ON THE DEFENSIBILITY OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENTS IN CRITICAL THEORIES OF BEARDSLEY AND ISENBERG

In the 20th century one of the most controversial questions in aesthetics for American philosophers is the question of the defensibility of aesthetic judgments. The main reason is that its answer determines whether aesthetic criticism can be a well-founded intellectual enterprise or not. Monroe C. Beardsley is one of the American philosophers who believe that aesthetic evaluations are defensible and he proposes a rationalist theory of objective criticism. According to him, there are normative principles governing aesthetic evaluations and critics can justify their critical verdicts on the artworks by inferring their evaluations from these principles. With regard to this proposal, the questions are as follows: Can such a rationalist theory maintain the essential feature of the aesthetic judgment which demands an internal response, a particular feeling, in addition to its cognitive aspect? If not, can there be an alternative theory for the defensibility of aesthetic evolutions which saves its essential emotive ingredient? In this paper, these questions will be responded to by examining Beardsley’s theory and its critical rejection by Arnold Isenberg. As a result, it will be demonstrated that Isenberg formulates the alternative theory which gives equal weight in aesthetic criticism both to the internal emotive aspect and to the validity of an aesthetic judgment.