevenson denied – then we have an additional explanation of why we debate matters of ethics. We often deem it important to bring our fellow human beings around to our view of how things are.
Though the Stevensonian analysis explains, at least in part, why we debate matters of ethics, Kivy argues that it provides no explanation of why we debate aesthetic matters. Aesthetic debates, he insists, are only incidentally aimed at changing action. ‘The [emotivist] explanation for the motive to persuade in ethical judgments will not plausibly serve as an explanation for the motive to persuade in aesthetic judgments. Simply put, there is no reason for me to want you to share my aesthetic attitude because there is no action of yours relevant to that attitude that I have any stake in motivating’ (33).
As to trying to change attitudes themselves, why would we want to do that? Why would we ‘have any interest in getting others to share our aesthetic emotions. What's it to us?’ (32). Why ‘should I want to spoil someone's pleasure in an artwork by discovering its faults to her? If I am motivated, as a critic, by benevolence, I should want to leave her alone to rejoice in her enjoyment of a work I cannot enjoy because I perceive it as faulty. If I am motivated by self-interest, there is no reason to convince her of its faults' (9).
There we have the theses that drive Kivy's argument in the remainder of the book. We do not debate others with the aim of getting them to share our attitudes. We debate them with the aim of influencing their actions or with the aim of getting them to share our view of the facts. Aesthetic arguments are not aimed at influencing action. So they must be aimed at getting others to share our view of the facts. That is Kivy's argument in a nutshell. ‘There are two basic and pervasive reasons why, normally, people become embroiled in disputes: to motivate their adversaries to action, or to convince them of the truth… I have argued… that motivation to action does not constitute a convincing reason for disputes over taste, because there does not usually seem to be any relevant action in the offing… So that leaves the second alternative.’ (99–100)
‘The only explanation that seems available [for why we dispute over taste] is that [art-interested people] are, deep down, whether they bring it to consciousness or not, dyed-in-the-wool artistic-value realists. They really believe they are disputing about something, not merely venting their passions, when they dispute over the merits of artworks and artists.’ (140) Kivy emphasizes that he is not arguing that artistic-value realism is true. Late in the discussion he offers some considerations to that effect; but he says he does not regard these as decisive.
The number of objections to his line of argument that Kivy considers along the way is truly astounding; I know of no other writer in the field who so thoroughly rakes the literature for objections to his or her line of thought and whose mind is so fertile in imagining objections. In most cases, Kivy wrestles with the objection. But when he finds the objection silly, he says so. He declares, I find this objection ‘very hard to credit’ (44). ‘I think the objection is without merit’ (104). In my opening sentence I described Kivy's style as straightforward and gritty. Mainly what I had in mind was the aesthetic character of the prose: it has a straightforward gritty character. But I also had in mind Kivy's way of dealing with silly objections: straightforward, gritty.
In the course of developing his argument Kivy introduces a sizable number of very helpful distinctions. He distinguishes, for example, between what he calls the ‘meaning’ of a work of art (what it says or represents), the aesthetic qualities of the work, and the overall worth of the work. All subsequent discussions of these matters should employ these indispensable distinctions. Kivy takes debates over the meaning of artworks to be obviously about matters of fact; I agree, though I think intention is less determinative of meaning than Kivy thinks it is. His efforts are devoted to arguing that the only way to make sense of debates over aesthetic qualities and over artistic worth is to understand the disputants as taking for granted, in these cases too, that the debate is over facts.
In bringing this review to a conclusion I want to question one of Kivy's central theses. My questioning of this thesis does not detract from my judgment that this is a rich and wonderful book – a game-starter. Many wonderful works of vocal music express sentiments that I disagree with.
Kivy says, ‘there are two basic and pervasive reasons why, normally, people become embroiled in disputes: to motivate their adversaries to action, or to convince them of the truth’ (99). Is that true? Do we not also dispute with the aim of getting our ‘adversary’ to share our attitude toward some person or thing? Is it true that, with respect to the attitudes of others, our view is, ‘What's that to me? Why should I care?’
I judge that it is not. Suppose I discover that you have a very negative attitude toward a good friend of mine. I try to get you to change your attitude. I point to what I regard as admirable features of his character that you are overlooking or downplaying. I explain that actions of his that you regard as bad are not bad when considered in the context of the full story of what happened. And so forth.
Kivy asks, why would I want ‘to get you to share my positive attitude toward cheeseburgers or Golden Retrievers? It is all the same to me whether you share them with me or not’ (32–3). Point taken about cheeseburgers. But I can imagine one dog lover trying to change the attitude of another toward Golden Retrievers.
One reason for trying to change your attitude toward my friend is that I believe your life would be better if you didn't live with that negative attitude; it would be a plus in your life. Another reason is that I am bothered by your negative attitude; living with my awareness of your negative attitude is a minus in my life.
It appears to me that there is, in most of us, a desire for attitudinal solidarity on important matters with those with whom we interact, especially those we love and care about. To use Kant's terminology, this is ‘the ground common to all’ that accounts for our attempt to change attitudes on matters that we deem important. For those of us who are what Kivy calls ‘art-interested,’ a good many artistic and aesthetic matters are important to us. It bothers me that you dislike Beethoven's Grosse fuge. And besides bothering me, I think your life would be richer if you came around to enjoying it. So I debate and argue with you, our debate sometimes extending over a long period of time.
Kivy considers the possibility that there is such a common ground. He says,
Perhaps at this point the very general claim might be made that there is some kind of deep-seated, unconscious (?) desire or need in the human species to achieve agreement not merely in belief about the way the world is, but across the board in ‘states of mind’ tout court: beliefs, emotions attitudes, the works. In other words, there is an innate desire or need, in each one of us, whether we are aware of it or not, to have everyone in one's living space be of the same state of mind as oneself, whether it be belief, emotion, attitude, whatever. (44)
About this suggestion Kivy says, ‘I find the claim, prima facie, very hard to credit’ (44). I too find the unqualified universalized proposition that Kivy propounds in these sentences very hard to credit. But what about the much more modest thesis, that there is in most of us a desire to enjoy attitudinal unity on matters we judge important with people with whom we interact, especially those we love and care about? That seems to me true.
Suppose I am right, that we debate with our fellows not only to influence their actions or change their beliefs but also to change their attitudes. That does not undermine Kivy's claim that we are all closet realists when we engage in debates about artistic and aesthetic matters; we might aim to change both attitudes and beliefs. Neither does it undermine my judgment that this is a rich and wonderful book, from which I learned a lot. What it does do is make it more difficult to reach Kivy's conclusion than he thinks it is.
