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Chapter 1

Relativism about Beauty

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so they say.¹ A great many readers—­philosophers and lay readers alike—will feel the force of this aphorism and think it is an insuperable barrier to any serious thesis about beauty.² The aphorism is usually meant as a shorthand way of saying that beauty is thoroughly relative.³ This means that the truth values of claims about beauty are utterly relative to being claimed: when a claim about beauty is made, it is thereby true. If this is true, then claims about beauty are indeed idle. Claims about beauty will only be true or false in virtue of whether they are claimed or not and thus cannot be advanced as though they were really true.⁴ For example, the truth value of a claim like “This theory is more beautiful than that one” will be true if that claim is asserted and false if that claim is denied. Thus, that statement could not be used as part of a serious argument. Any argument that applied my thesis will be plagued by this problem. For example:

Premise 1—Beauty is relevant to whether a theory is true.

Premise 2—Thstyseory T is more beautiful than its competitors.

Conclusion—Therefore, I have reason to believe that Theory T is true.

If relativism about beauty is true, then Premise 2 in this argument cannot be advanced as though it were really true. My thesis would thus be, at best, idle and, at worst, false. To advance my thesis that beauty is relevant to whether a theory is true, I must disambiguate the aphorism and argue that beauty is not thoroughly relative. That is what I will do in this chapter.

Arguments for Relativism from the Aphorism

The first argument against this line of thought is straightforward: there is something highly dubious about doing philosophy by aphorism. Analytical philosophers are not usually in the business of accepting an aphorism from received wisdom as an answer to a philosophical question. For example, if we ask the question “What is the nature of knowledge?” answering “Knowledge is power” is not satisfying. We want to know what the aphorism means, which theory of the phenomenon it comes from, and—most importantly—whether it is true. Our question is whether beauty is relative or not. Answering “It is relative because beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is not a satisfying answer. Citing the aphorism of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” should only raise further questions: What does the aphorism mean? Which theory of beauty is it based on? Is it true? If “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” simply means that beauty is thoroughly relative, then it obviously cannot be offered as a response to the question “Is beauty thoroughly relative?” Such a response is blatantly question-begging and can be dismissed out of hand. We need an argument as to whether beauty is thoroughly relative or not, not simply an aphorism that asserts that it is. If, on the other hand, the aphorism does not simply mean that beauty is thoroughly relative but is meant to support the claim that beauty is thoroughly relative, then we need to know what the aphorism means and what the argument is. I’ll next try to reconstruct what the aphorism might mean and to see whether it can generate any non-question-begging arguments about beauty being relative.

The aphorism says that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Most literally, this tells us “where” beauty is located: it’s in the eye of the beholder. The eye is a perceptual organ and the beholder is one who is beholding, one who is perceiving. Thus, taken literally, the aphorism means something like beauty is located in the perceptual apparatus of a perceiver. This seems to tell us that beauty is bound up with perceiving and perceivers. If it is located in the perceptual apparatus of a perceiver, then if there were no such perceptual apparatus (and hence no perceivers) then there would be no place for beauty to “live.” So beauty can only exist if there are perceivers. Does this entail that beauty is thoroughly relative, that the truth values of claims about beauty are true only in virtue of being claimed? No. For a phenomenon to be thoroughly relative is a fact about the structure of its truth value. For a phenomenon to depend for its existence on perceivers is a fact about where in nature it is found. There are plenty of phenomena that are “located in perceivers”—their existence depends on the existence of perceivers—which are nevertheless not thoroughly relative. Most philosophical theories of color hold that color has this structure: color is not to be literally found in an object itself but is instead found in the perceiver perceiving the object.⁵ But this does not thereby entail that color is thoroughly relative. Perception itself is a more general and powerful example: by definition perception can only exist in perceivers, but this does not entail that all perception is thoroughly relative.

If the aphorism only literally says something about where beauty is located, why do so many move to thinking that it entails that beauty is thoroughly relative? My diagnosis is a confusion of the terms “subjective” and “relative.” Subjective means “of, or relating to, a subject.” Relative means “not universal, true only in light of something arbitrary.” These words are sometimes used interchangeably, but they should not be. For a thing to be of, or related to, a subject is for it to be “in” or “of” perceivers, for its existence to depend on the existence of subjects, perceivers. But for a thing to be relative is not about “where” it is, but about the structure of its truth value.⁶ Once we’re clear about these words, it should be obvious that color and perception are subjective—they are of, or related to, a subject—but not relative—there are nonarbitrary truth values of colors and perceptions. Even more generally, subjectivity itself is (by definition) subjective but not relative. Even if it is true that beauty is subjective—it is “in” perceivers—this does not entail that beauty is relative—that claims about beauty are only true in light of something arbitrary. Thus, once we understand the meaning of the aphorism and the difference between subjectivism and relativism, it is clear that the aphorism itself does not support relativism about beauty. Things can be subjective but not relative, so to identify beauty as subjective does not get us to the claim that beauty is relative. A further argument for relativism about beauty would be needed.

Arguments for Relativism from Disagreement

Having disambiguated the aphorism, the defender of relativism about beauty may move to connect the aphorism to a different argument.⁷ A common kind of argument proceeds from the fact of disagreement about beauty and tries to use that fact to explain why subjectivism about beauty (as captured in the aphorism) does entail relativism about beauty. The argument can run as follows:

Premise 1—Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that is, beauty is “in” people’s perceptions.

Premise 2—If beauty is in people’s perceptions, then people will perceive beauty differently.

Premise 3—This means that people will have disagreements about what is or isn’t beautiful (e.g., Person A will think Object O is beautiful because he/she perceives it to be so, but Person B will think Object O is not beautiful because he/she perceives it to be so).

Premise 4—If people have disagreements about what is or isn’t beautiful, then beauty is thoroughly relative.

Conclusion—Therefore, beauty is thoroughly relative.

This argument turns mostly on Premise 4, which connects disagreement about a phenomenon with relativism about that phenomenon. But such a connection is spurious. It is perfectly possible for there to be disagreement about a subject where that subject is not thoroughly relative. There are obvious cases like scientific disagreements (e.g., Scientist A thinks Phenomenon P is caused by X because it is sufficiently supported by the data, but Scientist B thinks Phenomenon P is not caused by X because it is sufficiently refuted by the data). Such a disagreement is perfectly possible, but this does not entail relativism about the phenomenon or that there is no truth of that matter. We can also return to the case of color to see that even completely subjective disagreement (i.e., disagreement about a phenomenon that is “in” subjects) does not entail relativism. There are disagreements about the color of an object. Such disagreements can be caused by optical illusions, deficiencies in perceptual powers, bad lighting, and so on (e.g., Person A thinks Object O is blue and black, but Person B thinks Object O is white and gold).⁸ But this disagreement does not entail that thoroughgoing relativism about color is true (that a claim about color is true in virtue of being claimed). There is thus not a sufficient connection between there being disagreement about X and X being relative to warrant the inference from disagreement about beauty to relativism about beauty. The proponent of relativism can say that disagreement about beauty is distinct and just does entail relativism about beauty, but this is obviously only to return to a question-begging assertion of relativism about beauty.

But perhaps I am being too hasty. Perhaps there is something genuinely distinct about disagreements of beauty, as compared to most other kinds of disagreement, that does entail relativism about beauty in a non-question-begging way. We can reframe the previous argument to focus not just on disagreement about beauty as such but instead to focus on what kind of disagreement about beauty there is. Consider the following argument:

Premise 1—Disagreement about beauty is utterly intractable (i.e., it is impossible to resolve disagreement about beauty).

Premise 2—If it is impossible to resolve disagreement about a phenomenon, then that phenomenon is thoroughly relative.

Conclusion—Therefore, beauty is thoroughly relative.

(Notice that as the argument becomes more about the intractability of disagreement and less about merely the fact of disagreement, the aphorism—which is about where beauty “lives”—becomes less relevant.) This argument still depends on a connection between disagreement, now intractable disagreement, and relativism (as expressed in Premise 2). Even when further specified as intractable disagreement, this connection is still spurious. We can easily imagine cases of intractable disagreement that do not entail that the phenomenon in question is relative. The examples I used before—scientific disagreements and disagreements about color—can continue to show this. Disagreements of all kinds can become intractable: out of stubbornness, out of irrationality, out of lack of data, out of competing underlying theories, out of perceptual disparities (in the case of color), and so on. The fact that disagreements cannot be resolved does not entail that the phenomenon in question is thoroughly relative, that there is no fact of the matter about which the parties are disagreeing. The very practice of philosophy itself—which is often plagued by intractable disagreement, but nevertheless maintains that there is a truth to be discovered about the difficult phenomenon in question—refutes the inference from intractable disagreement to relativism.

The proponent of relativism about beauty can take one more stab at connecting disagreement about beauty with relativism about beauty. They can further specify the argument this way:

Premise 1—Disagreement about beauty is in principle intractable (i.e., there are utterly no principles of beauty that could adjudicate disagreements about beauty and so disagreements about beauty are necessarily intractable).

Premise 2—If there are no principles with which to resolve a disagreement about a phenomenon, then that phenomenon is thoroughly relative.

Conclusion—Therefore, beauty is thoroughly relative.

But, again, this relies on a connection between disagreement (now a very strong and rare kind of disagreement) and relativism. And that connection between disagreement and relativism is still spurious. We can dispense with all these arguments trying to connect disagreement with relativism once and for all by considering the following argument:

Premise 1—Disagreement (even the most intractable sort) is an epistemic phenomenon (it is about two parties’ beliefs being different and their inability to change the other’s beliefs).

Premise 2—Relativism is a metaphysical phenomenon (it is about the structure of the truth value of a class of propositions).

Premise 3—One cannot infer a metaphysical fact from an epistemic fact (because epistemic facts are about our minds, which are limited, and metaphysical facts are about the world, which is separate from our minds).

Conclusion—Therefore, one cannot infer relativism about beauty from disagreement about beauty.

This argument irrevocably drives a wedge between disagreement—even necessarily intractable disagreement, which is still a fact about our minds and their limitations—and relativism.⁹ This of course does not argue directly against relativism about beauty. But it undercuts all these arguments for relativism that are based on disagreement, which is a common kind of argument offered in support of relativism.

What’s more, my responses to all the previous arguments about disagreement and relativism granted the premises claiming that there was intractable or necessary disagreement about beauty. I was happy to grant those premises for the time being, given that disconnecting disagreement from relativism is enough to sink the arguments. But it’s worth noting that as those premises get stronger, they become less plausible. It is obvious that there is some disagreement of some kind about beauty (as there is about virtually everything), but this fact clearly does not entail relativism. But to claim that disagreement about beauty is always utterly or even necessarily intractable is much less plausible. A single resolved disagreement about beauty (with or without principles) will be enough to undercut these strong premises about the nature and scope of disagreements about beauty. For what it’s worth, my own experience includes cases of resolved disagreements about beauty (cases in which I have been able to convince someone else that they were wrong in their judgment of beauty as well as cases in which someone else has been able to convince me that I was wrong in my judgment of beauty). I invite the reader to consider their own case as to whether disagreements about beauty can ever be resolved (if there has ever been a case when you didn’t think a painting was beautiful until someone pointed out an overlooked feature, a case when you did think a novel was beautiful until someone pointed out that it was saccharine, and so on). A single case like this will be enough to undercut the premise that disagreements about beauty are always intractable. My diagnosis for why so many have difficulty with disagreement about beauty is that there are indeed no principles of beauty that could be used to adjudicate disagreements of beauty. But it is overhasty to move from a lack of principles of beauty to intractable disagreements about beauty, much less to relativism about beauty. I will further discuss principles of beauty, whether there are any, and what this means for disagreements about beauty in chapter 2.

Arguments against Relativism from Considered Judgments

So much then for arguments for relativism about beauty based on disagreement or the aphorism that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But to undercut arguments in not enough. My thesis requires that relativism about beauty is false, not just unsupported. I must provide arguments directly against relativism about beauty. I turn to that now. In order to argue for the negation of a thesis (in this case, that relativism about beauty is not true), it is enough to show that the affirmation of that thesis has deeply counterintuitive implications. That is, if it can be shown that the truth of a thesis would require radical, painful revision to our best, commonsense understanding of the world, then we have enough reason to believe in the falsity of that thesis. (Note that this method for arguing for the denial of a thesis is the inverse of fit with the data: if the affirmation of the thesis does not fit with the data, then we have reason to believe the denial of the thesis. This is also a version of reflective equilibrium, more on that in chapter 3.) This will be my strategy for arguing for the denial of relativism about beauty.

Relativism about beauty has profoundly counterintuitive implications. To see this, we must reemphasize what relativism about beauty would mean. For something to be relative is for claims about that thing to be true merely in virtue of being honestly claimed. That is, for something to be relative is for it to be the case that by claiming “X is true” that X becomes true. Why does this make it relative? Because if another person claims—at the same time and in the same way—that “X is not true,” then it also becomes true that X is not true. There may be some things that are genuinely relative: pleasure and pain are sometimes understood to work like this (though by no means under every theory of pleasure and pain). The thinking goes: if a person thinks they are in pain, then that is just what it is to be in pain. So, by honestly asserting “I am in pain” it ipso facto is true that the person is in pain. In other words, a person cannot be wrong in their honest assertions of their own pain. This is relativism. It is also important to distinguish a claim being relative from a claim being context-sensitive. If one asserts “Today is Monday,” then that claim is sometimes true, sometimes false. This of course does not entail that the fact of the day of the week is relative. Relativism is not that a claim can be true in one context, but false in another. All claims (except necessary truths and contradictions) are like this. For a phenomenon to be relative is much stronger: it is for it to be the case that by claiming “X is true” that X ipso facto becomes true.

We can see this understanding of relativism in the way people usually present relativism about beauty. They say things like: “If I think this painting is beautiful, then it is beautiful (to me). But if you think it is not beautiful, then it is not beautiful (to you).” This can sound like common sense, but simple reflection on the implications for the truth values in question raises many problems. First, and most straightforwardly, this entails that people cannot be wrong in their honest claims about beauty. Even the most outlandish, stubborn, contrarian claim about beauty will be ipso facto true as long as it is claimed honestly. Both “The Taj Mahal is a beautiful building” and “That pile of laundry is the most beautiful thing in existence” are equally true, as long as they are earnestly claimed. This is absurd.¹⁰ Sometimes relativism about beauty is presented as though it should make us humble by forcing us to respect other people’s claims about beauty. It does force us to acknowledge that their claims about beauty are true. But it also ensures that our own claims about beauty are always true, inoculating us from any danger whatsoever that our claims could be mistaken. It is hubris to set up a theory of beauty on which it is not possible to be incorrect about one’s claims about beauty. I will again use myself as an example: I certainly have had the experience of realizing that an initial judgment of beauty was incorrect. I had what is, I think, a common experience: upon first hearing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, I judged it to be very beautiful. After multiple hearings and more careful consideration, I came to think that this judgment was somewhat incorrect: while the piece is striking and fun, it possesses a heavy-handedness and gimmicky quality that detracts from its overall beauty. Still a beautiful piece of music, but my initial very high assessment was incorrect. (“Spring” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is perhaps another example like this.) Again, I put it to the reader: if you have ever come to the realization that an initial judgment of beauty of yours was incorrect (even subtly incorrect), then that is enough to dispense with relativism about beauty by showing that it is possible to be incorrect in an earnest claim about beauty.

Relativism entails that a person cannot be incorrect in their earnest claims about beauty. This is counterintuitive once we grapple with the phenomenon of realizing that one’s own judgments were incorrect. This is related to another counterintuitive implication of relativism about beauty: that one cannot improve one’s judgments of beauty. If relativism about beauty is true, then claims about beauty are true merely in virtue of being claimed. This of course means that one could change one’s claims about beauty: at one time one could claim that Object O is beautiful, then at another time one could claim that Object O is not beautiful. Both of these claims would be true in virtue of being earnestly claimed. Thus, both of these judgments would be equally good in terms of being a claim: they would both be true, utterly equally true. In order for a claim to be an improvement over another claim it must be true (or at least closer to the truth or more accurately capturing the truth) where the other is false. But this is not possible for claims about beauty if relativism is true. If relativism about beauty is true, then all claims about beauty are utterly equal. This entails that improvement among claims about beauty—discovering that something is beautiful when it was previously thought that it wasn’t, discovering that a standard of beauty is too narrow, discovering that one was unduly influenced by an irrelevant factor in making a judgment of beauty, and so on—is not possible. This entails that improving one’s ability to assess artworks in terms of beauty—whether music, literature, painting, and so on—is also not possible. It is not an improvement to claim, after careful study, that Bach’s music is beautiful, where before one casually claimed that it was boring and not beautiful. Those two claims—the careful claim after study that Bach’s music is beautiful and the casual claim that Bach’s music is not beautiful—are utterly equally true if relativism is true. This is absurd, the one is clearly an improvement over the other. It is possible, through careful study of the arts, to improve one’s judgments of beauty. It is possible, through careful thinking about biases or blind spots, to improve one’s claims about beauty. Again, I certainly have had the experience of improving my own judgments of beauty and I put it to the reader to reflect on whether any changes in their claims about beauty have been changes for the better. If changes for the better among judgments of beauty are possible, then relativism about beauty is false.

The absurdities of relativism thus far include the impossibility of incorrect claims about beauty as well as the impossibility of improvement among claims about beauty. Along the way I’ve been pointing to another implied absurdity of relativism: that no artwork can be more or less beautiful than any other. This means that there are no genuinely beautiful works of art: that the artworks cataloged in the Museum of Bad Art are equally beautiful (or equally ugly) as all artworks cataloged in the world’s great art museums.¹¹ The artworks that people overwhelmingly regard as beautiful (perhaps from Monet or Van Gogh) are equally beautiful (or equally ugly) as all other artworks, even the most amateurish or clumsy. If relativism about beauty is true, then as long as someone earnestly claims that an artwork is beautiful, then it ipso facto is beautiful. And vice versa: as long as someone earnestly claims that an artwork is ugly, then it ipso facto is ugly. This is absurd. The history of art—which traces the arc of great and beautiful artworks and the masters of creating such beauty—would be utterly idle and misguided. The institutions dedicated to promoting and preserving great and beautiful art—museums, concert halls, architectural preservation societies, UNESCO, and so on—would be utterly idle and misguided. Our histories of art and institutions of art are by no means perfect: they make omissions, have biases, can be drawn to fame over quality, and so on. (Note that even saying that histories and institutions of art could make mistakes about beauty assumes non-relativism about beauty.) But to admit that these are not perfect is of course not to say that they have not captured some truth about the beauty of artworks. It is an absurd implication of relativism about beauty that there are no genuinely beautiful artworks.

Thinking about the histories of art and the institutions of art in this context points to yet another absurd implication of relativism about beauty: that there is no expertise about beauty. The projects of art history, of art institutions, of art criticism, of art appreciation are all predicated on the premise that some artworks are genuinely beautiful and worthy of admiration. One can be trained to appreciate these beautiful artworks by training in technique, by repeated exposure, by expert guidance, and by learning some of the history of art and beauty. All of this is idle and meaningless if relativism about beauty is true. If an amateur earnestly claimed that their artwork was the most beautiful in all history, then that claim would be utterly on a par with the museum curator’s judgment that another artwork was more beautiful. If a stubborn student earnestly claimed that an artwork was not beautiful, then that claim would be utterly on a par with the art appreciation professor’s judgment that it was beautiful. Although experts about beautiful artwork can make mistakes (like any expert), this does not undermine the common sense that it is possible to be an expert critic of beauty. Relativism about beauty throws such expertise to the wind, which is an absurd implication.

Note that all these absurd implications of relativism about beauty relate to commonsense features of our judgments of beauty and the ordinary ways we interact with beauty. We make, revise, and improve our judgments of beauty; we engage in critical disputes about the beauty of artworks; we travel the world to see especially beautiful buildings, artworks, and landscapes; we listen to the expertise of art critics. None of this would be sensible if relativism about beauty were true and that painful revision to our considered judgments about beauty is enough to warrant the denial of relativism about beauty. But there is one more absurd implication for relativism about beauty related to our ordinary experience of beauty. Above I examined several arguments for relativism about beauty that were based on disagreement about beauty. I responded that those arguments, even granting their premises about disagreement about beauty, do not entail relativism about beauty. But here is another problem with relativism and disagreement about beauty: there is significant agreement about judgments of beauty as well, even across time and culture. There is widespread, persistent agreement that the Taj Mahal, Yosemite Valley, Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony are all very beautiful. There are countless other buildings, natural landscapes, paintings, pieces of music, and so on that we could list that would command widespread agreement on their beauty. There is, of course, some disagreement about beauty: even on these paradigm cases, there will be a few stubborn or strange detractors. And there are certainly cases that are less clear: we are far less certain about whether many cases of modern art are beautiful (of course, many cases of modern art are purposefully not supposed to be beautiful).¹² If relativism about beauty were true, then there should not be such patterns of agreement. If relativism about beauty were true, then our judgments of beauty should whimsically dart in every direction: a judgment of beauty would be true in virtue of being claimed, so true claims about beauty should be utterly haphazard. Relativism about beauty cannot explain the significant agreement about beauty that we experience and a theory’s running roughshod over that body of data is enough to deny that theory.

All of these absurd implications of relativism about beauty can be tied together by noting that relativism about beauty reduces beauty to an empty concept. If relativism about beauty is true, then there is really no truth about beauty at all. According to relativism, all claims about beauty are equally true, equally false, depending on whether they are claimed or denied. But this is better understood as asserting that claims of beauty are neither true nor false at all. If claims about beauty were properly true and false at the same time and the same respect, then straightforward contradictions are generated and relativism falsifies itself. Thus, relativism should understand claims of beauty as strictly speaking neither true nor false. Relativism must maintain, on pain of contradiction, that all claims about beauty—everyone’s individual claims, claims about improvement, claims about great artworks, claims about art expertise, patterns of agreement about beauty—are strictly speaking neither true nor false. This means that there are no truth conditions that govern the concept of beauty at all, which makes it an utterly empty concept.¹³ Thus, relativism about beauty—in the myriad ways I’ve argued above—destroys the concept of beauty in a way that runs utterly roughshod over our considered judgments of beauty. The most fundamental of these considered judgments is merely the considered judgment that beauty is a real and important concept. This considered judgment underpins our enjoyment of beauty, our attention to beauty-related greatness and expertise, our patterns of agreement about beauty, and our critical discussion of beauty when faced with disagreement. Relativism about beauty strikes at this most fundamental of considered judgments of beauty—that it is real—and so relativism should be rejected. Relativism’s violence to our considered judgments about beauty is enough reason to justify belief in the denial of relativism.

Arguments against Relativism from an Analogy to Moral Relativism

These arguments against relativism about beauty should sound familiar. They are closely analogous with arguments against relativism about morality. Although relativism about morality does not enjoy as widespread endorsement as relativism about beauty, anyone who has spent some time teaching ethics knows that relativism about morality is often (uncritically) endorsed. It is often the first task of teaching ethics to uproot a naïve relativism about morality; the arguments that are used against relativism about morality track the arguments against relativism about beauty given above. Disagreement (including intractable or even necessarily intractable) about morality is commonly cited as reason to believe in relativism about morality.¹⁴ But the counter to this argument is likewise to point out that disagreement does not entail relativism, given that disagreement is an epistemic phenomenon and that relativism is about the truth status of moral claims. If disagreement about morality does not license moral relativism, then neither does disagreement about beauty license relativism about beauty.

The analogy continues: if driving a wedge between disagreement and relativism is not enough to undermine relativism about morality, then the argument against relativism usually proceeds to point out the many ways in which relativism about morality runs roughshod over our moral considered judgments. Relativism about morality means that moral claims are true merely in virtue of being claimed. This has several implications, given that people can claim all kinds of things about morality: (1) that people cannot be wrong in their earnest claims about morality, (2) that they cannot improve their moral beliefs (since all moral beliefs are equally true/false), (3) that no action is any more or less moral than any other action (since someone could believe that any action is moral), (4) that there is no such thing as moral expertise,¹⁵ and (5) that patterns of agreement about morality are mere coincidence. These are all profoundly counterintuitive implications; together they make morality an utterly empty concept. The violence that relativism about morality does to our considered judgments about morality is enough reason to reject relativism about morality. Or, at least, this is often the kind of argument that is used to reject relativism about morality. If this kind of argument is successful, then my arguments against relativism about beauty will also hold up. On the other hand, if one is not satisfied with my arguments against relativism, then relativism about all normative values is just around the corner. If the damage relativism does to our considered judgments is not enough to warrant rejecting relativism, then radical skepticism about normative domains (in the vein of logical positivism) will follow.¹⁶

My arguments against relativism about beauty thus rest. I have undermined ordinary arguments in support of relativism about beauty and shown how relativism about beauty does not fit with our considered judgments about beauty. Both of these types of arguments have analogs to ordinary arguments against moral relativism, which are overwhelmingly thought to be successful arguments. In my experience, relativism about beauty is hard to shake for many philosophers outside of aesthetics and lay people: “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” has almost the status of a dogma. But I have shown that this aphorism is underspecified and not enough to entail relativism about beauty. None of this of course has been to establish any particular theory of beauty, much less to argue for the thesis of this book—that judgments of beauty are relevant to theory evaluation. But with thoroughgoing relativism about beauty now out of the way, the concept of beauty is on the table and worthy of our serious consideration. In the next chapter, I’ll examine an account of beauty that will get us more of a grip on this concept. With that account in hand, I will be able to develop the argument for my thesis in the remaining chapters.

NOTES

1 Throughout this chapter, I will refer to “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” as “the aphorism.” Like most aphorisms of this kind, it is difficult to discover its full origin. It seems the aphorism first appeared word-for-word in print in English in Margaret Wolfe Hungerford’s 1878 novel Molly Bawn.

2 The audience for this chapter (like the rest of this book) is a general philosophical audience (along with the interested lay reader). This is because the thesis of this book—that beauty is relevant to theory evaluation, including philosophical theory evaluation—is of general philosophical interest. This does mean, however, that this chapter is not addressed to narrow debates in aesthetics on the precise formulation of the truth conditions of judgments of beauty (what the “truthmakers” of judgments of beauty are, what kind of semantic we should give to judgments of beauty, and so on). Nor does this chapter speak to the dreaded realism/antirealism debate (see Zangwill 2001 for a good overview of that debate). As I understand it (and there is some dispute about even the terms of the dispute), a realism/antirealism debate is about whether a property is “really” in the world or whether it is not. Note that such a dispute is orthogonal to a universalism/relativism dispute (which is what this chapter is about). These two kinds of disputes are often confused because realism about phenomenon P does entail that relativism about P is false and vice versa (i.e., realism and relativism are inconsistent). But various kinds of antirealism are compatible with universalism (i.e., these kinds of antirealism deny relativism). For example, Kant’s theory of beauty (see Kant 1790) is not plausibly construed as a realist theory (given Kant’s transcendental idealism). But obviously Kant is a universalist, not a relativist, about beauty (likewise for morality). To give another example, the emotivist theory of beauty is a classic antirealist view. But emotivism can be interpreted as either a relativist view (see Santayana 1896) or a non-relativist view (see Hume 1757). This chapter only means to argue against common kinds of relativism (often found, in my experience, in lay people and philosophers outside of aesthetics). This chapter does not to speak to whether universalism (i.e., non-relativism) about beauty entails realism about beauty. Indeed, the mid-level account of beauty that I will develop in the next chapter will be inherited from Kant and so will easily be compatible with antirealism about beauty. That being said, everything I say about beauty in this book is meant to be agnostic about the realism/antirealism debate. But, as this chapter will make clear, I must (and do) deny relativism about beauty. To be sure, some antirealists about beauty (see Bender 2001; Cova & Pain 2012) are also relativists about beauty and my arguments in this chapter will necessarily cut against their view. But I am rejecting their relativism about beauty, not necessarily their antirealism about beauty. Again, I do not speak to the realism/antirealism debate in this chapter and everything in this book is meant to be agnostic about that debate. The purpose of this chapter is merely to motivate the general philosophical reader to take judgments of beauty seriously enough such that arguments for my thesis in the coming chapters will not be total nonstarters.

3 By thoroughly relative I mean that judgments of beauty are relativized to each individual believer. That is what is most often meant by this aphorism and the term “relativism.” This kind of relativism is what I’ll mean when I refer to “relativism” throughout this chapter. This kind of relativism is distinct from, say, a view on which judgments of beauty are relativized to the human species as a whole. That species-kind of relativism is not threatening to my thesis, so I do not engage it at all in this book. Everything I say about beauty in this book is meant to be agnostic about whether our judgments of beauty are relativized to our species or not. For thoroughly relativist theories of beauty, see Ayers (1936) and Santayana (1896).

4 Note that while such relativism is common (in my experience) among contemporary philosophers outside of aesthetics and among lay people, it is the significant minority view in the history of theorizing about beauty. For non-relativist theories of beauty, see Aristotle Poetics, Burke (1765), Collingwood (1945), Danto (2003), Hogarth (1753), Hume (1757), Hutcheson (1725), Kant (1790), Mothersill (1984), Nehamas (2010), Plato Symposium, Plotinus Ennead, Schiller (1795), Shaftesbury (1711), Sircello (1975), and Zangwill (2001). For relativist theories of beauty, see Ayers (1936) and Santayana (1896).

5 Obviously, there are some theories of color that hold that color is indeed in the object itself. My point is only that subjective color theory shows that subjective non-relativism is a live option. This is another way of emphasizing the point made in footnote 2: antirealist non-relativism is a live option, and so rejecting relativism does not commit one way or the other with respect to the realism/antirealism debate.

6 Confusing these terms is another version of confusing the realism/antirealism dispute with the universalism/relativism dispute. Subjectivism is a type of antirealism, but is not thereby relativist.

7 Remember, the main audience of this chapter is a general philosophical audience and interested lay readers, given the general nature of the book’s thesis. I have, in personal experience with philosophers, often encountered the kinds of arguments from disagreement that I will consider in this section. That said, philosophers in the realism/antirealism debate in aesthetics who also endorse relativism often ground their arguments for relativism in disagreement, particularly in intractable or so-called “faultless” disagreement. See Bender (2001) and Cova and Pain (2012). My arguments in this section will cut against these views. See Schafer (2011) for a realist (and thereby non-relativist) interpretation of faultless disagreement. Remember that I am only arguing against relativism, I am not thereby taking a view on realism/antirealism.

8 I refer of course to the infamous case of “the dress,” in which a large swath of the American internet was gripped by a dispute over the color a pictured dress. Many people perceived it to be blue and black, while many others perceived it to be white and gold.