‘Taste’ is both subjective and objective

We all recognize that personal taste in art — defined broadly as anything made by man, like paintings, motion pictures, wine, buildings, shoes, and so on — is both subjective and objective. Subjective because different people like different things, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that one is wrong and the other right. But objective because sometimes things are just bad, and if someone doesn’t see that then it is a defect on his part — likewise if someone doesn’t see that a good thing is good.

How does this work?

I propose that there are two actions in evaluating works of art.

The first evaluation is an act of division: separating the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff.

This is normally easy and obvious. Anyone with a basic receptivity to art should be able to recognize the difference — there can be a small grey area at the margin, but otherwise there should be widespread, spontaneous, non-controversial agreement.

Take for instance the Star Wars motion pictures. The act of separation is exceedingly easy. The films of the original trilogy are good; the films of the prequel trilogy are bad. The only grey area where there is any dispute is the third prequel film, Revenge of the Sith.

The second evaluation is an act of sorting: discriminating the merit of things already recognized to be good.

So with Star Wars, having dismissed the prequel trilogy we move on to discerning what is the relative quality, what are the particular achievements, what is special, about the original films.

In a word, we are trying to discover what makes them good and how good are they.

In this, personal taste in the usual sense has a large part to play — because any good thing is going to have many different qualities, and these qualities will speak to different people in different degrees, and different people will value these things more or less than others. So one person will say The Empire Strikes Back is the best of all the Star Wars films, because it is the most intense and emotional. I would say A New Hope is the best of all, because it is the most perfect, simple, and satisfying in conception.

Notice the difference between the two types of evaluation. The first evaluation is objective, the second is subjective.

In the first, contrary opinions have to be resolved. A thing cannot be both good and bad. If John says Chartres cathedral is good, and Jane says it is bad, one of them is wrong. It has to be that way. And so they can argue over it and try to persuade one another, and indeed they should, because the one who is wrong should be corrected. Jane needs to develop a better capacity for discerning good from bad.

Discriminating the good from the bad in art is a recognition of objective reality which, in principle, everyone should be capable of. It can be learned through teaching and through deliberate change of habits, but I suspect that the best way to improve is to become better oneself. A good man can comprehend both good and bad; a bad man cannot even comprehend bad.

In the second evaluation, contrary opinions do not have to be resolved. If my wife’s favourite Star Wars film is Empire, and mine is A New Hope, there is no contradiction and we do not need to argue about it. My wife perceives more perfectly the good in Empire, and I in A New Hope. What we can do is discuss our different judgements, not necessarily to persuade, but to try to reveal to the other what is the good which we perceive. Sometimes one can come to recognize what was not recognized before — and it is a beautiful thing, because it means you have become more adequate to perceive beauty.

In fact this latter task, communicating a perception of beauty to another, is what we are made for. Our subjective personal taste is actually a essential to the meaning of life. Because each of us is made to perceive, to praise, and to communicate a different glimmer of the glory of God. And since God is every perfection and every beauty, it means that every perfection and every beauty we perceive is the glory of God.

When one has a special love for a particular film, or a particular wine or building or meal, that is his unique character and destiny revealed. If he can communicate something of the beauty to another, he has done what he was created for — he has told the glory of God to the world.

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The twofold method of evaluation was inspired by C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism. A wonderful little book, less known among Lewis’s disciples than it should be.