judgments. Yet he feels no hesitation whatsoever about proclaiming his own *aesthetic* judgments. So when he fulsomely praises a Milton or a Pound, is he enunciating a religious faith or a merely personal grunt of approval?
Shane Mage
Porphyry in his Abstinance from Animal Flesh suggests that there
are appropriate offerings to all the Gods, and to the highest the only offering acceptable is silence.
(a) Bad habit I've been trying to discipline for almost half a century.
(b) There is no foundation for literary judgments, and criticism as evaluation is a bad habit. Such debates bring a Dow-Jones Mentality to literary discussions. Shelley's stock is up 10 points; Eliot's is down 15 points. Etc.
In conversation some of us find out that it is more interesting to discuss some writers than others, and over time among a given circle of readers & writers there emerges some agreement on which are the writers most interesting to talk about. That is a social and historical fact, however, and is no basis for asserting rational aesthetic judgments.
In fact, such judgments if pursued rigorously turn out to be not aesthetic judgments but (invalid) moral judgments of whole groups of people. Consider:
I'd rather flunk my Wasserman test, Than read a poem by Eddie Guest.
Dorothy Parker
That defines a certain social/intellectual group, one which my whole history leads me to have a certain affinity with. But the judgment it implies, that a poem by Eddie Guest is a bad thing for anyone to read is unacceptable.
In other words, Shane is correct in his basic premise: Aesthetic judgments imply moral judgments. I hold that for that reason both are unacceptable.
I would standby the following dialogue:
New York Reporter: What is?
Karl Marx (near end of life; after pause so long the reporter thought he had fallen asleep): Struggle.
Aesthetic judgments are just bad rhetorical tactics in the cultural struggle (which should be a genial ne, as it usually but not always is on this list).
There is a technical judgment one can make, but it is socially/historically conditioned: decorum, the mutual workings of the various elements in the poem. (Pope called it Wit -- see Empson in _The Structure of Complex Words.)
But of course principles governing decorum are also historical, not absolute. The attempt to assert general aesthetic judgments ought to have died with Arnold's touchstones, but I'm afraid Arnold still reigns.
Carrol