We are living during a historical moment in which more people have more access to infinitely more information than has ever been possible before. Given that fact, it seems to me that it makes little sense to do what many people seem content to do, which is: find something you like and keep getting more of the same. What we should be doing is learning, about anything and everything, all of the time. Trying new things should not be seen as the pastime of the adventurous; rather, it should be considered the norm. This has nothing to do with recklessness - you don't even have to leave your couch to experience the unfamiliar. The only things you need leave behind are your preconceptions and prejudgments.
What we ought to desire is the best of everything. And by "the best" I don't mean someone else's idea of what that is. I don't mean what is critically acclaimed or popularly beloved. I mean those things (works of art, activities, interests, people, places, whatever) that are unique; I mean those things that are extraordinary either in themselves or in the effects they have; I mean those things that are masterfully crafted (or, in the case of nature, have the appearance of having been masterfully crafted).
I mean, also, those things that excel at being themselves, that have a mission or a set of goals or just a certain nature that is their own. If they have an aim, they might be successful or unsuccessful in that aim, but that's less important. The point is that they know what they are about and they go for it. To take a weirdly random example: a basket of battered, deep-fried chicken. Nobody who eats fried chicken thinks that it's health food. You can see the grease stains on whatever container the chicken is placed in. It's fried chicken! It tastes good because it's full of fat. You can decide for yourself whether you want to risk eating something so unhealthy, but there's really no way to say that fried chicken is lying to you about what it is.
Another example is the novel Ulysses by James Joyce. Both novel and author have been saddled with the derisive label "pretentious" since its publication in 1922. Pretentiousness is an affect that requires willful dishonesty regarding one's own nature: it is an attempt at seeming more important or interesting than one actually is. So here we have a work (and an author) that, unlike fried chicken, is being accused of lying about what it is. But there is a problem with calling a work of art pretentious: almost inevitably, some people will use this label to justify disliking something that is either beyond their intellectual abilities (the irony is that doing this is itself quite pretentious) or in some other way inaccessible to them personally. The more honest thing to do, of course, is to admit that some works are, in way or another, not for us ("us" being the particular critic or set of critics who can't find a way into the work in question). For, regardless of how "difficult" or "tedious" a work may be, how can we possibly know that something (or someone) is being dishonest about its own nature unless we have a thorough and accurate understanding of that nature? My point here is not to argue that Ulysses/Joyce isn't pretentious, only that the label pretentious, as it is most commonly used, is not so much a criterion as an excuse. In any case, we need to establish more fundamental criteria first, in order to decide whether something is, among other things, pretentious.
So how can we go about judging the aesthetic value of our two examples of fried chicken and Ulysses? Qualitatively, they are obviously quite different, as one can tell simply by noting the categories that each item belongs to: food and literature. You could eat a copy of Ulysses, but you would have to have an exceptionally perverse sense of taste in order to find the experience more pleasant than that of eating fried chicken. Conversely, you can't read fried chicken. There is no plot, no characters, no setting and no development. The fried chicken can't tell you anything about the experience of being Irish in early 20th century Dublin, for example. (There is a narrative of how the chicken ended up on your plate, just as there is a story about how a book ends up in your lap; however, what I want to discuss here is not the history of physical objects, but the nature of cultural objects in terms of their aesthetic value.)
We have to judge each type of object or experience on its own terms. It is not, however, simply a matter of assigning an aesthetic value to each cultural object and then deciding to go with whatever has the highest value. Aesthetics is not a quantitative science - not yet, anyway. It's also not a matter of deciding what is most pleasant or fun. Eating fried chicken is a very pleasing experience for many people, but that doesn't change the fact that it isn't a very healthy choice. This is not to say that certain works of art are bad for your health (although they could be), nor that one should choose to consume art based on whether it is somehow "good for you" like eating your vegetables (there was an article in the New York Times last year that pretended to take seriously the analogy between healthy food and "difficult" art, but I believe this analogy is flawed for a number of reasons I won't get into here). I believe there are better ways to judge the aesthetic value of an object or experience:
1. Is this allowing me to experience something new, and if so, is it unique in its ability to deliver this kind of newness to someone who has never experienced it before? (E.g., there is nothing quite like the experience of reading Ulysses, but eating one plate of fried chicken is quite similar to eating another.)
2. If this is not something new per se, is it an example of something that performs in an extraordinary way, or causes me to feel something extraordinary? (E.g., perhaps this particular fried chicken is special in some way - exotic spices or the use of some other rare ingredient.)
3. Is there a sense of quality craftsmanship in this object? Sometimes there is much to admire about something simply in how it was made, and in being a remarkable specimen of its kind. (E.g. Ulysses is a stellar example of the craft of writing. Some plates of fried chicken are cooked better than others.)
4. As discussed above, there is aesthetic value (which, by the way, we can probably admit essentially means beauty) in simply being true to one's own nature. Sometimes flaws - or even outright failure - can be part of what makes something beautiful.
I'm not sure whether the above coheres into a straightforward essay. It may read more like a transcript of a thought process. Be that as it may, I welcome your feedback. What do you think about these criteria for evaluating an object or experience in terms of aesthetic value? Do you agree that they are valid or not? What criteria would you add? Do you think it's a mistake to even try to create a rational theory of aesthetics? Is this all complete bollocks? Let me know.
