Are literary judgments subjective?

TS Eliot said that the function of literary criticism is “the common pursuit of true judgment.” In other words, literary criticism is all about telling you whether a work is good or bad, and why. This classic statement of the traditional conception of literary criticism has fallen out of fashion, certainly in academia. There are a number of reasons for this, the main one being that aesthetic judgments are subjective, and that the notion of a “true judgment” is, accordingly, illusory.

But aren’t literary value judgments subjective? At this point we need to distinguish between different types of assertion. If I say that I like a particular poem, I am merely making a statement as to my personal preferences. I am not purporting to be evaluating the poem. But literary criticism seeks to go further than such self-referential statements of preference.

Immanuel Kant pointed out in his Critique of Judgment that aesthetic judgments (of which literary judgments are one type) transcend pure subjectivity and carry an implicit claim to universality. Kant then tried to explain what the basis for implicit claim is. We needn’t get lost in the tangle of Kantian aesthetics to recognise that Kant was clearly right to say that aesthetic value judgments go beyond—well beyond—merely statements as to what one likes or does not like. If I assert that Shakespeare’s sonnets are amongst the supreme achievements in the genre, I am surely purporting to make an assertion as to an objective state of affairs.

Bound up with this is the fact that we argue about literary critical judgments, and give reasons for and against them. I may seek to persuade you of the merits of a particular poem or novel by giving you reasons for my positive evaluation of it. I may say that a work is interesting, profound, beautiful, well-written, well-structured, enjoyable, and so on, and these terms support a positive verdict. Conversely, I might call it shallow, sentimental, boring, badly structured, and so on. I may also go into the details of the works to substantiate overall judgments or to point to particular felicities or infelicities.

The point is that the notion of disagreement presupposes the notion of an objective state of affairs about which we are disagreeing. One does not argue about whether one likes or dislikes a particular work, but whether one ought to like or dislike it.

Of course the fact that a particular way of talking about literature depends on a given assumption, does not entail that that assumption is correct. Could it not be the case that our judgments, while they purport to state objective facts, in fact fail to do so? This is the stance that would have to be taken by the subjectivist.

The subjectivist has two main reasons for reaching this view. First, unlike other areas of disagreement, such as in science, where there are agreed means to resolve that disagreement, he/she may say that this does not appear to be the case in literary criticism. Second, the fact that after arguing about our judgments, we often fail to convince our interlocutors, may be taken to suggest a lack of objectivity.

Let us look at each point in turn. The first is that we cannot demonstrate that our judgment is correct or not. This objection has its roots in scientism. Mathematics operates by way of proof, and the experimental sciences through controlled observation. If such scientific forms of reasoning were the only legitimate ones it would follow that the kinds of reasoning contained in literary criticism were not reasoning at all, but instead pseudo-reasoning on a par with a “debate” as to the relative virtues of chocolate and vanilla ice cream.

It follows from this scientistic view not only that aesthetic judgment is subjective but that moral and political judgment is too. A rather silly form of nihilism follows. It is clearly not possible to provide a mathematical proof for the proposition that torturing people for fun is morally wrong, and that arbitrary despotism is not a desirable political arrangement, but that does not stop those assertions from being (one might say self-evidently) true.

The scientistic objection to literary criticism is based on a naïve (albeit widespread) view that scientific forms of reasoning are the only valid ones. Isaiah Berlin pointed out that Marxism was permeated by what he called an infatuation with science. This infatuation, inspired by the evident technological and medical successes of science, permeates many aspects of modern world. The tendency to believe that only by placing literary studies on a scientific footing can literary studies be rendered respectable is no doubt one of the reasons for the trend towards pseudo-scientific theories in the humanities at large and in literary studies in particular. (Jargon is a key indicator of pseudo-science, and there is no shortage of jargon of literary theory.) Allied to this infatuation with science is a desire to disassociate literary studies from value judgment. According to this view, value judgments are merely subjective, and are to be ruthlessly ignored in the pursuit of objective theory.

The rise of science has been not uniformly received in the humanities with attempts at flattering imitation. It has been met also with hostility and an outright rejection. Various strands of Romanticism were anti-science, and hostility to science is a theme in much contemporary “theory.” Interestingly, this anti-science has much in common with pseudo-scientific theory. In particular, it shares with it the view that value judgments are subjective. However, instead of discarding them in favour of a putatively objective scientific study, it goes to the other extreme of embracing subjectivity. Literary theory on this conception is an expression of an authentic, irrational self. Insofar as it is they can say so without contradicting themselves (supposing they care about self-contradiction which they probably shouldn’t), these irrationalists believe that subjective feeling is authentic and a “good thing.”

The dichotomy between the objectivist pseudo-science and subjectivist irrationality is a reflection of the wider confusion about the nature of value judgments, confusion which is at heart philosophical in nature.

I now turn to the second objection put forward by the opponent of literary criticism, the stubborn fact of disagreement. As noted above, such disagreement afflicts moral and political debate, but people are less inclined to conclude that those areas are subjective. In the aesthetic domain the existence of persistent disagreement tends to be thought of as suggestive of subjectivity.

There are two points to be made in this regard. First, it is easy to exaggerate the level of disagreement. It is fairly obvious that King Lear is a better play than Timon of Athens. That there is a hierarchy of sorts between works, and certain authors, is, at one level, undeniable. It might be said that there is no fact of the matter as to whether King Lear is superior to Hamlet, say. This does not amount to a denial of hierarchy. Rather, it reminds us of the fact that only a certain degree of precision is possible, or indeed desirable, in literary criticism. It is not of course possible to quantify value judgments. Only the scientistic assumption that everything real is quantifiable would suggest otherwise.

Second, it is true that there are authors who tend to divide opinion. It may be for instance that some readers cannot abide Jane Austen, viewing her concerns as irretrievably petty, and others cannot abide what they see as Dostoyevsky’s grandiose mysticism. Aesthetic responses are often considered to be bound up with emotional responses to art, and therefore subjective. However, as the example shows, matters are not so simple. There is a clash between the two worldviews on offer in the works of those authors. These worldviews are permeated with value judgments as to what matters. If the subjectivist is to rely on such examples, it must be on the basis that there is no fact of the matter as to which worldview is closer to the truth. This is highly questionable. One would have thought that the reason that readers feel strongly one way or the other is precisely that they consider the worldview advanced by their preferred author to be correct (or more correct than the other).

This touches on one of the most rewarding aspects of literary criticism, the fact that it can be a means of disputing the merits of the worldviews advanced by authors in their works. The proof is in the pudding, and one can point to unsatisfactory aspects of a work in arguing for the implausibility of the worldview underpinning it.

So neither of the reasons given for adopting subjectivism is persuasive. Let us bear in mind that the subjectivist is committed to the thesis that our language when evaluating literature is systematically mistaken. Good reasons are needed for such a bold thesis. Does the failure of the subjectivist to provide such reasons discredit it altogether?

No. The possibility of an irreducible subjective dimension in at least some literary critical judgments cannot be discarded a priori. This is because there are two possible reasons for apparent disagreement as to the value of a literary work. The first is that our interlocutor fails to understand our argument. As Samuel Johnson pointed out in a heated exchange recorded by James Boswell, it is one thing to provide somebody with an argument, and another to provide that person with the ability to understand that argument. (Of course it may be that we are the ones who have got it wrong). The second possible reason for apparent disagreement is that there is an irreducible personal dimension in aesthetic evaluation, and that disagreement is to that extent illusory.

We simply do not know whether our failure to convince others of our evaluation of a particular work is due the obtuseness of our interlocutors, or our own obtuseness, or to an irreducible subjective dimension. These are not matters amenable to definitive proof. But the possibility that there is an irreducible subjective dimension cannot be ruled out.

It is important however to appreciate exactly what is entailed by the acceptance of an irreducible subjective dimension. It is that there is no fact of the matter as to the correctness of a judgment. It would follow that debate is pointless, in the same way that it would be pointless for two people to have a debate as to whether chocolate ice cream is superior to vanilla ice cream—there is no fact of the matter.

Now, admitting that there may be a subjective element to literary critical judgments does not entail that all such judgments are subjective, or entirely subjective. Literary judgments may be objective up to a point, but not beyond that point. The precise point where objectivity runs out would depend on the work in question. Accepting that there may be subjective patches in the field of literary criticism does not entail an acceptance that the whole endeavour is subjective and (therefore) pointless.

The subjectivist’s strongest argument is that one cannot rule out the possibility that what purport to be objective literary judgments are in fact, at least in part, rooted in subjective preference. Can the traditional conception of literary criticism accommodate this possibility?

Yes. Let us go back to TS Eliot's contention that the function of literary criticism is “the common pursuit of true judgment.” A subtlety inherent in TS Eliot’s formulation is the emphasis on the pursuit of true judgment. It may be that true judgment is pursued but remains elusive for a number of reasons. How will we know in any given case whether our own valuation of a work is correct, or simply a reflection of our own foibles? The pragmatic answer is that we ought to see how much common ground we can attain by attempting to persuade others of our own valuation. To the extent that we succeed, the common pursuit has, to that extent, succeeded. Of course it may be that we share personal foibles with our interlocutor, and that the notion that we have reached common ground as to an objective matter of fact is illusory.

Theoretical certitude one way or the other is unattainable. If literary critical language is anything to go by, objectivist assumptions are embedded in literary critical discourse. But the possibility that we are led astray by those assumptions cannot be ruled out. The traditional conception of literary criticism—according to which our judgments always purport to be objective (they would not otherwise be judgments), but that there may in some cases be no underlying fact of the matter for those judgments to latch onto—can accommodate such uncertainty.