Art, Education, and The Democratic Commitment

ART, EDUCATION, AND THE DEMOCRATIC COMMITMENT
Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture

VOLUME 7
Series Editor
H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy,
Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, and Philosophy Depart-
ment, Rice University, Houston, Texas
Associate Editor
Kevin William Wildes, S.1., Philosophy Department and Kennedy Insti-
tute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC
Editorial Board
Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University, Durham, N.C.
Maureen Kelly, Centerfor Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor Col-
lege of Medicine, Houston
Terry Pinkard, GeorRetown University, WashinRton, DC
The titles puhlished in this series are listed at the end of this \'olume.
ART, EDUCATION,
AND THE DEMOCRATIC
COMMITMENT
A Defence of State Support for the Arts
by
DAVID T. SCHWARTZ
Randolph-Macon Woman's Colle!?e, Lynchburg, U.S.A.
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

A c.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-90-481-5450-0 ISBN 978-94-015-9444-8 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-9444-8
Printed an acid-free paper
AII Rights Reserved

© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2000
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover lst edition 2000
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
inc1uding photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from
the copyright owner.
CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES VI
PREFACE V11
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS XI
INTRODUCTION 1
1 THE TRADITION OF SUBSIDY:

ART AND CULTURAL PERFECTION 13
2 THE COMMITMENT TO DEMOCRACY 45
3 EMPATHY, INTERPRETATION, AND JUDGMENT:

THE CASE FOR ART 67
4 THE POLITICS OF SUBSIDY 111
5 PUBLIC POLICIES AND CONCLUSIONS 141
INDEX 163
BIBLIOGRAPHY 173
v
LIST OF FIGURES
1 George Washington by Horatio Greenough 4
2 A Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks 78
3 Piss Christ by Andres Serrano 125
4 Tilted Arc by Richard Serra 149
VI
PREFACE
In reflecting on this book and the process of writing it, the most
pervasive theme I find is that of confluence. I drew much of the energy
needed to write the book from the energy that resides at the
confluence, or nexus, of contrasting ideas. At the most general level,
the topic of arts subsidy offered a means of exploring simultaneously
two of my favorite philosophical subjects-aesthetics and politics.
The risk of a dual focus is of course that you do neither topic justice.
However, the bigger payoff of this strategy resides in finding new
and interesting connections between two otherwise disparate topics.
Developing such connections between art and politics led directly
to many of the book's positive arguments for subsidy.
At a deeper level, the book exploits a confluence of contrasting

philosophical methodologies. The central problem of the book-
politically justifying state support of the arts-is cast in the Anglo-
American tradition of analytical philosophy. Here normative
arguments of ethics and politics are scrutinized with an eye toward
developing a defensible justification of state action. Yet while the
book initially situates the subsidy problem within this analytical
tradition, its positive arguments for subsidy draw heavily from the
ideas and methods of Continental philosophy. Rather than
adjudicating normative claims of ethical and political ttuth, the
Continental tradition aims at the hermeneutical task of interpreting
and describing sttuctures of human meaning. That the book draws
from both traditions reflects my belief that rarely can a single
tradition of inquiry produce a complete philosophical explanation.
VII
PREFACE
Today, unfortunately, a strict partition exists between the practice of

analytical and Continental philosophy, and often the distinction is a
source of enormous rancor and downright nasty behavior among many
professional philosophers. This book reflects my long-held desire to
practice philosophy across this divide, in a way that might be fruitful
to adherents of either tradition.
Another methodological confluence informing the book is that of

theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy. That is, the book
occupies a point at which metaphysical claims about the foundations
of morality, beauty, and political legitimacy connect more with
practical issues of democratic citizenship, public policy, and practical
wisdom. The bridge term that facilitates this crossover is the concept
of judgment, an intellectual phenomenon essential to resolving
theoretical questions about the metaphysics of value as well as
practical questions about how to live a fruitful life.
While on the topic of practical life, I would also point out a more
personal confluence at work in the book. In addition to the various
connnections of theory and method just discussed, for me the book
also represents a confluence of personal career choices. That is, the
book not only reflects my current work as a teacher and lover of
philosophical inquiry, but it also connects with my past service in
the public sector. Prior to pursuing philosophy as a career, I served
six years with The United States General Accounting Office, a
support agency of the U.S. Congress. One might even say that before
becoming a philosopher I was something of a government junkie,
having always been fascinated with what government is and how it
works. This was true not only during my time at GAO but as early
as age eight, when I remember being simply fascinated at touring
the local post office and understanding its inner workings!
Viti
PREFACE
From a personal level, then, it is not surprising I would write a book

of philosophy that dealt with the public sector. Yet more
philosophically, perhaps these early experiences help explain my belief
that philosophy is something one should be able to discuss with
others, not just with other philosophers. I believe Ludwig
Wittgenstein was absolutely right when he said all philosophy must
in the end maintain friction with an actual form of life. Or to put
the point in Platonic terms, I believe philosophers must routinely
turn around, come out of the sunlight, and climb back down in the
cave. How else can they know their work has relevance?
IX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Any acknowledgements I make must begin with my family. I thank

my parents, Lee and Martha Schwartz, for the support and
encouragement that made my pursuit of philosophy possible. Also,
I thank my brother, Dr. J.P. Schwartz, for his steadfast encouragement
and good cheer. I also thank Julie Hemstreet, whose moral support,
conversation, and editing greatly improved the book.
Along the way many persons helped me complete this project. My

mentors at Rice University, Steven Crowell, Tris Engelhardt, and
George Sher, deserve much credit for the care, patience, and time
they devoted to my philosophical training. Also, Mark Cherry,
Ruiping Fan, Lisa Rasmussen, Minranda Robinson-Davis, Carolyn
Sherayko, and Judy Thomas all provided invaluable technical support.
There are many others who helped by providing those elusive but
necessary intangibles of success: Lola, my late canine friend, for
keeping my feet warm on those cold nights at the keyboard; Matt
Kelly, for keeping the java flowing; and, Paul Wiley, Lisa Ray, Roger
West, and the gang at Valhalla for providing many restorative
diversions.
Xl
INTRODUCTION
Why not subsidize the arts? This ambiguous question captures the
most common yet extreme viewpoints in the debate over public
funding for the arts. At one extreme, this question reflects the
exhortations of embattled subsidy advocates-"Surely the arts have
great value, so why not give them government money?" At another
extreme, it reflects the unfortunate fact that the debate over subsidy
has been framed much more by those who oppose it than those who
support it. For while subsidy proponents have done much
campaigning, lobbying, and proselytizing for their causes, they less
often have supported their claims with positive arguments. Often,
arts advocates simply assume a positive answer to the very question
most in need of argument-Why do the arts deserve public money?
In contrast, subsidy opponents have developed sophisticated moral
and political arguments why public monies ought not be spent on
the arts. These arguments have no doubt contributed to this decade's
precipitous decrease in funding for America's premier subsidy
institution, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).1
This book seeks to balance the subsidy debate by offering a

comprehensive, positive argument why a democratic government
may-and perhaps even should-tax its citizens to support the arts.
Unlike other defenses of subsidy, the justification offered here eschews
the idea that the arts deserve public support because they have
intrinsic value. Rather, it argues the best reason to fund the arts is
insttumental-art should be subsidized because it brings important
educational benefits. More specifically, while engaging art no doubt
INTRODUCTION
fosters aesthetic appreciation, here it is argued that engaging art

constitutes a form of political education. Art affords democratic
citizens an opportunity to practice the politically useful skills of
empathy, interpretation, and judgment. This argument strategy
makes the book meaningful for any society that values democratic
self-rule, even though its examples draw primarily from the American
subsidy experience.
In one sense, defending such ambitious claims about art IS a

substantial task, for it requires both a plausible account of art and an
explanation of how art can further the aims of democratic education.
However, in another sense classifying art as education may seem
simplistic, perhaps even a truism. Yet this appearance is deceiving.
To see why, consider the arguments most often made against
government funding. While criticisms of arts funding emanate from
across the political spectrum, virtually all objections are of two basic
types: arguments from moral offense and objections about the proper
scope of government. 2 The claim of moral offense is most common.
This objection argues that a government acts illegitimately when it
finances artworks that offend the moral convictions of taxpayers.
Recently, this objection was voiced loudly in response to publicly-
funded artworks such as Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (a photograph
of a crucifix immersed in a jar of the artist's own urine) and Robert
Mapplethorpe's Self Portrait (a photograph of the artist with a
bullwhip protuding from his rectum).
It is tempting to judge this objection as more an indictment of

contemporary art than a critique of subsidy. That is, some think this
objection would simply disappear if artists would stop urinating
and get back to producing rea! art. Yet clearly this is not the whole
story. History reveals heated debate over the morality of publicly-
funded art long before Serranno and Mapplethorpe, and even long
2
ART, EDUCATION, AND THE DEMOCRATIC COMITTMENT
before rogue movements such as Pop Art or Dada. One interesting

example of this occurred in the mid-19th century, soon after the
United States Congress awarded sculptor Horatio Greenough
$20,000 to create a tribute to America's first president, George
Washington (Figure 1). In language strikingly similar to that of
recent NEA controversies, Greenough's sculpture received derision
and ridicule upon its unveiling in 1842. One viewer, aghast, claimed
the work depicted Washington "like Venus of the bath .. . undressed
with a huge napkin covering his lower extremities .... " One of the
work's more tolerant critics, Virginia Congressman Henry Wise,
claimed the statue's head should be preserved but the body should
be thrown into the Potomac River. This was necessary "to hide it
from the eyes of the world, lest the world should think that that was
the people's conception of the nation's founder." The work was
eventually removed from the Capitol grounds and to this day rests
in storage. 3
The second objection to subsidy argues that supporting the arts is

not a legitimate government function. Rooted in libertarian theories
of property and self-ownership, this objection claims a government
may tax its citizens only to finance essential services such as national
defense and economic infrastructure--essential because these services
produce benefits for every citizen. Funding the arts does not pass
this test because many citizens never even look at art, much less
benefit from it. This objection is sometimes bolstered by the
perception that art is activity of luxury and leisure. The more
thoughtful of such critics might cite Enlightenment philosophers
such as David Hume. For while Hume's inquiries offer important
insights into the nature of beauty and aesthetic judgment, he typically
depicts art as the paradigm of leis ute. For example, his classic Of the
Standard of Taste depicts a person of aesthetic sensibility as someone
who, like Sancho Panza's kinsmen, possesses a palate of sufficient
3
INTRODUCTION
Figure 1: George Washington, publicly-funded sculpture by Horatio Greenough

(1842). Photograph reprinted with permission of the National Museum of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Transfer from the U.S . Capiro!.
Accession 1910.10.3.
4
delicacy to appreciate the subtleties of a fine wine:
It is with good reason, says Sancho to the squire with the

great nose, that I pretend to have a judgment in wine:
this is a quality hereditary in our family. Two of my
kinsmen were once called to give their opinion of a
hogshead, which was supposed to be excellent, being old
and of a good vintage. One of them tastes it, considers
it; and, after mature reflection, ptonounces the wine to
be good, were it not for a small taste ofleather which he
perceived in it. The other, after using the same
precautions, gives also his verdict in favor of the wine;
bur wi th the reserve of a taste of iron, which he could
easily distinguish. You cannot imagine how much they
were both ridiculed for their judgment. But who laughed
in the end? On emptying the hogshead, there was found
at the bottom an old key with a leathern thong tied to
it.4
To the extent Hume's stereotype lingers in our thinking, it is no

surprise that the wisdom of art subsidy is so often questioned. Few
taxpayers would consider wine appreciation a proper venue for
government largesse.)
Given that art subsidies do not enjoy unanimous public support,

they require some justification. Justifying arts subsidies requires
constructing an argument with enough normative force to answer
the disgruntled taxpayers described above. More specifically, it
requires building a cogent response to the objections from moral
offense and improper government function. One popular strategy
for meeting these objections is to claim that art has intrinsic, or
objective, value. Often labeled perfectionist, this strategy argues a
5
INTRODUCTION
government may promote objectively valuable activities because

doing so helps citizens'lives go better. 6 How do perfectionists define
objective value? While often vague on this important point, many
perfectionists define objective value generally as the ability to
promote human flourishing. Regarding art in particular,
perfectionists typically claim a life that includes the appreciation of
art is objectively better than a life devoid of such appreciation.
Many people find the perfectionist strategy attractive because it

acknowledges art's profound value for humanity. Because art
facilitates reflection on the profound questions of human existence,
it has an intrinsic value that simply cannot be captured in economic
terms. This plausible intuition has led many arts advocates to accept
the perfectionist argument without hesitation. Others, however, find
the perfectionist strategy deeply flawed. These critics typically do
not object to the perfectionist assessment of art but to its underlying
political assumptions. For example, some question whether it is
legitimate for a government to promote particular views of human
good. Others worry it is paternalistic for a government to base its
policies on claims of objective value. Still others think perfectionist
policies disrespect autonomy by implying each citizen is not the
best judge of her own interests. Such concerns lead some subsidy
advocates to pursue an instrumental argument. Rather than vague
references to intrinsic value, instrumentalists justify subsidy by
enumerating concrete, sometimes even quantifiable, public benefits
of maintaining a robust artworld. This does not mean instrumentalists
deny that art has intrinsic value; rather, it means they think decisions
about spending public money can be justified only through concrete
claims about taxpayer benefits.
Of course, instrumental justifications are not without difficulties of

their own. For instance, take what is perhaps the most common of
6
all justifications, that subsidizing art promotes tourism. Often

asserted by local governments seeking to bolster economic
development, this argument has two distinct shortcomings. First,
like any instrumental justification, it is not really a commitment to
the arts per se. If another activity is found to promote tourism more
effectively, funding for the arts can quickly fall into jeopardy. Second,
this approach casts the subsidy net too widely. Is then anything that
promotes tourism a legitimate candidate for subsidy? A professional
sports franchise no doubt promotes tourism, but does this justify
spending taxpayers' money to subsidize construction of a multi-
million dollar stadium? Taking this a step further, subsidized
prostitution would no doubt increase tourism in many localities,
yet few arts advocates would openly embrace this implication of
their argument.
These difficulties notwithstanding, this book pursues an instrumental

strategy of justification. It begins by explaining why the perfectionist
argument should be rejected. Chapter One argues that perfectionism
faces some strong political criticisms and that it makes problematic
assumptions about the nature of art. With these criticisms on the
table, the remainder of the book develops a non perfectionist
alternative. The task of developing this al ternative is two-fold . First,
as a justification proper, it must account for art's instrumental value
in a way that generates sufficient normativity to meet our taxpayers'
two objections. Second , in order to minimize the most common
criticisms of the instrumental strategy, the argument must appeal
to qualities inherent to art itself, thereby avoiding appeals to any
incidental, nonartistic qualities such as economic development.
In order to generate sufficient normativity, the book appeals to the

closest thing we have to a political and moral consensus-the
commitment to self-rule. Chapter Two describes this commitment
7
INTRODUCTION
to democracy, and it distinguishes this commitment from a more

general commitment to political liberalism. The chapter also
introduces the concept of democratic education, and it discusses the
extent to which our commitment to democracy also implies a
commitment to educating future citizens. With this normative
foundation in place, justifying arts subsidy becomes a matter of
describing art's usefulness for democratic education.
The instrumental connection between art and democracy is developed

in Chapter Three. Here it is argued that by encouraging citizens to
engage, interpret, and evaluate works of art, a government fosters
deliberative skills of great value for democratic life. While politics
and art are certainly not identical activities, the two share several
constitutive features. As a result, art and politics utilize a common
set of skills and attitudes that together constitute the faculty of
judgment. Practitioners of either democratic deliberation or artistic
appreciation both benefit from keen perception, sustained and
imaginative reflection, an ability to construct and defend
interpretations, a propensity to empathize with unfamiliar characters
and situations, and an awareness that sound judgment requires
disengaging personal bias and assuming a broadened perspective. In
describing this connection, Chapter Three draws on diverse modes
of thinking about both art and politics. From a classical perspective,
it draws on Aristotle and Martha Nussbaum. From a Continental
perspective, Kant's Critique o/Judgment and Hannah Arendt's political
interpretation of Kant's work are prominent. And from an analytical
perspective, the book draws on contemporary political philosophers
Robert N ozick and George Sher, as well as philosopher of art Arthur
Danto.
If the case for art as democratic education can be successfully made,

the resulting justification will exhibit several distinct virtues. First,
8
because the argument does not claim art has intrinsic value, the
justification avoids all the difficulties facing perfectionist arguments.
The justification does not deny art has intrinsic value; rather it affirms
John Dewey's assessment that art has an ability "to remove prejudice,
tear away the veils due to wont and custom, ... perfect the power to
perceive," and encourage us to "enter ... into other forms of relationship
and participation than our own."7 Second, the justification offers a
cogent response to those who claim subsidizing art is an improper
function of government. For if the arts can be shown to serve an
important educational function, then those who press this objection
are forced into agreeing that education is an improper function of
government. While many libertarians will happily agree with this
claim, Chapter Four argues that this move is a reductio ad absurdum of
libertarianism rather than a convincing argument against subsidy.
A third virtue of the proposed justification is that it describes art's

instrumental value using characteristics inherent to art qua art. This
makes it less vulnerable to the general criticisms of instrumental
justifications discussed above. For example, tying the justification
to art's inherent nature allows for discriminating artworks from
entertainment activities such as sports or prostitution. It also allows
for discriminating between art and other politically-valuable pursuits
such as public debate and the study of politics. Art differs from
these other intellectual pursuits because its structure is metaphorical.
This difference allows the justification to fund the arts while
excluding a wide variety of unintended, nonartistic activities.
Unlike many other justifications of subsidy, this argument also offers

practical guidance concerning concrete subsidy policies. For example,
if arts subsidies are educational expenditures, consistency requires
that subsidy dollars be administered in the same manner as other
educational spending in a democracy. In turn, this suggests the
9
INTRODUCTION
appropriate model for administering an art subsidy program is to

levy taxes on the national level but to delegate spending authority
to states and localities. On this democratic model, selection criteria
would likely include not only artistic merit but also consideration
of local preferences and values. The process would mirror state
textbook committees and local school advisory boards, where
professional educators work in tandem with local citizens to define
curricula and select textbooks. Yet as discussed in Chapter Five, this
model carries implications many arts advocates may find uncongenial,
especially regarding support for controversial artworks.
Before moving to the work at hand, a few words should be said

about the task of political justification itself. Some citizens consider
state support of the arts self-evidently good, and from their perspective
political justification will seem unnecessary and redundant. Others
may find the whole idea of justifYing art subsidy incoherent, especially
if they subscribe to the modernist ideal that the wonderful thing
about art is precisely that it defies justification. In fact, neither of
these extremes is correct. While there is some truth in the idea of art
as a private, autonomous activity, levying taxes in the name of art is
very much a public activity that requires public deliberation. That
is, even if the argument presented here is logically sound, this does
not entail its political success. Politics is at most only partially
theoretical, and political justifications must be capable of persuading
citizens. 8 Thus, if the philosophical defense developed here is to
succeed as a political justification it must also-and no less
importantly-withstand the rigors of public deliberation and
democratic decision-making. I am pleased to offer it here for
consideration.
10
NEA funding dropped from its peak of $176 million in FY 1992 to $99.5 million in FY
1997. National Endowment/or the Arts Appropriatiom History, Office of Policy, Research and
Technology, 11129196.
2 There is a third type of objection that claims subsidizing the arts has bad effects on the art
world. The idea here is that if the government pays artists to produce certain forms of art,
this will distort the natural progression of the artworld, leading in the end to poorer quality
art. For several reasons, I do not take this argument seriously. First, it requires the dubious
metaphysical assumption that art possesses some sort of internal, historical destiny just
waiting to unfold. Second, it ignores the fact that art has, throughout history, heen sup-
ported by patrons of one sort or another, all of whom exhibit influences on artistic produc-
tion. The question is not whether patronage affects the production of art but whether or not
the government ought to be one of art's patrons.
3 Cummings, Milton c., Jr. "Government and the Arts: An Overview." in Public Money and
the Muse: Essays on Gm;ernment Funding/or the Arts. Stephen Benedict, ed., New York: W.W.
Norton and Company, 1984, pp. 31-37 (emphasis original).
4 Hume, David. "Of the Standard of Taste," in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, Eugene F.
Miller, ed., Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985, pp. 234-5.
Of course, this should in no way be taken as a dismissal of the essential importance in life of
appreciating--or at least enjoying-a good California Merlot, especially one from the ex-
ceptional vintage of 1993. The issue here is always one of justifying grwernment involvement,
not of justifying the activity itself.
6 For an influential example of this approach, see Derek Parfit's Reasom and Persom. City:
Clarendon Press, 1984.
7 Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Capricorn Books, 1958, pp. 325-333.
8 There are competing theories about what constitutes an acceptable political justification. A
representative example is Joel Feinberg'S "indignant taxpayer" model. Feinberg envisions a
"philistine" taxpayer who objects to subsidies on the grounds that she personally receives no
benefits from such spending. Feinberg thus asks us to imagine a taxpayer who hates art and
even goes out of her way to avoid encountering an art museum or gallery. The indignant
taxpayer simply wants to obtain a fair return on the money she pays in taxes, and because
she receives no benefits from art, she objects to being forced to pay for its production. On
what basis do we legitimately tax this person to support the arts? Further, how should we
interpret the demands of this model? Does political justification require that we actually
persuade the indignant taxpayer to acquiesce to the needed taxation, or does it entail only the
weaker requirement that we respond to the taxpayer's complaint by providing good and
adequate reasons in favor of subsidy? This is an interesting question in itself, but it is
beyond my present scope, and so throughout this project I simply assume the responsel
reason-giving account of justification.
11
1
THE TRADITION OF
SUBSIDY: ART AND
CULTURAL PERFECTION
This chapter examines the most prevalent justification of government

funding for the arts, the appeal to cultural perfection. This appeal
argues that government funding is justified because art has intrinsic
value. The chapter begins by presenting the basic perfectionist
argument, while subsequent sections each examine a distinct mode
of criticizing that argument. One sort of criticism focuses on
perfectionism as a political principle, including the charge it
disrespects autonomy. A second criticism focuses on the perfectionist
view of art. Here I argue that perfectionist assumptions about art
conflict with the thought and practice of many contemporary artists.
By making both the political and aesthetic criticisms explicit, the
chapter demonstrates the potential benefits of constructing a
nonperfectionist justification. Constructing such an alternative is then
the task of the remaining chapters.
I
In the charter of America's National Endowment for the Arts, one
finds specific claims about art's essence and value. For example, NEA's
13
CHAPTER ONE
charter claims that
Throughout the ages, humanity has striven to go beyond

the limits of the immediate physical world to create that
which was not there before and thus nourish the human
spirit .... Our need to make, experience, and comprehend
art is as profound as our need to speak. It is through art
that we can understand ourselves and our potential. 1
By claiming art nourishes the spirit and helps realize human potential,
NEA's enabling legislation offers a perfectionist argument for
subsidizing the arts. Filling in some premises, this argument asserts
(1) art has transcendent qualities that resonate deeply
within the human spirit and promote human
flourishing;
(2) helping citizens flourish as human beings is a proper
and justifiable government activity;
Therefore, it is proper and justifiable for a

government to promote the arts through subsidy.
This argument is the philosophical justification of the NEA. Before

examining this argument more closely, it is helpful to consider that
the NEA could have been founded for a host of other reasons. 2 For
instance, NEA's founders might have offered an economic argument,
namely that supporting the arts fosters tourism. Or there is the
argument that large consumer economies distort and inhibit the
production of art, making government support essential to the
continued vibrancy of artisic production. 3 Other justifications include
that art increases citizens' welfare (either general welfare or a special
aesthetic welfare); that art has positive, moralizing effects on citizens;
that art helps "prevent social unrest and alleviate social pathologies;"
14
THE TRADITION OF SUBSIDY: ART AND CULTURAL PERFECTION
and, that art yields therapeutic benefits for prisoners and those
suffering from mental disorders. 4 That Congress chose to create the
NEA using a perfectionist argument is not surprising, for
perfectionist thinking is deeply ingrained within the Western
intellectual tradition. Its first comprehensive expression is found in
Aristotle's moral and political philosophy. Aristotle argued that
human happiness consists in actualizing one's potentialities,
something the state rightly encourages through education. Within
contemporary social philosophy, perfectionist thinking is central to
debates over how citizens choose to live their lives. Broadly speaking,
contemporary perfectionists think some forms of life are better. than
others, and the state acts properly when it encourages the superior
over the inferior. To take an easy example, if"the life of contemplation
[is} inherently superior to other forms of human life, such as the life
devoted to bestiality and the eating of one's excrement," then the
state ought to enact policies that encourage contemplation. 5
Fully appreciating the perfectionist argument requires considering

its underlying value theory. Vinit Haksar writes that a perfectionist
is someone who believes that "Some forms of human life are
intrinsically (or inherently) inferior to other forms of human life."6
The key terms here are intrinsically and inherently. Perfectionists
claim the superiority of certain ways of living expresses objective
facts about human flourishing, not merely subjective preferences.
This objectivity is important because it is what justifies invoking
the state's coercive powers to foster these lifestyles. And this
objectivity is especially important when citizens themselves disagree
about the relative value of competing lifestyles. The argument implies
that a citizen with perfect knowledge will in fact choose the superior
way ofliving over the inferior. If a citizen claims to prefer the inferior,
it is because she either lacks sufficient knowledge about her options
or is irrational. Thus, perfectionists conclude that the state rightly
15
CHAPTER ONE
alms to "bring citizens around" to what IS 10 fact a good and

flourishing life.
Of course, that perfectionists agree on the existence of objective values

does not mean they agree on the content, quantity, or basis of these
values. For instance, Aristotle considered there to be a single
objectively superior form of human life-rational activity. Aristotle
argued that rational activity was the human telos because it was the
highest activity of which humanity was capable. Actualizing this
telos was hence the essence of human happiness. 7 Contemporary
perfectionists are less likely to claim there is a single best way to
live, or that there exists a universal human telos. Contemporary
perfectionists such as Joseph Raz and Charles Taylor maintain there
are many valuable ways to live, each instantiated by a social form
within particular communities. More specifically, Raz argues for an
objective value pluralism, which he defines as " ... the belief that
there are several maximal forms of life."8 While no single form is
superior to all others, certain forms lead to human flourishing and
thus may be promoted using the state's coercive powers (e.g., by
levying taxes to promote them).
Stepping down to the specific issues of art subsidy, there are at least
two ways the perfectionist thesis can be interpreted. One is that the
state ought to support working artists because artistic activity is
objectively valuable. On this interpretation, subsidy aims to develop
the talents of as many artistically-gifted citizens as possible,
culminating in a society with a maximal amount of realized artistic
talent. This aim reflects Nietzsche's dictum that
Mankind must work continually to produce individual

great human beings-this and nothing else is the
task ... for the question is this: how can your life, the
16
individual life, retain the highest value, the deepest

significance? .. Only by your living for the good of the
rarest and most valuable specimens. 9
From this perspective, state funding need not be indexed to the

production of a particular artwork or project; rather, it is most
accurately viewed as compensation to the recipient for developing
her artistic talents, and as an incentive for further artistic exploration.
This philosophy is implicit in many contemporary art subsidy
contracts, which typically are not conditional on the production of
particular works. These contracts allow the recipient to spend her
funds however she sees fit, even for personal expenses. IO
Yet while this interpretation of perfectionist principles is coherent,

it is not the most cogent. Its biggest drawback is the inordinate
emphasis it places on the artist. The argument casts artists as isolated
and autonomous, and it gives little regard to the general welfare of
society. These are problemmatic assumptions because government
subsidy should aim not to produce great individuals but to produce
great art, which society as a whole can then engage and draw benefit.
People become great individuals in a variety of ways, including the
discipline of participating in sports. Yet this fact does not justify
subsidizing citizens to pursue careers playing basketball or running
track. This interpretation of the perfectionist argument fails to
distinguish between public and private benefits, making it especially
vulnerable to John Rawls' criticism that "there is no more justification
for using the state apparatus to compel some citizens to pay for
unwanted benefits that others desire than there is to force them to
reimburse others for their private expenses. "II
A more plausible interpretation of the perfectionist argument is that

living a good life requires the capacity for aesthetic appreciation. By
17
CHAPTER ONE
subsidizing art, the state thus helps citizens flourish by leading them
toward such appreciation. This interpretation coheres with the
thinking of perfectionist Derek Parfit, who considers art an essential
element of the good life. In examining what makes for a good life,
Parfit asks "What would be best for someone, or would be most in
this person's interests, or would make this person's life go, for him,
as well as possible?" While this question has generated many
arguments among perfectionists concerning the most defensible list
of objective goods, nearly all such lists include something analogous
to the "awareness of true beauty. "12 As discussed later in this chapter,
adequately describing art's objective value is one of the major
challenges to the perfectionist view.
Ronald Dworkin captures the essence of the perfectionist justification

in describing what he calls the "lofty" approach to art subsidies.
Dworkin writes
The lofty approach ... concentrates on what it is good for

people to have. It insists that art and culture must reach
a certain degree of sophistication, richness, and excellence
in order for human nature to flourish, and that the state
must provide this excellence if the people will not or
cannot provide it for themselves. 13
Again one sees the link between art and human flourishing. As with
all perfectionist justifications, the lofty approach assumes that art
allows citizens to achieve a level of flourishing otherwise
unobtainable. And no less importantly, it assumes that promoting
human flourishing is a proper and justifiable item on the state's
agenda.
18
II
Having presented the basic perfectionist argument, it is now time
to focus on its weaknesses as a political principle. 14 These criticisms
will be familiar to readers ofliberal political theory, for they include
many of the same arguments used to defend state neutrality. These
arguments are of two basic types, libertarian and liberal, and each
questions whether a government acts rightly when it seeks to
influence how citizens choose to live. Libertarians reject this premise
because they think levying taxes for any purposes other than
providing national defense and protecting free markets is an
illegitimate use of state power. Libertarians ground their argument
in a belief that liberty of transfer makes free markets morally necessary,
and taxation for any reason other than protecting these markets is
unjust. Such taxation violates a citizen's right of self-ownership,
inclu~ing the absolute right to one's talents and the fruits of their
use.
If correct, the libertarian objection undercuts funding not only for

the arts but also for a great many other government programs and
activities, most notably wealth redistribution and public education.
Yet, the libertarian challenge cannot be ignored. This is both because
of its theoretical strength and because it is tirelessly marshaled by
persons seeking to block all types of interventionist government
programs. The libertarian argument is rhetorically effective, for if
one accepts a principled limit to government activity, any program
exceeding this limit can be rejected without deliberation over its
consequences. However, because the libertarian objection cuts so
broadly, i.e., it cuts against any justification of government subsidy,
not just the democratic proposal, it will be given separate treatment
in Chapter Four.
19
CHAPTER ONE
I turn then to the liberal criticisms. Unlike the libertarian, the liberal
does not in principle reject the idea of a government seeking to make
its citizens' lives go better. What the liberal rejects is the perfectionist
approach to implementing this ideal. Because perfectionists advocate
the state's actively promoting what it considers the best ways to
live, many liberals judge perfectionist politics paternalistic, unjust,
and dangerous. For example, in reviewing some common criticisms
of the lofty (i.e., perfectionist) approach to subsidy, Dworkin writes
that
[T}he lofty approach seems haughtily paternalistic.

Orthodox liberalism holds that no government should
rely, ro justify its use of public funds, on the assumption
that some ways ofleading one's life are more worthy than
others, that it is more worthwhile to look at Titian on
the wall than watch a football game on televisionY
The underlying political assumption of this criticism IS that a

government ought to remain neutral concerning the good life. This
neutrality thesis pervades contemporary Western political thought,
as George Sher succinctly describes when he writes
[Neutrality is} a picture that no contemporary Westerner

can altogether escape. Though barraged by competing
ideologies and social schemes, we have all absorbed, by a
kind of cultural osmosis, the ideas that self-expression,
choice, and diversity are paramount, and that how a
person lives is far less important than whether he lives as
he prefers and chooses. We also worry, unfortunately with
justification, that by rolerating departures from official
neutrality, we risk allowing the state's coercive apparatus
to be captured by fanatics, bullies, or worse. Neutralism
20
also draws support from our uncertainty about where

our deepest values lie and which ways of living really are
best. .. 16
Yet while neutralists object to a government actively promoting

certain ways of living, they do not in principle reject the idea of a
government seeking to make citizens' lives go better. Yet unlike
perfectionists, neutralists would limit state influence to actions that
least reflect substantive conceptions of the good. For example, the
neutralist John Rawls identifies a bundle of primary goods that should
help all citizens flourish, regardless of their particular conception of
the good life. Because primary goods are more or less neutral, the
state is justified in promoting and even redistributing these goods
among citizens. Under Rawls' scheme, a government is justified in
constructing roads and bridges, mandating the use of safety belts,
and, more controversially, providing an economic social net. 17 All
these activities help citizens flourish, but none of them privilege
any particular way of living.
Unfortunately, in rejecting perfectionist politics, neutralists risk

rejecting the possibility of arts subsidies as well. Dworkin describes
the political tension of this point when he observes that "if we begin,
as many of us [liberals/neutralists} do, by wanting to find some
justification for a generous level of state support ... to make our culture
excellent," we must "pause to notice [the paternalistic/elitist} warts"
of a lofty (i.e., perfectionist) appeal. Conversely, Rawls expresses a
different aspect of this tension when he admits that "[e}ventually of
course we would have to check whether the consequences of doing
without a standard of perfection are acceptable, since offlland it may
seem as if justice as fairness does not allow enough scope for ideal-
regarding considerations." IX
21
CHAPTER ONE
It is helpful to look more closely at why Rawls views arts subsidies

as unjust. His argument rests on the contention that artworks are
not primary goods because they are not neutral vis-a-vis competing
conceptions of the good. Supporting the arts thus differs in kind
from constructing roads and bridges or providing national defense.
Far from neutral, artworks embody and celebrate particular cultural
values and sentiments. And because these values are not shared by
all citizens, a general tax to support them is unjust. Rawls clearly
targets perfectionism when he claims the principles of justice
(D}o not permit subsidizing universities and institutes,

or opera and the theater, on the grounds that these
institutions are intrinsically valuable, and that those who
engage in them are to be supported even at some
significant expense to others who do not receive
compensating benefits. l9
While Rawls may be incorrect in claiming taxpayers receive no

compensating benefits from arts subsidies, he is right in claiming
artworks are non neutral. This coupled with the fact that many persons
do not value-and are sometimes offended by-much contemporary
art, a compelling case emerges against classifying art as a primary
good. 20
Neutralists who advocate arts subsidies thus face an impasse. Caught

between the demands of neutrality and the aspirations of
perfectionism, they must either: (1) abandon neutrality as the guiding
principle of state action, or (2) abandon perfectionism as their strategy
for justifying arts subsidies. If they choose the second route, they
may either (3) concede that arts subsidies cannnot be unjustified
(i.e., Rawls), or (4) formulate a cogent nonperfectionist argument
for subsidy. The remainder of this section works to establish the
22
implausibility of abandoning neutrality, and therefore it argues in

favor of rejecting perfectionism as a political principle. The chapter's
final section offers an argument not against perfectionism as a political
principle but against its application to the arts.
Perfectionist arguments carry much intuitive appeal, and most

people, if pressed, would agree theatre is better than wrestling and
contemplation better than bestiality. Further, it seems reasonable
that if a government can steer citizens toward the more desirable
lifestyles, it should do so, especially if the means would be relatively
painless. As George Sher points out, U[i}t is, to say the least, not
self-evident that even the weightiest of perfectionist reasons-reasons
that should and often do guide our personal conduct-should have
no weight at all in our deliberations about law and public policy."21
Thus, while Rawls' argument against subsidy may be valid, its
fundamental premise-that the state must be neutral-is not yet
established.
A sensible way to evaluate this premise is to examine the best

arguments for state neutrality, for if any of them hold then
perfectionism is defeated. Sher conveniently groups the arguments
for neutrality into three general types: (1) arguments from autonomy;
(2) arguments from safety and stability; and, (3) arguments from
skepticism. Most of the reasons for neutrality discussed so far have
been versions of the argument from autonomy. This argument claims
that by seeking to influence how citizens choose to live, the state
disrespects their autonomy and thus denies the essence of their
humanity.22 John Stuart Mill offers this sort of argument when he
writes
There is a part of the life of every person ... within which

the individuality of that person ought to reign
23
CHAPTER ONE
uncontrolled either by any other person or by the public

collectively. It is the privilege and proper condition of a
human being, arrived at the maturity of his faculties, to
use and interpret experience in his own way.23
According to Sher, autonomy-based defenses of neutrality assert that

when governments promote particular conceptions of the good
[T}hey invert the proper relation between the person and

her ends. To qualify as autonomous, a person must
formulate, execute, and monitor her own life-plans. She
must make her own decisions about what is valuable or
best. But when the state promotes a conception of the
good, it channels citizens in directions they have not (yet)
chosen, and so pre-empts their autonomous choices. Thus,
indefensibly, it substitutes its judgment about how they
should live for their own. 24
Appeals to autonomy have particular cogency because they resonate

with the pervasive Western intuition that persons should be free to
conduct their lives as they see fit. They reflect Will Kymlicka's claim
that
[N}o life goes better by being led from the outside

according to values the person doesn't endorse. My life
only goes better if I'm leading it from the inside,
according to my beliefs about value. 25
Arguments from autonomy have profound underpinnings in the

Kantian ideal of respect for persons. On Kant's view, disrespecting
autonomy violates our deepest moral imperative, which is to treat
others as ends in themselves. The concept of autonomy is perhaps
24
the greatest legacy of political liberalism, or what John Gray describes

as one of the "weighty ... rights [that liberals claim} are owed to all
human beings, regardless of their cultural inheritances or historical
circumstances, just in virtue of their standing as human beings. "26
Given this historical significance, it is hardly surprising that liberals
reject perfectionism-or any other principle they perceive to
underminine individuality, choice, and freedom.
But while the theoretical and historical import of this argument is

undeniable, some would criticize it as overly abstract. That is, some
believe political arguments can persuade only when they rest on
practice rather than theory, or at least when the theory is bolstered
by practice. This is exactly the strategy of the next group of arguments
for neutrality. In contrast to the arguments from autonomy, the
arguments from safety and stability focus on the undesirable
consequences that can result when governments legislate specific
conceptions of the good. One version claims that while a government
may mean well, any paternalistic measures it adopts will likely cause
more harm than good. Mill expresses this sentiment when he writes
"People understand their own business and their own interests better,
and care for them more, than the government does, or can be expected
to do."27 Additionally, it seems ttue that a government will often be
less motivated to protect and promote a person's interests than will
that person herself.
But, while Mill's concern IS legitimate (i.e., a well-meaning

government may in fact decrease utility because it is uninformed or
insensitive), a more worrying concern is that a nonneutral government
will become intolerant or oppressive. Thus, perhaps the strongest
argument for neutrality turns on a claim of unacceptable risk: while
perfectionist politics does not entail oppression and fascism, such
outcomes are so egregious that any political theory that does not
25
CHAPTER ONE
rule them out simpliciter poses unacceptable risks to the citizenry's

freedom and well-being. These risks involve the potential for abuse
once a government acquires the power to enforce claims about the
best way to live.
While giving it lip-service in the academic literature, perfectionists

have not adequately answered this criticism. Typically they contend
the problem is real in theory but avoidable in practice. For instance,
recall Raz's contention that a necessary condition of autonomy is a
sufficient range of lifestyles for citizens to consider in choosing the
course of their lives. Because of its essential importance to perserving
autonomy, Raz thinks a government may legitimately act to preserve
a diverse range of cultural options. However, Raz gets into trouble
when he asserts the government is duty-bound only to protect
"valuable" cultural options: "the autonomy principle permits and
even requires governments to create morally valuable opportunities,
and to eliminate repugnant ones. "28 Raz argues such limiting will
not infringe autonomy because "only very rarely will the
nonavailability of morally repugnant options reduce a person's choice
sufficiently to affect his autonomy. "29 But one must ask how Raz
can legitimately distinguish the worthwhile options from the
repugnant? This would seem to require getting outside our particular
moral situation, for only then would we be able to objectively define
"repugnant" and "worthwhile." Yet this is impossible, for we are
inevitably siruated on the inside, and the "nowhere" of objectivity is
mere chimera. The challenge for Raz is to provide an account of the
repugnant and the worthwhile that is something more than the
subjective tastes of those in power. Further, he must describe how
such determinations can avoid the unacceptable risks oflegitimizing
oppreSSIOn.
In addressing this problem, Raz and other perfectionists often point
26
vaguely in the direction of democracy. For instance, as to which values

and lifestyles the state should encourage, Raz recommends those
"which command a large measure of social consensus. "30 But this
will not do, for while democratic methods will indeed produce
decisions, such decisions may still be oppressive, as Mill and others
have noted. Raz eventually recognizes this risk, and he places a
significant caveat on his entire project: not all societies will be able
to adopt nonneutral policies, for the risk of oppression and tyranny
will be too great. He concludes that
[The autonomy based doctrine of freedom} cannot

disguise the dangers inherent in the concentration of
power in few hands, the dangers of corruption, of
bureaucratic distortions and insensitivities, of fallibility
of judgment ... The study of these issues belongs to the
theory of political institutions which must supplement
any inquiry into political morality to give it concrete
content applicable to the circumstances of a particular
country. I mention their relevance because their presence
affects in a radical way the degree to which one is willing
to entrust any government with the tasks whose existence
is indicated by the doctrine of freedom advocated [here}.
Sher faces similar obstacles. For example, in defending his perfectionist

scheme against the charge that it could legitimize racial discrimination,
he counters
[S}uch worries are groundless. To the suggestion that a

perfectionist politics would prevent us from condemning
discrimination, the obvious reply is that even if no reasons
for political action are in principle off limits, it hardly
follows that all reasons are equally weighty, or even that
27
CHAPTER ONE
every alleged reason must be taken seriously. It is, for

example, quite clear that 'reasons' of race, caste, and the
like have no moral weight. They are, quite simply, bad
reasonsY
But agaIn, from what standpoint are such reasons bad? To a

community committed to its own racial supremacy, race and caste
would seem good if not optimal reasons on which to base policy.
Sher reifies our particular society's sentiments against racism to the
status of objective truth. While our society generally abhors racism
and considers it a bad reason on which to base state action, this is a
contingent, not necessary, fact. Both Raz and Sher imply that the
so-called good reasons will be clear and determinable, but this often
is not the case. Recent legislation in Colorado denying equal
protection for homosexuals attests to this reality.
Regarding the proper means for deciding which values the

government should promote, Sher, like Raz, points in the direction
of democracy when he writes that "a democratic polity may, through
its representatives, induce or even compel its own members to live
what it collectively judges to be good lives."32 But again, while
democratic procedures will certainly produce decisions, this does
not avoid the risk of oppression. Tyranny by the majority is tyranny
nonetheless. Sher, of course, recognizes this risk. He addresses it by
claiming a nonneutral state "can retain most, if not all, of the classical
liberal protections" by adopting a constitution that imposes a
separation of powers, civil liberties, and procedural civil rights. But
once again, that a perfectionist government may choose to organize
itself within such a prophylactic frame is no assurance that it will,
and thus it is no certain protection against oppressive legislation.
By definition, any government organized under perfectionist
principles will have fewer safeguards against tyranny than will a
28
neutral state. If it did not, then it would in fact be a neutral state.

The unacceptable risk remains.
Before moving to the third and final set of objections, it should be

noted that the perfectionists' appeal to democracy seems to conflict
with their own overall value theory. That is, perfectionism logically
depends on the existence of objective values (or at least nonsubjective
values). As described above, the objective status of these values is
what provides the normative force needed to justify the state's acting
to promote them even when this goes against the expressed desires
of the citizenry. Put another way, perfectionism subordinates what
people want to what is best for them. But if this is the case, appealing
to democratic procedures would seem to be of no big help to a
perfectionist. If preferences do not matter, then of what value will a
vote-an expression of preferences-be in determining questions of
value? Further, if the perfectionist scheme depends on objective
values, then its advocates may be at a loss to explain how the
democratic polity may, over time, select different values or rank these
values differently. It is also possible that in a universe populated
with a finite list of objective goods, a democratic polity might choose
to foster a good that is not on this list (i.e., it may make a mistake).
Thus, to the extent one appeals to democracy in settling questions
of value, the objectivity of such values becomes suspect. And the
weaker the claim of objectivity, the weaker the justification for
perfectionist policies.
This last point connects with the third set of arguments for neutrality
arguments from skepticism. In general, these objections argue that
the government should remain neutral because to act otherwise is to
make the dubious assumption it knows what the good life really is.
As Sher points out, such skepticism can be centered on the
impossibility of knowledge generally, on the impossibility of moral
29
CHAPTER ONE
knowledge, or on the impossibility of knowledge of the good. While

these arguments carry some force, Sher is right in dismissing them
as proving too much. That is, if one is a radical skeptic on these
matters, one is unable to marshal reasons in defense of neutrality
itself.
However, while these particular arguments prove ineffective, they

have variants that do merit consideration. Concerning the possibility
of moral knowledge, Sher discusses what he considers the most radical
formulation of this thesis, one forwarded by Bruce Ackerman. On
Ackerman's view,
[T}here is no moral meaning hidden in the bowels of the

universe. All there is is you and I struggling in a world
that neither we, nor any other thing, created. 33
In evaluating this claim Sher recognizes but dismisses its implicit

anti-realism: "the fundamental issue is not anti-realism but
skepticism, and the fundamental worry is that any appeal to it will
prove too much."34 But perhaps Sher moves too quickly. If the anti-
realist is right, then the question is not one of skepticism at all, for
skepticism involves claims about what we can come to know and
not about what there actually is. Said another way, if the moral anti-
realist is right, then the question is not one of skepticism but of
nihilism. This renders the skeptical arguments moot, for if there are
no transcendent, objective values, then skeptical arguments miss
the mark-there is nothing to be skeptical of But while this may be
good news for opponents of skepticism, it raises difficulties for
perfectionists, for it denies the objective values upon which their
strategy depends. This is not to espouse or defend anti-realism but
to point toward a potentially devastating anti-realist critique of
perfectionist politics. Developing such a critique would require (and
30
deserve) a separate treatment of its own.
A similar criticism can be mounted against perfectionism from the

opposite extreme of moral ontology, what John Gray terms objective
pluralism. This view rejects both the nihilist denial of objective values
as well as the perfectionist espousal of universal values having validity
for all humans. Rather, the objective pluralist argues there are many
objectively valuable, and often incommensurable, forms of life. 3;
Gray traces this view to Isaiah Berlin, who writes
There are many objective ends, ultimate values, some

incompatible with others, pursued by different societies
at different times, or by different groups in the same
society, by entire classes or churches or races, or by
particular individuals within them, anyone of which
may find itself subject to conflicting claims of
uncombinable, yet equally ultimate and objective, ends. 36
According to Gray, objective pluralism "destroys the very idea of

perfection" because it denies the possibility of rationally adjudicating
between competing claims about the good.
On the pluralist view, ... [dJifferent forms of life may

embody virtues and excellences which, though they are
each of them recognizably great, cannot rationally be
ranked or weighed against each other. As between the
life of a bushido warrior and a Renaissance scientist, say,
there is on the pluralist account no scales whereby they
could be put in the balanceY
In contrast to the nihilist criticism that objective values do not exist,

the objective pluralist rejects perfectionism because there exists a
31
CHAPTER ONE
multiplicity of objective values. A government will be unable to justify

privileging one conception of the good because the epistemology of
objective pluralism
[Wlill be nonhierarchical, in that incommensurability

precludes objective rankings or weightings of ultimate
values. It will therefore refrain from prioritizing or
privileging anyone form of life-say, the life of rational
inquiry, of contemplation or wealth-creation, of prayer
or selfless devotion to others-as the best for the human
species. Unlike the Millean moral epistemology, it will
not suppose that moral inquiry will eventuate in a
Peircean ideal convergence. Rather, as a species of
objective pluralism in ethics, it will expect inquiry to
issue in an ultimate divergence of ethical perspectives. 38
This view has clear affinities with Raz's pluralist axiology discussed
earlier. Yet while both posit a plurality of morally acceptable ways
to live, Gray's scheme is more radical, for he denies the very possibility
that one conception of the good is superior to any other.
If one accepts Gray's radical pluralism, then perfectionist politics in

its traditional form is blocked. As an alternative, Gray advocates a
minimalist state that aims first and foremost to preserve our primary
historical inheritance--civil society. 39 And an essential feature of
civil society is that "the state does not seek to impose on all any
comprehensive doctrine."40 So while Gray espouses neutralism, his
claims are philosophically modest. He privileges civil society not
because it respects some universal right to autonomy but simply
because of "the rich variety of human flourishing that it shelters."
His argument is pragmatic, contending that "civil society itself[is}
a condition of prosperity and peace for any modern civilization,"
32
and that without civil society, "no modern society can expect to
enjoy peace or commodious living."41 Gray's neutrality differs from
most others by rejecting the appeal to universality. In a pluralistic
world of incommensurable values, a neutral civil society is the ground
for any hope we might have in forging a positive answer to Rodney
King's deceptive! y simple question: "People ... can we all get
along?"42
III
It should be clear by now that defending perfectionist politics is a
formidable task. Not only does it clash with important tenets of
liberalism, but the defenses offered by perfectionists such as Raz and
Sher are not without controversy. Yet even if these political criticisms
can be overcome, perfectionists face another sort of criticism, this
time from the philosophy of art. 43 Arthur Danto captures the kernel
of this criticism when he writes
What makes the art from 1962 to the present so difficult

to deal with is that so much art criticism continues to be
based on Modernist criteria but is applied to art that
rejects those criteria altogether. 44
Although Danto is writing here about issues in the philosophy of

art and art criticism, his comments are relevant to current
disagreements over subsidy. His words suggest that the perfectionist
view of art may no longer reflect the thinking of those closest to its
practice-art critics and artists themselves. This section develops
this criticism and its implications for subsidy in some detail.
Perfectionists most commonly argue that engaging art fosters

aesthetic appreciation. An influential expression of this view is Derek
33
CHAPTER ONE
Parfir's discussion of the Objective List Theory of the Good, in which

one of six objective values is "the appreciation of true beauty. "45
While it seems intuitively true that aesthetic appreciation is an
imporant good, perfectionists have done little more than assert this
claim dogmatically. What, specifically, makes aesthetic appreciation
so valuable? One way to add the needed specificity is to follow G.E.
Moore in saying that all value is constituted by pleasurable mental
states, and that the refined appreciation of beauty generates especially
pleasurable-and hence highly valuable-mental states. 46 Another
interpretation might follow Robert Nozick in claiming that all value
stems from the elegance of organic unity. Because beautiful objects
manifest and exemplify organic unity, experiencing these objects is
valuable because it helps us understand the nature of value itselfY
A less technical interpretation might simply claim that experiencing
beauty comforts human beings and inspires them towards higher
ranges of sensibility.
But even if one grants that appreciating beauty is intrinsically

valuable, this does little towards justifying subsidy, for it is simply
incorrect to assume a necessary connection between art and beauty.
This is not to say art and beauty have no connection at all, for
throughout history artists have indeed sought to create objects of
beauty, often in order to glorify deities or monarchs. But this
paradigm of art was abandoned over a century ago. 48 Counter-
examples include the "readymades" offered by Dadaists, as well as
works from less strident movements such as Cubism, Russian
Suprematism, and Abstract Expressionism. Tightly linking art and
beauty betrays a pervasive but mistaken notion that the historically
contingent association of art and beauty is a necessary association. 49
Moreover, subsidy policies based on this criterion will by definition
exclude nonbeautiful art, whatever merits it might otherwise possess.
Noel Carroll makes this point in evaluating the argument that
34
artworks satisfy an inherent human need for aesthetic experience.

Carroll wri tes
The problem here, of course, involves what is meant by

'aesthetic.' It is not synonymous with 'art.' Generally, it
is associated with the beautiful and the sublime, or it is
associated with the qualitative appearance of things. An
aesthetic need, under this reading, would be a need for
experiences of the beautiful, the sublime, or for the
experience of objects and environments with marked
expressive qualities such as warmth, friendliness, or
joyfulness. Much art, including, significantly, much
contemporary art, is not dedicated to producing aesthetic
experience. Indeed, much contemporary art is even
avowedly anti-aesthetic. If an artist makes a junk-yard
piece to portray modern life, it seems curious that he
should expect funding on the basis of alleviating aesthetic
privations. [Such an argument} will not support
prospective arts funding as we know it ... . Nonaesthetic,
anti-aesthetic, reflexive, and certain darkly expressive
artworks will not be defensible in the name of aesthetic
experience. 50
At this point, perfectionists must decide how best to continue their

argument. One option is simply to agree these nonaesthetic works
should not be funded. The perfectionist can do this with consistency,
for the value being promoted is the beautiful and not art per se. This
move would effectively group art in the same class as natural wonders
such as the Grand Canyon. While this move would allow
perfectionists to defend the claim that only beautiful works should
be funded, the strategy is far from satisfying. First, it questions
whether the perfectionist is really an advocate for the arts or is an
35
CHAPTER ONE
advocate of something like public beautification. Assuming their

aim is indeed to support the production of great art, then it must be
recognized that this conception of art conflicts with many practicing
artists, art critics, art historians, and art theoreticians, most of whom
believe that nonaesthetic artworks can have great value. Perhaps even
more troubling, such a policy is likely to bias some artists against
nonaesthetic modes of expression. Again, Carroll writes
[I}f the government places large investments behind one

type of art, the evolution of the art world will
undoubtedly be affected. Whole avenues of artistic
development will appear less viable than the production
of aesthetic art. And from the contemporary art world's
point of view, this kind of prospective arts funding might
be regarded as having a regressive effect overall. Sj
With these problems noted, a more promising option for

perfectionists is to jettison the appeal to true beauty and run the
argument using some other objective value. One promising candidate
is an appeal to culrural excellence, a value which clearly resonates
with perfectionists' general aim of realizing human potentialities.
This move improves the perfectionist argument because now it does
not immediately exclude nonbeautiful works. Nonetheless, this
approach is not without problems of its own. Not only does it face
the political challenge of defining cultural excellence within a
pluralistic society, bur it also faces scrutiny from the artworld. Once
again, these questions concern the fit between the goal of perpetuating
cultural excellence and the intent of much contemporary art.
For perfectionists pursuing this approach, the first step is to define

what they mean by cultural excellence. One interpretation would be
to cast cultural excellence as excellence in artistic technique or subject
36
matter. This might be exemplified by a Michelangelo ceiling fresco

or a highly practiced (i.e., perfected) ballet performance. A variation
of this interpretation would cast artists as fostering cultural excellence
by producing meticulous representations of human and societal ideals.
For instance, much ancient Greek sculpture celebrated human form
and exalted its perfection. Such art supplied society with
representations of ideal human forms and activities, and it did so by
using methods involving high levels of skill and craftsmanship.
But if this is the perfectionist interpretation of cultural excellence,

any justification based upon it will again admit only a narrow range
of artistic genres. Art forms such as ballet and classical music will be
supported, but many nontraditional genres, i.e., those not heavily
dependent on refined artistic technique, will be excluded. The irony
of this policy surfaces more clearly when one reflects on the fact that
a growing number of contemporary artists seek precisely to reject
the view that art must embody refined skill and craftsmanship. This
aesthetic philosophy is epitomized by the randomness found in the
"drip" paintings of abstract expressionists, as well as by the
appropriation of advertising images by pop artists.
Perhaps there is a more plausible way perfectionists could construe

art's relation to cultural excellence. One possibili ty is to view artists
as members of a cultural vanguard whose works manifest the leading
edge of culture. This view considers artists as cultural leaders, priceless
engines of cultural development. This view in fact enjoyed wide
acceptance within the artworld of the mid-20th century. Often
termed the cult of genius, it saw artists as endowed with special
abilities to experience and interpret the world, as having access to
ideas and emotions unavailable to ordinary humans. For instance,
the modernist appeal to the sublime was often accompanied by a
view of the artist as a person of special mettle, someone capable of
37
CHAPTER ONE
withstanding close encounters with primordial realms of experience

unfaceable by the average person (i.e., by nonartists).
Another, less dramatic, interpretation is to think of artists as

practitioners of what Rosalind Krauss terms the discourse of
originality. As Krauss describes it
The avant-garde artist has worn many guises over the

first hundred years of his existence: revolutionary, dandy,
anarchist, aesthete, technologist, mystic. He has also
preached a variety of creeds. One thing only seems to
hold fairly constant in the vanguardist discourse and that
is the theme of originality... The self as origin is the
wayan absolute distinction can be made between a
present experienced de novo and a tradition-laden past.
The claims of the avant-garde are precisely these claims
to originality.52
Here one again sees the artist as cultural vanguard, as constantly

pushing culture forward by creating ever-innovative works. Harold
Rosenberg called this the tradition of the new, writing in 1961 that
Through Modern Art the expanding caste of professional

enlighteners of the masses-designers, architects,
decorators, fashion people, exhibition directors -
informs the populace that a supreme Value has emerged
in our time, the Value of the new, and that there are
persons and things that embody that Value ... [T}he
only thing that counts for Modern Art is that a work
shall be new. 5\
38
A perfectionist adopting this interpretation of cultural excellence

might claim artists should be subsidized because they provide the
innovation and inspiration needed for robust cultural development,
a criterion that would no doubt be more inclusive than beauty or
technical merit.
But even this interpretation is not without controversy, for many

now question whether art must even be original. Critic Suzi Gablik
argues that
As the great juggernaut of modernism, ruled for a century

by the notion of perpetual innovation and the creation
of new styles, reaches its fateful closure, the idea of
participating comfortably in the old discourse of
'originality' and change no longer seems possible ... The
avant-garde, which used to be the cultural 'cutting edge,'
has been defeated and rendered impotent by its
absorption into the mainstream. 54
Now determining the intent of 20th century avant garde artists is

tremendously complicated and controversial, a task far beyond my
present scope. 55 Suffice it to say that many contemporary artists
simply deny being saddled with any imperative to be new or original.
Instead, many of them choose to hover and drift. Quoting artist and
critic Ronald Jones, Gablik explains that
"[Drifting) is one way of refusing our assigned role," says

Jones. "Instead of creating anything new, we move into
slow motion where nothing seems to change. We create
a 'hover' culture. Throwing things into neutral becomes
the most radically charged gesture of the moment."
'Hovering' is about negating the modernist idea of
39
CHAPTER ONE
change. The artist refuses to feed the culture's demand

for new shows and innovative works, renouncing both
authorship and originality. It is the kind oflow-frequency
effort exercised by Sherrie Levine, for instance, when in
1981, instead of creating her own 'original' photographs,
she rephotographed the work of Edward Weston and
Walker Evans, two well-known photographers, and
exhibited it as her own work. This action violates our
sense of acceptable behaviour; but it also refuses to serve
the old modernist notions of originality and 'who came
first.'56
One may question here whether Levine's work constitutes the radical
break with tradition that Gablik suggests. But whatever Levine and
these anti-originality artists are up to, their work does not seem
dedicated to cultural excellence in any traditional sense. Indeed, some
of their work argues against the very possibility of cultural excellence.
Such art is deconstructive, aiming to debunk what artist Craig Owens
calls
'[T}he mastering position,' the hegemonic, masculine

authority that has been vested in Western European
culture and its institutions. [And} one way it does this is
ro simulate mastery-to undermine the fixation with
originality-which still dominates our ideas of cultural
production. 57
Certainly not all contemporary art is as exclusively deconstructive as

Levine's. Further, while many contemporary artists would happily
participate in any project that discredited the extremes of modernist
art, many do not think the answer lies in renouncing artistic
inspiration. Some offer a more positive response to the nihilism of
40
deconstruction. These reconstructive artists create works calculated

to raise social consciousness about issues such as environmental
degradation, human sexuality, and political oppression.
But, returning to subsidy, even in this role of social ombudsman the

reconstructive artist is far from advocating a unified notion of cultural
excellence. These works embody a fractured set of political agendas,
and they are increasingly antithetical to established community
values. And even if such artists do reside within the traditional
discourse of originality, subsuming their work under the rubric of
cultural excellence remains problematic. Furthermore, in relation
to subsidy, defining cultural excellence is perhaps more worrisome
than any task discussed so far, because here the realms of art and
politics converge. For when the content of art is essentially political,
the line is exceedingly fine between excellence of artistic expression
and excellence of political ideology.
Preamble, Statement of Mission, National Endowment for the Arts, as written in NEA's Ap-
plication Guidelines Document, OMB No. 3135-0049, August 1992, p.l.
2 For a general discussion of these various approaches, see Noel Carroll's "Can Government
Funding of the Arts Be Justified Theoretically," in Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 21,
No.1, Spring 1987, pp. 21-35.
3 Much of this list is drawn from Edward Banfield. The Demlxratic Muse: Visual Arts and the
Public Interest. New York: Basic Books, 1984, ch. 9. The passage quoted is from p. 200.
4 The particular justification one adopts will have profound effects on the particular subsidy
policies implemented. For example, a justification based on the value of economic stimulus
will likely privilege works having a broad public appeal, which of course may not be the
best works of art per ie. The same critique obtains for claims of social rehabilitation and
aesthetic welfare, as well. Thus, if one wishes to encourage production of the very best art, it
makes sense to link the justification as closely as possible to artistic rather than nonartistic
ends. This is a primary reason why the NEA's justification has the force it does. We gener-
ally believe that the value of art lies not in its ability to stimulate the economy but rather in
its ability to speak to more profound human concerns that stand beyond monetary value.
See also Ronald Dworkin's contrast between the 'lofty' and the 'economic' approaches to
justifying arts subsidy in "Can A Liberal State Support Art," in A Matter of Principle. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 221-233.
Haksar, Vinit. Equality, Liberty, and Perjectionism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979,
41
CHAPTER ONE
p.3.
6 Equality, Liberty, and Perfectionism, p. 1.
7 Aristotle also held admiration of beauty to be an intrinsic good for man, but he viewed it as
a subordinate good to the highest good of rational contemplation. Also, I ignore here cer-
tain controversies about whether Aristotle actually held rational contemplation to be the
single best life for man. The perfectionist literatute typically takes this assumption as
unconttoversial, and so in this context I do not question it here.
8 Raz, Joseph. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986, p. 396.
9 Cited in J.R. Hollingsdale. Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1965, p. 127.
10 This view was expressed duting interviews with NEA officials in Washington, DC,July 12-
16, 1993. This view expresses neither a majority opinion on the issue nor an official position
of the NEA.
11 Rawls, John. A Theory ofJustice. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1971, p. 283.
12 The other entries on Parfit's list include: moral goodness, rational activity, the development
of one's abilities, having children and being a good parent, and knowledge. See Parfit, Derek.
Reasom and Persom. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, p.499.
13 See Dworkin's contrast between what he calls the 'lofty' and the 'economic' approaches to
justifying arts subsidy in "Can A Liberal State Support Art," in A Matter of Principle. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 221-233. Quotation is from p. 221.
14 A methodological point is in order. For my overall argument to be successful, I need not
show conclusively that the perfectionist view is untenable, either as a general political prin-
ciple or as a workable justification for arts subsidy. By explicating several difficult problems
with the view, my goal is to illuminate what stands to be gained by avoiding an appeal to
perfection. Some of the objections presented here will be pressed harder than others, and
some will be more convincing than others, but taken as a whole, the various criticisms
should illuminate the desirability of formulating a defensible nonperfectionist alternative.
And if certain of the objections raised here are correct, then more than this minimal goal
will be achieved, perhaps throwing into question the aptness of perfectionism as a justifica-
tion for art subsidy.
15 A Matter of Principle, p. 222. Elitism is another common charge against perfectionist justi-
fications of art subsidy, and it is mentioned by Dworkin as well. This charge consists of the
claim that the high arts are really only experienced by the well off and well educated, and
thus subsidies for art benefit those least in need of help. Such money would be better spent,
so the critics say, on items such as health care for the poor. I consider this argument to be a
subsidiary of the general justification of arts funding, on the grounds that if experiencing
art is important enough to justify state subsidy, then subsidy for any requisite education
needed for such experience is justified as well.
16 Sher, George. Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1997, ch. 1, p. 3. Sher and many others also distinguish two types of neutrality:
neutrality of outcomes and neutrality of reasons, or as Kymlicka puts it, consequential and
justificatory neutrality. The first defines a nonneutral policy as one with effects that benefit
one particular conception of the good. This definition makes the neutrality ideal too strin-
gent to be workable, and so most if not all neutralists defend neutrality of reasons, or justi-
ficatory neutrality, which holds that a non neutral policy is one based on reasom that seek to
privilege one conception of the good.
17 Rawls thinks that his hypothetical contractors would not select perfectionism because it
42
would "be to accept a principle that mighr lead to a lesser religious or other liberty." See A
Theory ofjusti~, p. 325-29.
18 A Theory ofjusti~, p. 331.
19 A Theory ofjusti~, p. 332 (emphasis added).
20 A primary example of this contentiousness is the recent confrontation surrounding Andres
Serrano's work Piss Christ, which consisted of a crucifix submerged in what the artist claimed
was a jar of his own urine. This work offended the Rev. Donald Wildmon and his American
Family Association, who publicly demanded that the NEA retrieve the federal funds re-
ceived by Serrano and dismiss the NEA employee responsible for the grant. See discussion
in Chapter Four, and also Figure Two.
21 Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics, ch.l, p. 22 (author's emphasis).
22 Sher distinguishes two distinct ways of interpreting the appeal to autonomy argument. One
of these interpretations holds that government interferences with autonomy inevitably re-
duce overall value (an appeal to the value of autonomy). The second interpretation does not
evaluate whether allowing full autonomy maximizes value, but rather it places a deontological
constraint on the government's preempting autonomous choice. This interpretation pro-
tects autonomy from being 'trumped' by other values, and for this reason Sher dubs it the
'appeal to respect for autonomy.'
23 Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1947, p. 197.
24 Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics, ch.l, p. 10.
25 Kymlicka, Will. Liberalism, Community, and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 12.
26 Gray, John. Post-liberalism: Studies in political thought. New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 286.
27 Mill, ].S. Principles 0/ Political Economy, vol. 2. New York: Collier & Sons, 1900, p. 448.
28 The Morality of Freedom, p. 417.
31 BeyondNeutrality: Perfectionism and Politics, ch. I, p. 11.
32 Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics, ch. I, p. 12.
33 Ackerman, Bruce. Social justice in the Liberal State. p. 369.
34 Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics, ch.6, p. 2.
35 The objective basis for these values comes not from their being selected as preference satisfiers
but from the social forms from which they emanate. See Gray, pp. 306-313.
36 Post-liberalism, p. 290 (emphasis added).
37 Post-liberalism, pp. 291, 293.
38 Post-liberalism, p. 295.
39 By civil society, Gray roughly means a tolerant, pluralistic society, governed by rule of law,
possessing the rule of private property, and enjoying civil liberties such as freedom of asso-
ciation, conscience, and expression.
40 Post-liberalism, p 314.
41 Post-liberalism, pp. 315, 320.
42 King, Rodney. Statement in press conference as reported in the Los Angeles Times, May 2,
1992. Reprinted in Reading Rodney King: Reading Urban Uprising. Robert Gooding-Will-
iams, ed., New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 235.
43 Because this line of criticism relates to issues in the philosophy of art rather than in political
philosophy, it does not cut against using perfection as a general principle of societal order-
ing, but it does cut against perfection as a justification for arts subsidies.
44 Danto, Arthur. "Hand-Painted Pop," in The Nation, vol. 257, No.9, September 27, 1993.
45 The entries on Parfit's list include: the appreciation of true beauty, moral goodness, rational
43
CHAPTER ONE
activity, the development of one's abilities, having children and being a good parent, and
knowledge. See Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, p.499.
46 Of course, Feinberg and others (including Sher) have argued forcefully against the idea that
an object's value can be fully accounted for by mental states: "We must already sense that
the object or pursuit is beneficial (or valuable in some other way) if we are to experience any
satisfaction at its ptoduction or occurrence." Feinberg, p. 127.
47 As remote as this idea may at first sound, it dovetails nicely with many tenets of 'formalist'
aesthetics, such as found in the writings of Roger Fry. See Nozick, Robert, Philosophical
Explanations, pp. 403- 450, and Fry, Roger. "The Form-Content Distinction," in Problems in
Aesthetics, M.Weitz ed., London: Macmillan, 1970, p. 200-202.
48 The High Aestheticism of the late 19th century marked the zenith of this paradigm, where
artists pursued the purity of aesthetic experience disinterested from any social or political
concerns. Pieter Burger suggests that this autonomous status of art was the primary target
of the historical avant garde, who were objecting to what they saw as excessive catering to
facile bourgeois sensibilities. See Pieter Burger's Theory a/the Avant Garde, Frankfurt: Surkamp,
1974.
49 Much contemporary thought that closely associates art with beauty has its source in a fun-
damental conflation of two distinct notions found in Kant's third critique: the judgment of
artworks and the judgment of the aesthetic. Contrary to much currently fashionable opin-
ion, Kant did not equate the experience of art and the experience of beauty, for unlike pure
aesthetic judgments, i.e., judgments of beauty rendered under certain ideal conditions cul-
minating in a free play of the faculties, Kant saw judgments of art as involving something
more than nonpurposive free play. Specifically, artworks contain for Kant 'aesthetic ideas,'
or roughly speaking, metaphors in need of interpretation. But because this distinction has
been often overlooked, Kant's influential thoughts on the aesthetic have become a part of
Western thinking not only about the aesthetic but also about the nature of art, to the end
that the experience of artworks is often (but erroneously) thought to be synonymous with
the experience of the aesthetic.
50 Carroll, Noel. "Can Government Funding of the Arts Be Justified Theoretically'''Journal 0/
Aesthetic Education, vol. 21, No.1, Spring 1987, p. 28 (emphasis added).
51 Carroll, pp. 28-9.
52 Krauss, Rosalind. "The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition," in
Art A/ter Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Brian Wallis, ed. Boston: The New Museum
of Contemporary Art, 1984, p.18.
53 Rosenberg, Harold. The Traditioll o/the New. New York: Dove Press, 1961, p. 37.
54 Gablik, Suzi. The Reenchantment 0/ Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991, p. 14.
55 For a classic examination of the avant-garde artists and their social aspirations for art, see
Pieter Burger's Theory 0/ the Avant Garde. Frankfurt: Surkamp, 1974. See also, Herbert
Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension. Boston: Beacon Press, 1977.
56 Gablik, p. 16.
57 Gablik, p. 17.
44
2
THE COMMITMENT
TO DEMOCRACY
Chapter One illuminated a difficult set of political and aesthetic

criticisms that could be avoided entirely with a plausible
nonperfectionist justification of arts subsidy. The remainder of this book
seeks to formulate such an alternative. Rather than claiming a life
with art is intrinsically superior to other ways of living, the book
argues the arts are instrumentally valuable to what is perhaps our
most widely-held public value--democratic self-rule. This chapter
lays the groundwork for the larger argument by examining our
commitment to democracy. It argues that our commitment to
democracy rests on a contingent belief in the value of human
autonomy, as well as a belief that democracy is the form of governing
that best respects auronomy. The chapter concludes by exploring
the extent to which our commitment to democracy implies an
obligation to educate future citizens.
The chapter is a significant digression from arts subsidy per se, and
some readers may prefer to skip directly to the discussions of art and
judgment in Chapter Three. This would be appropriate for those
who have no interest in democratic theory, for those who consider
our commitment to democracy uncontroversial, or for those who
prefer to focus solely on the connections between art and democratic
45
CHAPTER TWO
judgment. Of course, some readers may deny that we are in fact

committed to democracy, or that democracy carries any special
legitimacy. Yet whatever the force of such objections, the argument
offered here does not depend on democracy being universally superior
to other modes of governing. Consequently, the book does not claim
arts subsidies are necessarily justifiable within all societies. Rather,
the argument is contingent on the empirical fact that we happen to
value democratic self-rule. If art has the educational relevance
described in Chapter Three, then a society that values democratic
self-rule will have adequate reason to subsidize the arts. While a
more difficult argument to defend, demonstrating a link between
art and democracy generates a distinctly political rationale for
government support.
I
"Liberal democracy" is now so pervasive a term that some might
assume democracy and liberalism are by necessity linked. That is,
some might think it redundant to discuss a commitment to
democracy that is distinct from a larger framework of political rights
and obligations. Yet while understandable, this view is incorrect.
Democracy and liberalism are inseparable neither in practice nor
theory. Theories of liberalism seek to define the proper role of the
state. Negative liberals such as John Stuart Mill assert that
government activity should be limited to protecting citizens from
external harms and preserving their freedoms of thought, speech,
association, and lifestyle. The antipathy of negative liberalism is a
society in which open thought and speech are discouraged and
personal decisions are made under the yoke of government coercion.
Positive forms of liberalism claim the state may pursue a more
substantive, social agenda, often seeking to insure each citizen a
relatively equal chance of flourishing. On this view the state acts
46
THE COMMITMENT TO DEMOCRACY
rightly in using its coercive powers to insure fair distribution of

societal wealth, equal access to education, and equal opportunity in
competing for society's positions and offices.
Democracy, in contrast, is not a theory about governing but is itself

a form of governing. It stands in distinction to monarchy, aristocracy,
oligarchy, and any other form of governing in which public decisions
are imposed upon a citizenry from without. Compared to liberalism's
lofty and principled commitments to individuality and a just society,
democracy's ambitions might seem a bit mundane. After all,
democracy is merely a set of procedures for making public decisions.
Democracy does not in it pure form protect freedoms of expression
or association (except to the extent these freedoms are essential to
democracy itself), and it certainly does not guarantee fair distribution
of resources or opportunities. More troubling still, unfettered
democratic decision-making is notoriously vulnerable to the impulses
of a tyrannical majority.
With such a mundane agenda and so many warts, it is sometimes

puzzling that we so easily pledge allegiance to democracy. Yet while
democracy is in a sense only a public decision procedure, it is
distinguished by the fact it bestows special legitimacy upon public
decisions. Some claim democracy is the only form of government
capable of political legitimacy.! Such legitimacy stems from the fact
that democratic procedures privilege who decides political questions
over what gets decided. A democratic government carries legitimacy
because its policies are created not by an external authority (however
benevolent) but by the very people who must abide by those
policies-the governed.
But if democracy and liberalism are so thoroughly distinct, why are

they so often conjoined? Some answer this question by claiming
47
CHAPTER TWO
democracy is most likely to protect citizens against tyranny. Seen in

this light, democracy's worth is instrumental: democracy's value rests
in its ability to secure individual freedom. Yet this account is surely
incomplete, for the claim that democracy protects personal liberties
is at best only contingently true. 2 Democratic decisions need not-
and often do not-respect basic liberties, as evidenced by democratic
initiatives in Colorado banning equal treatment for homosexuals.
The irony is that liberal freedoms could in principle be better
protected through nondemocratic means. For instance, a benevolent
monarch could well decree a set of sacrosanct political rights and
enforce these rights with her absolute political powers. In contrast,
democratic citizens can in principle choose to abolish any or all liberal
rights by a popular vote. 3
This suggests a converse and more common account of democracy's

relation to liberalism. This account claims that because democracies
may choose not to enact liberal protections, pure democracy must
be tempered by liberal values to avoid the tyrannical risks of pure
majoritarianism. Liberal values thus proscribe a range of acceptable
outcomes from democratic procedures. This is an approach Amy
Gutmann and many others invoke in distinguishing between populist
and constitutional democracy. 4 The former emphasizes the legitimacy
of unmediated decisions of the populace, while the latter places
constitutional restrictions on what the populace may choose to enact.
These restrictions encompass those public activities (such as free
speech, thought, and association) that constitutional democrats think
should be "beyond popular control."5 This view casts democracy as
an incomplete ideal, legitimating political decisions yet unable to
prevent the potential injustices of popular rule.
Clearly there is some truth in this position. But to view democracy

in this way is again to underestimate the real (although perhaps
48
obscured) value that we place on democratic self-rule per se. Recent

global events provide one indicator of this value. For instance, the
shift to democracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
has been accompanied by great hardships that have left many citizens
bitter and destitute. Yet without claiming these citizens would be
willing to suffer indefinitely, the fact that democratization continues
to be applauded and pursued suggests that it is worth pursuing even
at considerable cost. Further, it is helpful to recall that political dissent
in South Africa would settle for nothing short of full voting rights
for all citizens, despite the fact that many of the government's
notorious abuses of the apartheid system could be abolished without
the additional step of full democratic enfranchisement.
The goal of this discussion is not to define the precise relation between
democracy and liberalism, but to suggest democracy is something
we value in itself. 6 We value democratic self-rule in distinction from
liberal ideals such as free speech and equal opportunity. Further,
democracy's value cannot be exhausted by enumerating its
instrumental ability to secure these liberal ideals. Living under
democratic self-rule is a good most would commitedly pursue even
if their society already guaranteed each and every liberal right.
But while democracy may indeed be distinct from liberalism, what

can be said about our commitment to democracy per se?7 What is
the justification for privileging democracy over other forms of
governing? The remainder of this section argues that our
commitment to democracy rests upon the belief that self-rule is
constitutive of respecting persons as autonomous agents. Thus, our
commitment rests on properties intrinsic to democracy rather than
any of its (presumably good) effects. To see why this justification
makes the most sense, it is helpful to examine the shortcomings of
the alternatives. By criticizing and eliminating each alternative, the
49
CHAPTER TWO
virtues of an autonomy-based argument for democracy should become

clear.
First, consider several important instrumental justifications of

democracy. James Madison (among many others) sought to justify
democracy on the grounds that it is the form of government most
protective of individual rights. He defended this view by arguing
that nonelected, nonaccountable rulers will be less inclined to protect
individual rights than will democratically-elected leaders subject to
recall by the people. 8 Yet while this view carries an intuitive appeal,
it is ironically insufficient as a justification of democracy proper.
The irony stems from the fact that democracy's most notorious
shortcoming is its insensitivity to individual rights. Even more
troubling, such rights violations assume an air of legitimacy when
derived through democratic means. This has led some theorists to
claim that constitutional democracy, i.e., a system of popular rule
tempered by constitutionally-mandated constraints on outcomes, is
the only plausible account of democracy. Without having to accept
this last claim entirely, the irony of basing democracy's value on
protecting individual rights should be clear. Even Friedrich Hayek,
who thinks this argument "historically has been the most important
and ... is still very important," admits in the end to its shaky empirical
ground.
[I}f the prospects of individual liberty are better in a

democracy than under other forms of government, this
does not mean that they are certain. The prospects of
liberty depend on whether or not the majority makes it
its deliberate objective. It would have little chance of
surviving if we relied on the mere existence of democracy
to preserve it. 9
50
Similar empirical questions face other instrumental justifications of

democracy. Consider the argument that democracy is most likely to
produce just laws. The most cogent proponent of this approach is
William Nelson, who argues that democracy tends "to foster
consensus on adequate principles of morality, and consequently tends
to produce law and policy decisions consistent with these
principles."iO Nelson attributes this tendency to the fact that
democracy requires citizen participation.
[W]hen matters of public policy are subject to frequent

public debate, [both] ci tizens ... and political
leaders ... will have to formulate principles and
conceptions of the common good in terms of which they
can justify their positions ... Such justifications will have
to be capable of gaining widespread public acceptance ... a
kind of consensus .... 11
While Nelson captures an important aspect of democracy's value, he

overstates the case in claiming such tendencies fully account for our
commitment to self-rule. For one thing, Nelson's account faces a
troubling axiological problem, for it is unclear how substantive moral
constraints, can both emanate from the processes of democracy and
serve to constrain the outcomes of these processes. 12 Even putting
this problem aside, Nelson still faces the empirical concern of whether
democratic regimes actually do produce just laws consistently.
Counter-examples have already been discussed, and Nelson himself
admits that "A good question for empirical study is the question
under what conditions the moralizing tendencies of democratic
politics will tend to produce desirable results and under what
conditions they will not." In the end, Nelson concedes "The argument
for democracy, as conceived here, is an argument in terms of its long
run tendencies. In the short run, it requires faith."13
51
CHAPTER TWO
But even if we (generously) grant that democracy is most likely to

produce just legislation, two questions still remain: (1) Does a
tendency to produce just laws constitute an adequate justification of
democracy? and, (2) Does this tendency fully capture the nature of
our particular commitment? The answer to the first question may
very well be yes-producing just laws is indeed sufficient reason to
privilege democracy over other forms of governing. Yet while an
adequate justification of democracy, this leaves out a significant aspect
of our particular commitment. Our commitment to democracy stems
not merely from a desire to produce good outcomes but from a
fundamental belief in the value of respecting persons as self-directing
and autonomous. And because rendering this respect involves
recognizing that persons must make hard choices and will make
mistakes, our conception of self-rule must also provide the political
space for making mistakes. Faced with a choice between (fallible)
democratic self-rule and rule by a wise and benevolent monarch,
most would select self-rule even though the monarch would in a
sense always get it right-i.e. would always enact the most just
laws. Nelson's account thus ignores an implicit aspect of our
commitment to democracy, something which might best be termed
the right to be wrong.
One other consequentialist justification deserves attention. Drawing

heavily on Rousseau and John Stuart Mill, Carole Pateman offers a
participatory justification of democracy based on the claim that
democracy produces good citizens. In developing her theory Pateman
argues
[T}here is an interrelationship between the authority

structures of institutions and the psychological qualities
and attitudes of individuals, and [a} related argument
that the major function of participation is an educative
52
one .... As a result of participating in decision making

the individual is educated to distinguish between his
own impulses and desires, he learns to be a public as
well as a private citizen. 14
While also consequentialist, Pateman's account emphasizes not the

morality of democracy's laws but the mental and moral development
of its citizens. Democracy is desirable because it is the most
participatory of all forms of government. Like Nelson, Pateman
should be commended for emphasizing the value of democratic
participation and deliberation. And democratic participation likely
does produce the positive empirical effects Pateman suggests.
However, while instructive, Pateman overstates the case in claiming

mental advancement is the primary criterion for evaluating political
institutions. As a justification of democracy, her appeal places
insufficient emphasis on the distinctly political aspects of justifying
a government. Do we really value democracy primarily because of
the type of citizen it produces? Or, is it rather that we value democracy
because it is the best mechanism for allowing persons to influence
their political future? To deny such influence is to display profound
disrespect for persons as self-directing, autonomous agents. In
emphasizing participation, Pateman has no doubt isolated an
invaluable aspect of democracy's value. However, in casting
participation as the primary value of democracy, her account-like
all consequentialist justifications-undervalues democracy's deeper
importance.
From this brief survey, two broad criticisms of consequentialist

justifications emerge. First, consequentialist justifications all rely
on contingent empirical claims that mayor may not be true. Second,
by their very nature, consequentialist justifications do not constitute
53
CHAPTER TWO
a commitment to democracy per se. If another form of government

more effectively secured these ends, a purely instrumental argument
would suggest we drop democracy in favor of the more efficient
alternative. While a coherent option, history shows we do not so
quickly abandon democracy, and hence that the instrumental account
is incomplete. These criticisms have been forcefully argued by Peter
Jones. lS
Because of such difficulties, many have abandoned instrumentalism

in favor of an appeal to intrinsic nature. For example, Peter Singer
appeals to democracy's intrinsic fairness:
It is the fairness of the compromise by which force is avoided

that gives rise to the stronger reason for accepting the
decision-procedure of the [democratic} association. 16
Singer's claim reflects an important insight: however we otherwise

extol its virtues, democracy is in fact only a set of decision procedures.
Appealing to the intrinsic fairness of democratic procedures allows
Singer to avoid the contingent, empirical criticisms that plague
instrumental justifications. For while Singer pins his argument on
the intrinsic fairness of democratic procedures, he does not claim
these procedures will always produce fair or just outcomes. His is a
claim of procedural equality, not equality of outcomes ..
Yet while this argument is a step in the right direction, Singer's

account unduly reifies the abstract value fairness. Democratic
procedures are no doubt fair, yet as William Nelson remarks
What is odd about the attempt to justify democracy in

terms of its intrinsic fairness, its fairness as a procedure
taken in isolation, is that it seems ro treat the right to
54
influence political decisions as an end in itself. 17
Indeed, rather than the bedrock underlying our commitment to

democracy, fairness is better construed as instrumental to the more
profound value of political self-directedness. We value democratic
procedures such as majority-rule not solely because of their intrinsic
fairness but because their fairness instrumentally serves this higher
ideal. Citizens cannot be robustly self-directing if not accorded formal
political equality. The shortcomings of Singer's account can be seen
more clearly by drawing on Rousseau's distinction between
democracy as a form of governing and democracy as a form of
sovereignty. By casting his justification solely in terms of procedural
fairness, Singer appeals solely to democracy as a form of government.
Yet this formulation omits the distinctly political aspect of justifying
democracy: its function as a form of sovereignty. Singer explains
why it is rational to select democracy as a means of self-sovereignty,
but this tells us little about why we should opt for self-sovereignty.
A more promising formulation is to claim democracy is the only

form of government that best respects persons as autonomous agents.
Carl Cohen elegantly describes the basic intuition behind this view
when he asks
What is the sense upon which the justification of

democracy in the body politic depends? It is, simply,
that beneath all the undeniable differences among men
there is in every human being an element, or aspect, or
essential quality which justifies our treating him as the
equal of every other in the largest sphere of human
life ... just this thought is expressed in the now
commonplace remark that the dignity of every human
being must be respected. IS
55
CHAPTER TWO
While he does not develop its full potential as a justification of

democracy (offering instead yet another instrumental justification
based on democracy's ability to promote equal rights), Cohen makes
exactly the right move in appealing to human dignity. 19 Thus, while
he misrepresents its full implication, Cohen's argument does capture
the bedrock value of our commitment to democracy. Cohen's
argument is successful if reinterpreted in terms of respect for persons
rather than equality among persons. Instead of claiming that democracy
requires equality of outcome (what system of government could insure
that?), human dignity requires we respect citizens as self-directing
agents. Interpreted in this way, Kant's ideal of respect for persons
provides a strong justification of democracy: democracy best respects
self-directedness in its unavoidably political dimension. Because an
integral part of respecting a person's dignity is respecting her ability
to direct her own life, and because no one can truly direct her life
absent political sovereignty, the ideal of respect for persons supports
the ideal of democratic self-rule. 20
This justification also says something about the kind of democracy

that we value. If our commitment to democracy is founded on the
ideal of respect for persons, then we also seem committed to the
form of democracy that best serves this ideal. One account centered
on this ideal is Amy Gutmann's deliberative democracy. Deliberative
democracy
[aJrgues that the primary value of popular rule lies in its

encouragement or expression of the broadest possible
degree of public deliberation, not in its mere expression
of popular will ... Deliberative democracy values popular
rule to the degree that it manifests or supports autonomy
in politics, not simply for the expression of majority or
plurality wilL ... The aim of deliberative democracy is
56
not popular rule but autonomy.21
It is indeed the deliberative model that best reflects-and is partly

constitutive of-our commitment to respecting persons as
self-directing agents. Active deliberation fosters autonomy by
increasing awareness of competing views and by honing the
intellectual faculties for judging these options. In the Millean sense,
deliberation not only contributes to the marketplace of ideas but
also makes each citizen a more discerning consumer in this
marketplace. 22
Yet the marketplace metaphor is incomplete. Wise decision-making

within a democratic polity is a much more sophisticated task than
straightforward economic maximizing. Rather than the formulaic
task of maximizing individual interest, political wisdom involves
the more difficult task of judgment. While much more will be said
about judgment in Chapter Three, here are two quick points to
distinguish market decisions from political judgments. First, while
it is possible to be a discerning market consumer in isolation from
others, isolation is incompatible with true political self-directed ness.
As Benjamin Barber writes
... [p}olitical judgment [is} a function of commonality

that can be exercised only by citizens interacting with
one another in the context of mutual deliberation and
decision .... Political judgment is thus 'we-judgment'or
public judgment or common-willing (in Rousseau's
phrase, general-willing). I cannot judge politically, only
we can judge politically; in assuming the mantle of
citizenship, the I becomes a we. This transformation
naturally requires an understanding of citizenship more
vigorous and murualistic than the one favored by modern
57
CHAPTER TWO
social scientists, which identifies citizens as private agents

pursuing private interests in a political marketplace. 23
Similarly, when Gutmann writes that "Because autonomy requires

that we deliberate, it presupposes ... a system of popular rule that
encourages citizens to think about political decisions," she cannot
mean "think about" in the sense of disconnected individuals seeking
to maximize their interests in isolation from broad concerns. And
indeed she does not mean this, for she recognizes an inherent
disharmony "rooted in the tension between living your life as you
see fit, and recognizing that to live your life as you see fit, you must
share political power with many other people and therefore you may
not be able to live every part of your life just as you see fit."24
Gutmann's idea is that only through deliberation does one come to
know the practical limitations of one's ideas and aspirations.
While correct as far as it goes, Gutmann's argument does not capture

the full difference between political and market deliberation. Not
only does living a self-directing life require a richer conception of
the self than the atomism of market theory, but it also requires a
richer account of public decision-making. Sound political judgment
involves more than merely consulting others in order to avoid clashes
with them. Political judgment involves discerning the meaning of
political events and potential courses of action. Discerning meaning
is a reflective act requiring two distinct skills. One, it requires the
ability to withdraw from one's immediate inclinations and assume a
mediated point of view. As Alexander Hamilton suggests, judgment
requires distinguishing the "temporary delusion" of "inclination"
or "transient impulse" from the public's consideration of its interests
when there is "opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection."25
Second, in addition to skills of rational debate, analysis, and
deduction, sound judgment requires skills of imagination and
58
interpretation. Such skills are necessary because judgment is never

solely a task of rational debate or discursive analysis. Rather, debate
and analysis always presuppose the more profound ability of clearly
"seeing" the political landscape and assigning meaning to its various
elements. As will be discussed in Chapter Three, this process is highly
interpretive, similar if not identical to the process used to discern
the meaning of artworks.
II
Before closing this chapter, we must briefly consider whether our
commitment to democracy also implies a commitment to educating
citizens for democratic life. This question is important because if
engaging art can foster skills of judgment, a strong justification of
subsidy is at hand. Assessing this issue requires addressing two
questions: (1) What activities and institutions promote democratic
character? and (2) What sort of obligation or commitment do we
have toward promoting such character? The first question has a
straightforward answer: democratic character is more likely to flourish
when citizenry possess the requisite opportunities, desires, and skills
to carry it out. This section will focus only on the third condition,
for regardless of opportunity and desire, deliberative democracy will
flourish only if a citizenry possesses its requisite skills.
What are these deliberative skills? In Democratic Education, Gutmann

argues that democratic citizens must possess both general literacy
and the "capacities for criticism, rational argument, and decision
making (that come from} being taught how to think logically, to
argue coherently and fairly, and to consider the relevant alternatives
before coming to conclusions."26 Gutmann also thinks deliberative
character encompasses a moral dimension. For example, citizens
should possess the "capacity to understand and to evaluate competing
59
CHAPTER TWO
conceptions of the good life and the good society, ... [and be]
predispos[ed] ... to accept those ways of life that are consistent with
sharing the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in a democratic
society. "27
While Gutmann captures important elements of democratic

character, she over-emphasizes the discursive. Robust democratic
citizenship involves an element of imagination, for it requires the
ability to transcend one's immediate and particular situation. Robust
democratic participation requires the ability to assume a broad
perspective, for only then can one visualize novel alternatives,
solutions, and compromises. John Dewey elegantly describes this
imaginative element of democratic life in his book Democracy and
Education. Dewey argues that democracies face the peculiar
educational challenge of insuring that citizens do not become overly
rigid in their thoughts and ideas. Such rigidity is inimical to
democratic life, encouraging social isolation and in some cases even
a slave mentality. Democratic education can help assuage this
condition, but only if it brings citizens to realize the "full use of
[their] intelligence." Such education must be diverse, for "Diversity
of stimulation means novelty, and novelty means challenge to
thought."28 Dewey is absolutely right to extol the value of robust
imagination among democratic citizens. Imagination is constitutive
of a host of democratic traits, including the ability to empathize, to
interpret the meaning of events, the ability to incorporate unfamiliar
ideas, as well as the ability to compromise.
While this list might at first seem something of a grab-bag-literacy,

critical reasoning, interpretive skills, moral sensibility, empathy, open
mindedness-the list can in fact be subsumed under the rubric of
judgment. 29 To be a good democratic citizen, one must possess a
well-developed faculty of judgment, and training in judgment refers
60
inclusively to those activities that tend to foster such character traits.

Such training can occur at various points of a person's life: exemplary
character training for pre-schoolers; development of rational, critical,
and persuasive skills in primary and secondary schools; theoretical
inquiry within the ivory towers of higher education; and, various
forms of continuing education for adults. 30
Yet identifying the traits and training appropriate for democratic

citizens is only part of the work. Still unaddressed is the question of
whether, given our particular commitment to democracy, we have
an obligation to foster these traits among current and future citizens.
That is, do these traits constitute mere desiderata, or do they reflect
an ideal to which we have at least a prima facie obligation? Gutmann
makes the strong claim that fostering democratic character should
be lexically prior to all other educational aimsY She admits this
goal is nonneutral, but she seeks to justify her view by asserting that
"We are committed to collectively recreating the [democratic] society
we share. "32 According to Gutmann, if we are going to educate the
citizenry at all, our first priority must be to educate them as
democratic citizens.
It is beyond this book's scope to determine society's precise obligation

vis a vis democratic education. Sher has pointed out that Gutmann's
strong claim cannot stand without further support, writing that while
"it is one thing to show that [democratic education} is needed if
future authority is to be apportioned in the best way, [it is} quite
another to show that apportioning future authority in the best way
is more important (let alone lexically more important) than any other
educational aims."33 Sher is right here to distinguish the various
levels of argument that Gutmann's strong claim must hurdle, yet
that alone does not demonstrate that these hurdles cannot be
overcome. Perhaps democratic education is lexically prior to our other
61
CHAPTER TWO
educational aims. Such a claim is not wildly implausible given the

fundamental importance we attach to democracy. Yet even if
democratic education is not lexically prior, surely it warrants some
privilege among competing educational options. For if democracy
is indeed one of our fundamental social values, then democratic
education would seem to share in the force of this commitment.
That is, our commitment to self-rule seems also to imply a
commitment to insuring that self-rule remains robust over time. 34
This argument turns provocative to the extent it can be shown that

engaging artworks can foster the mental preconditions of judgment.
Then the case for arts subsidies would share in the force of our
commitment to perpetuating democratic sovereignty. A peculiar
virtue of this approach is that unlike perfectionist appeals to objective
value, this argument appeals to a less controversial yet distinctly
political value-robust democratic participation. This approach
better justifies government involvement in the arts, for promoting
democratic participation is more properly a function of government
than the perfectionist aim of promoting human flourishing. In Strong
Democracy, Benjamin Barber writes that "To speak of democratic
political judgment is to speak of civic education and also of styles of
political participation that go well beyond occasional voting. "35
Chapter Three describes why it is plausible to consider engaging art
as part of this education and one of these styles.
See Wolff, Robert Paul. In Defense of Anarchism. New York: Harper and Row, 1970.
2 Nelson, William. OnJustifying Democracy. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980, p. 117.
3 Constitutional democracy seeks to avoid this possibility by "placing personal freedoms ef-
fectively beyond popular control," an approach reflected in the American Bill of Rights.
However, as unlikely as their repeal may be, the Constitution makes provision for repealing
any and all such amendments through (an albeit stringent) process of popular vote. See
Gutmann, Amy. "The Disharmony of Democracy," in Democratic Community, John W.
Chapman and Ian Shapiro, eds., New York: New York University Press, 1993, p. 151.
62
4 Gutmann, Amy and Thompson, Dennis. "Moral Disagreement in Democracy," in Contempo-

rary Political and Social Philosophy. Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul,
eds. Cambridge: Cambridge Press Syndicate, 1995.
5 "The Disharmony of Democracy," p. 15l.
6 This is not to say that we cannot give reasons why we value democracy, but rather to claim
that we value democracy apart ftom any instrumental value it may have in securing other,
distinctly liberal, values or ends.
7 Traditionally, accounting for democracy's value has been considered to involve two distinct
questions: (1) On what grounds do we justify adopting democracy over other forms of gov-
erning? and (2) Of the many conceptions of democracy available for consideration, which
garners (or ought to garner) our allegiance' In his book On Justifying Democracy, William
Nelson claims that these two questions inform each other to such an extent that they can
only be answered in tandem, for to do otherwise is effectively ro "build in" many substan-
tive claims about either democracy's definition or its justification. While I share Nelson's
thesis that questions of definition and questions of justification are tightly inter-connected,
I do not agree that they can only be answered in tandem. Rather, the question of justifica-
tion is prior, and the interconnectedness of the two questions is better accounted for by
recognizing that the particular value placed on self-rule in a society properly drives deci-
sions about the best form of democracy for that society. This approach also reflects Rousseau's
insightful distinction between democracy as a form of sovereignty and democracy as a form
of governing, with the deeper question of justification corresponding ro our commitment ro
self-sovereignty rather than to any particular set of democratic procedures.
8 Democracy: Theory and Practice, pp. 15-16.
9 Democracy: Theory and Practice, p. 10l.
10 On Justifying Democracy, pp. llO-lll.
liOn Justifying Democracy, p. 117.
12 That is, one can interpret Nelson's project in a strong and a weak sense. In the strong sense,
justice manifests itself through democratic procedures, and it consists of substantive moral
claims that may conflict with the results of popular elections. In such conflicts the substan-
tive moral claim takes priority over the popular results, thus constraining the range of
acceptable outcomes. Conversely, on the weak interpretation this morality is really no more
than the results of public debate (i.e., democratic procedures), and these could never consti-
tute a constraint on democratic outcomes because they would simply be the democratic
outcome restated.
Thus it may be that Nelson's project requires a stronger, more objectively-based mo-
rality than the contractarian morality he adopts. But if he moves to this more objective
morality, a whole host of problems arise, most significantly the issue of whether such a
common morality can even exist within highly pluralistic cultures (see chapter one's discus-
sion of moral incommensurability). Further, it seems that one of the fundamental functions
of democracy is ro provide a mechanism for agreeably settling precisely those public issues
about which there is no moral consensus, Requiring that public decisions be constrained by a
moral consensus thus appears to be either redundant (interpreting Nelson's project in the
weak sense) or at best puzzling (when interpreted in the strong sense).
13 OnJustifying Democracy, p. ll9.
14 Democracy: Theory and Practice, p. 108-9. Pateman's list of the educative aspects of democracy
is actually much longer than I suggest here. William Nelson summarizes the list nicely
when he writes that the effects on character which Pateman focuses on " .. .fall into several
63
CHAPTER TWO
groups. First, active participation is supposed to lead people to develop a 'responsible' char-
acter, to enhance group harmony, develop a sense of cooperation and sense of community,
and to lead to willing acceptance of group decisions. Second, it leads people to feel that they
are free, that they are their own master, and to increase their sense of political efficacy, and it
teaches them how to participate effectively. Finally it leads them to develop active, non-servile
characters, democratic or nonauthoritarian personality structures, and it leads them to btoaden
their horizons and to appreciate the viewpoints and perspectives of others. The foregoing is
not an exhaustive list of all the character traits Paternan mentions, but it is a representative
collection." On Justifying Democracy, p. 49.
15 Peter Jones has forcefully criticized consequentialist justifications of democracy, claiming
that (1) "They are contingent in character ... and involve empirical assertions which mayor
may not hold true"; (2) because of their contingent character, "they do not constitute prin-
cipled commitments to democracy as such. If it turned out that the desired result would be
better achieved by a nondemocratic system of government, then we should abandon democ-
racy"; and (3) they "fail to account for our sense that democracy constitutes a fair decision
procedure. That is, they do not accommodate the idea that irrespective of what decisions are
made, a democratic system constitutes a fairer way of making decisions than one in which
some are excluded from the process of decision-making and others are accorded a privileged
status." Excerpts from "Political Equality and Majority Rule," reprinted in Democracy: Theory
and Practice, p. 210.
16 Singer, Peter. Democracy and Disobedience. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973, p. 32.
17 On Justifying Democracy, p. 22.
18 Democracy: Theory and Practice, p. 204-5.
19 That is, Cohen takes the significance of Kant's ideal to be the requirement of equality, and
he concludes from this that democracy is justified because it is the form of governing that
best treats people equally (e.g., democracy "distributes the right of participation equally").
Cohen thus chooses, like Singer, to reify an abstract value-in this case "equality."
20 I would point out immediately that in basing democracy's value on the Kantian ideal of
respect for persons, I need not claim that democracy is justifiable as the best form of govern-
ment in some universal sense. And in fact I am making only the contingent claim that the
principle of respect for persons underlies our particular commitment to democratic self-rule.
John Gray pursues a similar strategy in justifying liberalism, arguing that if one takes
seriously contemporary "postmodern" criticisms of the Enlightenment, then the most phi-
losophers can realistically hope to accomplish is to offer an "historical" and specifically
non universal argument for liberalism. Gray writes that
"{T]hough it is not the case that a liberal civil society ... is the only, or
necessarily the best society from the standpoint of human flourishing,
nevertheless it is the only sort of regime in which we-in our historical
circumstance as late moderns--<:an live well. There is an historical argu-
ment for liberalism, in other words, which maintains that a civil society
constitutes the only sort of society through which modern civilization can
reproduce itself... The worth of civil society for us as moderns (or
post-moderns) is that it permits the peaceful coexistence in a modus viv-
endi of incommensurable values and perspectives on the world."
(Postliberalism, p. 288)
Now while Gray's latter claim is more problematic, I agree with the post-modernist line of
criticism generally (at least in its less extreme forms) and specifically with Gray's histori-
64
cally contingent approach to justification. However, because I believe that our commitment
to democracy involves more than a commitment co peaceful conflict resolution, I am more
optimistic than is Gray about explicating democracy's value in terms of moral principles.
Thus, one might accurately view my claims here as a principled but nonuniversal justifica-
tion of democracy. This is to accept an essential kernel of the post-modernist critique (i.e.,
abandoning the aspirations of universality), but it is to reject the idea that justifications are
impossible or that they cannot appeal to moral principles. For instance, while I do utilize
the language of principles and foundations (e.g., the Kantian principle of respect for per-
sons), my approach does not require that these principles carry universal validity. Rather
than insisting that democracy is appropriate for every society and every time, it is sufficient
for my purposes to elucidate a limited justification of democracy based only on the extant
values of a particular society. Appealing to such principles while stopping short of asserting
their universal validity is neither inconsistent nor does it constitute a wholesale rejection of
the tradition from which these ideals arose. Rather, it is to recognize these principles as part
of our contingently-derived "historical inheritance."
21 The Disharmony o/Democracy, pp. 140, 144.
22 There are other arguments for deliberative democracy, as well. For instance, in her more
recent writings Amy Gutmann has moved away from this autonomy-based argument and
toward the claim that only deliberative democracy offers an adequate procedural mecha-
nism for incorporating moral argument into public decision-making. Gutmann claims that
there are four reasons that we ought to incorporate moral deliberation into the democratic
process: (I) moral deliberation adds legitimacy to democratic decisions, for people will be
more likely to accept decisions they do not like if they know that their side of the issue has
been given real consideration; (2) deliberation encourages citizens to take a broader view of
public issues when these issues are deliberated; (3) deliberation can clarify the nature of moral
conflict; and (4) deliberation tends to foster changes of mind rather than mere shifts in
power.
23 The Disharmony 0/ Democracy, pp. 200-01.
24 The Disharmony 0/ Democracy, p. 156.
25 Fishkin,James S. Democracy and Deliberation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, pp.
35-36.
26 Democratic Education, pp. 50-1.
27 Democratic Education, p. 42.
28 Dewey,john. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy o/Education. New York:
The MacMillan Company, 1926, p. 98.
29 As will be seen, the ideal of political judgment that I appeal to is typically considered a
product of the Kantian tradition (as developed most notably by Gadamer and Arendt),
although as Barber points out, a more complete account acknowledges the ideas of Ameri-
cans such as C.S. Peirce, Richard Bernstein, Richard Rorty, and Charles Taylor. On the other
hand, Gutmann does not explicitly use the language of judgment, even though it encom-
passes most of what she includes in her ideal of "deliberative character."
30 Democratic Education, pp. 38-52, 256-81.
31 Sher, George. "Educating Citizens," in Philosophy and Public A//airs, vol. 18, no. I, p. 70.
33 "Educating Citizens," p. 80
34 It would be useful to systematically compare our duties regarding democratic educational
activities to those regarding democratic procedures. For instance, the government has the
65
CHAPTER TWO
obligation of insuring that there is access to voting places, no one votes more than once,
candidates abide by campaign finance laws, persuasive campaign literature and other adver-
tising does not appear closer than specified minimum distances from polling places, votes
are counted accurately, ballots are dearly written, and candidates be given equal access time
in the journalistic media. On the other hand, government responsibility does not seem to
extend to organizing and sponsoring debates, a central precondition of an informed elector-
ate.
35 Strong Democracy, p. 210.
66
3
EMPATHY,
INTERPRETATION, AND
JUDGMENT:
THE CASE FOR ART
This chapter presents the book's positive argument for art subsidy.
As outlined in the Introduction, this justification claims that the
arts offer robust opportunities for political education. While claims
are often and easily made about art's value for general education, here
I build on Chapter Two in arguing that the arts also have important
value for democratic education. To make the case for art as democratic
education, this chapter describes how aesthetical and political
judgments share a common phenomenological structure and foster
a common set of intellectual skills. While artworks may indeed have
intrinsic value as perfectionists suggest, here I argue the best reason
to subsidize them is instrumental: engaging an artwork practices
politically useful skills of interpretation, empathy, and judgment. If
successful, this argument produces an especially strong justification
of subsidy. The strength of the argument resides in its fundamental
commitment to democracy. This commitment is not only something
shared by even diehard opponents of subsidy, but it also generates
an especially apt reason for government involvement in the artworld
67
CHAPTER THREE
improving democracy itself.
I
To discern art's significance for democratic education, it is useful to
think further about the kinds of activities that foster democracy. A
useful starting point is the philosophy of John Dewey, who wrote
persuasively not only about democracy and education but also art.
In Democracy and Education, Dewey argues that successful democratic
education leads citizens toward "full use of [their} intelligence" by
providing a diversity of stimulation, for "[d}iversity of stimulation
means novelty, and novelty means challenge to thought."t Dewey's
ideas can also be cast in terms of the imagination: democracy
flourishes most fully when citizens possess robust powers of
imagination. Fostering imagination is essential to democratic
education, for it leads citizens "to develop initiative in coping with
novel situations."2 Such initiative, in turn, discourages the fixity of
thought and habit that can undermine a democratic polity's most
effective tool-the flexibility to compromise.
Some will find it uncontroversial to claim art stimulates novelty,

challenges thought, and fosters the full use of human faculties. Even
so, these claims must be made more specific if they are to justify a
general program of public subsidy. One way to add specificity is by
once again broadening perspectives, this time to the philosophy of
art. What do particular assumptions about the nature of art suggest
about its ability to foster democratic virtue? What does contemporary
aesthetic theory suggest we might expect in terms of art's ability to
foster democratic skills? At least one plausible and influential theory
of art suggests we can expect quite a lot. This theory rejects the idea
that engaging art is a matter of passively experiencing aesthetic
pleasure. Instead, it argues artifacts must be constituted as works of
art. The final step in the creative process is thus made not by the
68
EMPATHY, INTERPRETATION, AND JUDGMENT: THE CASE FOR ART
artist but the viewer: artworks are not merely gazed upon but actively
achieved.
With proponents back to the 18 th century, this view of art is not

new. 3 Nonetheless, its most sophisticated and elegant expression has
appeared in the 20 th century. Embracing enigmatic artworks from
artistic movements such as Dada and Pop Art, Arthur C. Danto
rigorously develops this theory in his book The Transfiguration of the
Commonplace. Using Andy Warhol's "Brillo Box" as a point of
departure, Danto explains how the appropriation of a commonplace
consumer product (i.e., a box of kitchen soap pads) can be art when
it exhibits absolutely no discernible differences from its nonartistic
counterpart on the grocery store shelf.4 The explanation, Danto
reasons, resides in an indiscernible yet ontologically genuine
difference between artworks and everyday objects. About this
difference Danto writes
[T}he phenomenon of confusable counterparts belonging

ro distinct ontological orders arises only when at least one
of the confusable things bears a representational property:
where at least one of the counterparts is about something,
or has a content, or a subject or a meaning. It is because
one ... is representational that it has ... structural properties
lacking in its nontepresentational counterpart. s
But, of course, while all artworks may be representations, clearly

not all representations are artworks. Danto illustrates this point by
asking us to imagine two indiscernible representations, one a paper
printout from an electrocardiogram machine, the other a pen and
ink sketching of Mount Fuji. Ifboth images are visually indiscernible,
and if both are representations, how is it that only one is a work of
art? Danto explains this fact by appealing to the way each
69
CHAPTER THREE
representation depicts its content. The electrocardiogram represents

a particular person's heartbeat, and nothing more. As a diagram, its
meaning is reducible to-is exhausted by a comprehensive
description of-its content. On the other hand, while perceptually
identical to its diagrammatic counterpart, the drawing of Mount
Fuji is more than the sum of its content. It exhibits semantic richness
and style, both of which the diagram lacks. Thus, the ontological
structure of artworks is qualitatively distinct from other forms of
representation, meaning that artworks constitute a peculiar subclass
of representations.
[W}orks of art, in categorical contrast with mere

representations, use the means of representation in a way
that is not exhaustively specified when one has
exhaustively specified what is being represented. This is
a use that transcends semantic considerations
(considerations of Sinn and Bedeutung). Whatever [an
artwork} finally represents, it expresses something about
that content. 6
What distinguishes the species art from the genus representation is

that artworks are metaphorical representations. Unlike literal
representations such as diagrams or newspaper stories, the ontological
structure of artworks is intensional. 7 Similar to Kant's concept of the
aesthetical idea, this structure endows artworks with a semantic
richness that defies reduction through discursive paraphrase. No
paraphrase, however exhaustive, can substitute for experiencing a
metaphor itself. This is not only because of the indefinite richness of
the metaphor, but also because metaphors are by nature participatory.
Engaging a metaphor requires one to engage its particularity, for
only then does one engage the artist on her own stylistic terms. Such
direct engagement with the work is crucial because the particular
70
style of a metaphor is the source of its semantic richness. Similar to

the psychology of enthymeme, a viewer achieves the meaning of a
metaphor, making its meaning her own meaning.
A distinct advantage of this theory is that it comes closer than most

any other to offering a unified philosophy of art. Not only does it
provide a framework for understanding enigmatic art of the 20[h
century, but it also accommodates traditional works, even those not
typically classified as representational. This explanatory breadth
comes from the fact that while the theory is essentialist (i.e., posits
necessary and sufficient conditions for art), it does not define art in
terms of any particular style of art. Take for instance Van Gogh's
Sorrow, often hailed as the paradigm of expressive art. Such an
emotionally expressive work can be accommodated by this view
because representation and emotional expression are not cast as
competing theories of art. Instead, emotional expression is understood
as a subclass, as a way, of representing. Expressing emotion is simpl y
one style of representation.
[T}he concept of expression can be reduced to the concept

of metaphor, when the way in which something is
represented is taken in connection with the subject
represented ... Metaphor presents its subject and presents
the way in which it does present it.H
Yet while these explanations may function as a persuasive philosophy

of art, we have yet to see their relevance and value for democratic
citizens. How can engaging metaphorical expressions contribute to
the aims of democratic education? To answer that question, consider
for a moment the phenomenology of engaging a metaphor. While
no doubt beginning with the empirical experience of visual, aural,
and perhaps tactile sensations, metaphor requires at its essence an
71
CHAPTER THREE
act of interpretation. Only through interpretation can the meaning

of a metaphor be constituted. Danto goes so far as to say that artworks
do not even exist without interpretation.
An object 0 is then an artwork only under an

interpretation I, where I is a sort of function that
transfigures 0 into a work: 1(0) = W. Then even if 0 is a
perceptual constant, variations in I constitute different
works. Now 0 may be looked at, but the work has to be
achieved ... 9
As a metaphor, works of art ontologically require interpretation by a

viewer. Furthermore, interpreting an artwork requires a much more
active form of mental engagement than interpreting literal
representations such as newspapers or diagrams. Constituting the
meaning of an artwork involves synthesizing many complex factors,
including its content and formal properties, the artist's intentions,
the cultural milieu within which it was created, and even the material
conditions of its production. 10 And judging the quality of an artwork
requires one to engage it in normative terms, assessing its aesthetic
value and the significance of its meaning.
Yet again, while these claims ring true in relation to arts, in what
way are they relevant to developing democratic citizenship? My thesis
is that the same interpretive, reflective, and evaluative skills required
to engage art are also constitutive skills of successful democratic
life. To demonstrate this connection, I shall first explore the
pervasiveness of interpretation in human affairs. Succeeding sections
of the chapter explore deeper, structural similarities between political
and aesthetical judgments.
Much has been written about the vital role of interpretation in human
72
life. Some go so far as to claim interpretation is the essence of human

nature. 11 Yet while such strong claims may well be true, my argument
depends on nothing this broad. Rather than universal claims about
human nature, my argument focuses more narrowly on the role of
interpretation within society's institutions and cultural practices.
In Law's Empire, Ronald Dworkin argues that all social practices rely
upon interpretation. For example, consider the practice of courtesy.
No set of a priori rules, however complete, can exhaust what it means
to be courteous. Courtesy cannot be defined discursively because
being courteous involves applying the concept of courtesy to particular
situations. This hermeneutical moment is inescapable, for it is the
means whereby one discerns what it actually means to be courteous
in a particular situation. As Wittgentstein might put it, being
courteous requires successfully functioning within the language game
of courtesy. Such success comes not through refined conceptual
analysis but through linking word and action (i.e., by acting in ways
we call courteous). 12
Dworkin extends this analysis to argue that law itself-our most

fundamental political category-rests not on bedrock foundation
but on interpretative reading of texts. What is the basis of law?
Does not law reside within the written statutes, to be simply read
and followed literally? Surely this is not the case, for legal scholars
as well as thoughtful judges often disagree deeply about the meaning
of a written statute. Discerning what a law means, i.e., moving from
the literal wording to an understanding of what this wording means
in terms of practical action, is structurally identical to the act of
interpreting literature. Dworkin describes this commonality when
he writes
Literary critics all agree about what poem "Sailing to
73
CHAPTER THREE
Byzantium" is in the first sense. They agree it is the series

of words designated as that poem by W.B. Yeats. But
they nevertheless disagree about what the poem is in the
second sense, about what the poem really says or means.
They disagree about how to construct the 'real' poem,
the poem in the second sense, from the text, the poem in
the first sense. In much the same way, judges before whom
a statute is laid need to construct the 'real' starute-a
statement of what difference the statute makes to the
legal rights of various people-from the text in the
statute book. 12
It is precisely this aim of transcending the literal that marks the

work of interpretation. As Paul Ricoeur writes
Interpretation ... is the work of thought which consists

in deciphering the hidden meaning in the apparent
meaning, in unfolding the levels of meaning implied in
the literal meaning. 13
Some may object this model is too narrow, perhaps arguing that
painting and the plastic arts do not contain literal meaning. Yet,
even putting aside the fact that artworks sometimes do contain literal
components (e.g., Magritte's C'est n'es pas un pipe), this objection
still does not demonstrate that the interpretive model has validity
only for literature. 14 While painting and the plastic arts represent
pictorially rather than linguistically, they still contain a factual
component analogous to the literal text. This factual component
typically includes the subject represented, the composition, as well
as the work's particular style. So while one might factually describe
Monet's "Water Lilies" as "blurry pictures of some flowers and a
bridge," its artistic meaning would certainly not be exhausted by
74
this description. And, just as in constituting the full meaning of a

law, the method for ferreting out the figutative meaning of art is
reflective interpretation.
Evidence of the inter-relatedness of interpretation and law is also

found in the fact that Out worst practicing judges are precisely those
who do not practice interpretation when judging. That is, they engage
the law literally and mechanically, showing little flexibility and
paying little heed to the particularities of each case. It may be clear
to everyone that a person has committed this or that act, or even
broken this or that law, but a good judge renders her decision not
simply based on the literal wording of a statute but on what she
interprets that statute to mean given the exigencies of a particular
case. 15 As Dworkin writes
Thoughtful lawyers and judges ... [tell us that} law is

instinct rather than explicit in doctrine, that it can be
identified only by special techniques best described
impressionistically, even mysteriously. They say that
judging is an art not a science, that the good judge blends
analogy, craft, political wisdom, and a sense of his role
into an intuitive decision, that he 'sees' law better than
he can explain it, so his written opinion, however carefully
reasoned, never captures his full insight. 16
This ability to "see" the meaning of particular situations is the

precondition of all sound judgments, whether they concern the
meaning of a law, the significance of a political act, the proper coutse
of practical action, or the meaning of an artwork. The differences
between these activities are differences of application, not of kind.
In all these cases what is sought is a kind of nonscientific
knowledge-a judgment one can defend with persuasive reasons
75
CHAPTER THREE
rather than deductive logic. For while judges may never be able to
offer a deductive argument in support of a particular judgment, they
can (or at least should be able to) provide reasons for why they judged
as they did. Some reasons will clearly stand out as more relevant
than others; and perhaps none will be decisive on its own. Yet taken
together such a response can be persuasive, for individual reasons
intertwine and gain strength from each other, just as individual
strands of twine come together to form a strong rope.
This brings to mind a weekly television news feature in which two

thoughtful analysts meet to discuss political events of the week. 17 In
nearly every instance, the two analysts (who are old friends) agree on
what the events of the week were in fact (e.g., proposed legislation
to restrict immigration). Yet while the pundits typically agree on
what these events are in fact, they very often disagree about the
political meaning of these facts. For example, one may see the proposed
legislation as xenophobic. He may defend that interpretation by
citing relevant historical precedents, related current events, and
perhaps even evidence of legislative intent. In contrast, the other
analyst may see the proposal as reflecting citizens' legitimate concerns
about the effects of unchecked immigration, such as lost jobs, lower
wages, and decreased worker safety. Again, this pundit will offer
reasons why this interpretation is the most plausible reading of the
political landscape. In constructing this landscape, each pundit is
making evaluative judgments-indeed aesthetic judgments-about
this proposal. Will the political scene be more pleasant, perhaps
more noble, with this law in place? The two pundits then jostle
back and forth, offering their reasons to persuade others. Peter
Steinberger captures this dynamic of political life, as well as its affinity
with literature, when he writes
[I}nsofar as judgment necessarily eschews universal proof,
76
its power to persuade depends upon the presumption

that different people will 'see' certain things in the same
way. This similarity or commonness of vision allows the
person who judges to point to and describe what he or
she senses in the hope that others will sense it as well.
Perhaps I cannot prove that LordJim is a great novel, or
that building the B-1 Bomber is a good idea; but if I can
identify certain important shared observations and
assumptions about the world and give an account of their
relevance to the question at hand, I can perhaps convince
others that my judgments are sound. IS
This sharing of observations, assumptions, and reasons clearly echoes

the deliberative ideal discussed in Chapter Two. There we saw how
robust deliberative democracy depends on the ability and willingness
of citizens to shape "public life through deliberation, informed
reflection, evaluation, and persuasion that allies rhetoric to reason. "19
Viewed from this perspective, the relevance of art for democratic life
becomes more apparent. It is precisely this reflective, interpretive
activity that we encourage when we encourage citizens to engage
works of art. As an example, consider Edward Hicks' painting, "A
Peaceable Kingdom" (Figure 2). Imagine two critics engaging this
work and developing independent interpretations of its meaning.
Imagine further that both critics completely agree on what this work
is in a factual sense. For instance, they agree it was created by Edward
Hicks around 1830, and that its composition consists of three major
elements (a foreground containing various pairs of animals at rest; a
background containing humans of European and Native American
descent; a middle ground containing various natural objects and
terrain). Yet while each critic may find these perceptual and historical
facts uncontroversial, each may still interpret the meaning of the
77
CHAPTER THREE
Figure Tw<r-A Peaceable Kingdom, by Edward Hicks (1829-32). Printed by permission

of the Maier Museum of Arc, Randolph-Macon Woman's College.
78
work in profoundly different ways. For instance, one may judge that
these pictorial elements constitute an ominous glimpse into the
exploitation of Native Americans, while the other may interpret it
as addressing the relationship between humans and the natural world.
It is important to keep in mind that even if both critics agree that

no interpretation is ever objectively correct, each will likely defend
her own interpretation as the most cogent. 20 And the method each
will use in defending her interpretation is precisely the method used
by the political analysts discussed above: persuasive reason-giving.
Such reasons may pertain to elements of the work itself, such as its
particular content or the particular arrangement of this content. For
instance, if the painting is a statement about the treatment of Native
Americans, why is the bulk of the painting taken up by animals?
Conversely, if the painting is a statement about nature, why are the
animals' faces so clearly anthropomorphized? Other relevant reasons
pertain not to the work itself but to historical facts about the work
or the artist. For instance, some claim the work is a literal depiction
of a Biblical story, supporting this interpretation by citing the artist's
statements surrounding his intent as well as historical evidence of
his devout Quakerism. And of course, if one of our imagined critics
had interpreted the work without knowledge of these facts, she might
in light of this knowledge choose to revise her original interpretation,
or to offer reasons why such revision is unnecessary. 21
In describing this process, I am not suggesting both parties will (or

should) arrive at identical interpretations of a particular work. Nor
am I defending the superiority of interpretations based on expert
knowledge. Rather, I seek only to show that contemplating artworks
and deliberating political events implicates a common set of
intellectual tasks: examining facts, interpreting the meaning of these
facts, and defending one's interpretations through persuasive
79
CHAPTER THREE
reason-giving. Like art criticism, political disagreement is most often

not disagreement over the facts but over what the facts mean. And
like art criticism, political judgments aim not so much at discovering
objective truth as discerning the meaning of an event within the
larger political landscape. Because this ability to discern meaning
takes time and practice to develop, it seems only wise for a democratic
polity to encourage activities that practice these skills. Art not only
offers rich opportunities for such practice, but it offers them within
a venue where-unlike politics-mistakes in judgment can cause
little to harm others.
II
So far, the term judgment has been used only indiscriminately. Yet
judgment is in fact the unifying theme of this book, and so its
meaning must be examined more closely. To do so I shall again expand
perspectives, this time tapping the philosophical srudy of judgment.
This tradition begins with Aristotle's analysis ofphronesis, or practical
wisdom, and it extends through Immanual Kant's critical assessment
of taste in the Critique ofJudgment. While rarely if ever invoked in
the debate over art subsidy, this tradition offers an invaluable
framework for discerning deeper, structural commonalities between
the endeavors of art and politics.
Aristotle's analysis ofphronesis constitutes the first sustained treatment

of judgment in Western philosophy.22 Phronesis is an epistemological
activity aimed at "seeing particular situations in their true light in
interaction with a general grasp of what is it is to be a complete
human being, and to live a proper human life. "23 While
epistemological in nature, phronesis differs fundamentally from
scientific inquiry. Whereas science seeks fixed and universal truths,
phronesis seeks "truth relative to the particular (and contingent)
80
situation of men in contexts of action."24 Whereas science seeks
... things that are universal and necessary ... [and} whose
originative causes are invariable, ... practical wisdom on
the other hand is concerned with things human and
things about which it is possible to deliberate ... ; no one
deliberates about things that cannot be other than they
are ... 25
Aristotle's distinction between scientific and practical knowledge is

clear enough, but it immediately raises questions about the status of
judgment. For instance, if phronesis operates outside the universal
and necessary, in what sense can it lay claim to genuine knowledge?
Conversely, if its epistemological objects are variable rather than
fixed, is it at all possible to discriminate good judgments from bad?
Aristotle recognized this problem, and he worked hard to resolve it.
While steadfastly maintaining phronesis did not generate scientific
knowledge, he nonetheless thought it exhibited a validity greater
than mere educated guessing, or what he called "skill in conjecture. "26
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes it clear that phronesis
engages a form of rationality. "Deliberation involves reasoning," and
"he who deliberates inquires and calculates .... To deliberate and
calculate are the same thing."27 Elsewhere in the Ethics he describes
phronesis as a "correctness of thinking," with "correctness" defined as
"that which tends to attain what is good. "28 Aristotle also discusses
phronesis in The Rhetoric, again contrasting it to scientific inquiry.
Unlike science, which proceeds based on fixed concepts and rules,
phronesis is called for precisely when we are" ... without arts or systems
to guide us. "29
While no doubt a form of rational activity, Aristotle also thought

phronesis exhibited an essentially social dimension. Unlike a scientist
81
CHAPTER THREE
or mathematician, the phronimos must be able to "project himself

into the genuine situation of another. "30 This fellow-feeling is crucial
to sound judgment because it provides access to, and encourages
reflection upon, a "common view of what is just."3 1 This idea is one
of Aristotle's most significant contributions to the tradition, for it
recognizes that practical judgments are necessarily situated within
particular horizons of social meaning. 32 This situatedness constitutes
the substantive ends, or teleology, of judgment. Aristotle's influence
on the study of judgment cannot be over estimated. For instance, he
developed a formal account of judgment that is still very much in
use today, i.e., judgment as the subsuming of particulars under
universals. And as discussed in the next section, Aristotle thought
that the arts-especially tragedy-constitute a genuine means of
obtaining practical wisdom.
Yet before exploring these ideas in the next section, we must now
turn to Kant. 33 We have already encountered aspects of Kant's account
of judgment in Chapter Two. For instance, recall the claim that
democratic judgments should be grounded not on transient impulse
but cool and sedate reflection, and that sound judgment requires
disengaging our private perspective and engaging a public sympathy.
Gutmann and Barber would likely (and rightly) attribute these ideals
to Adam Smith, for they clearly reflect Smith's ideal of the judicious
spectator. Smith considered the best judgments to be those rendered
while reflecting on one's own personal desires and interests as if they
were someone else's.
Curiously, the most eloquent defense of Smith's ideal appears not in

the fields of economics or politics but in aesthetics. Indeed, one of
Smith's earliest philosophical influences was Francis Hutcheson, who
along with David Hume (and predecessors Burke and Shaftesbury)
utilized Smith's model as the cornerstone in their scientific study of
82
taste. Kant's work on judgment is rightly considered the culmination

of this tradition. Kant recognized that advancing the study of taste
required looking beyond the empirical, and so Critique ofJudgment
aims to deduce nothing less than the transcendental conditions of
judgment. If aesthetic judgments are possible, what a priori principles
must ground this activity? Said another way, what are the conditions
for the possibility of pure aesthetic judgments?
At this point it may seem we have lost contact with Aristotle, for
the connection between aesthetic taste and practical action is far
from clear. But a closer look reveals that the tasks of Kantian taste
and Aristotelian phronesis share an important commonality of
strucrure. Just as phronesis is the skill of proceeding in the absence of
fixed rules or concepts, judgments of taste are never mere acts of
rule-following or conceptual analysis. Kant steadfastly maintained
there was no essential concept of "beauty" that could determine in a
rule-like manner whether or not an object was beautiful: claims of
beauty are always particular, subjective judgments. And just as
Aristotle sought to account for a validity between the extremes of
scientific certainty and mere conjecture, Kant sought to resolve an
analogous problem, or antinomy, of aesthetic taste. This antinomy
stemmed from the curious fact that while judgments of taste are
purely subjective (i.e., not based on a concept), they exhibit a
normativityas if they were objective (i.e., as if they were based on a
concept).34 Thus, we see that Aristotle and Kant are motivated by a
common epistemological problemY Phronesis and taste both require
navigating an epistemological middle ground between scientific
certainty and mere conjecture. Neither is determined objectively
yet each exhibits a validity greater than mere guessing. Their
differences are essentially a matter of application: the Phronimos
grapples with this epistemological problem in managing practical
affairs, while the Kantian person of taste encounters it in rendering
83
CHAPTER THREE
judgments of beauty.
The political relevance of Kant's critique of taste has been developed

most forcefully by Hannah Arendt. Arendt argues that "the Critique
o/Judgment contains the outlines of a powerful and important political
philosophy [albeit} one that Kant himself did not develop
explicitly. "36 Indeed, Arendt considered Kant's aesthetic theory more
significant in this regard than his explicitly political writings such
as Perpetual Peace, which she claims Kant himself dismissed as a "mere
pleasure trip."37 She grounds this optimism in the fact that The
Critique o/Judgment offers a plausible answer to the problem of taste,
and that it does so in a way that reveals aesthetic and political
judgments to share several commonalities of structure.
Perhaps the fundamental commonality is that both aesthetic and

political judgments are reflective rather than determinative
judgments. Kant offered this distinction as a means of resolving the
antinomy of taste, and he differentiated the two by claiming
If the universal (the rule, principle, law) is given, then

judgment which subsumes the particular under it, is
determinative ... But if only the particular is given and
judgment has to find the universal for it, then this power
is merely reflective. 38
An example of determinative judgment is the syllogism. Here an

argument's conclusion follows from, i.e., is determined by, the
meaning of key terms and concepts in its premises. Determinative
judgments are essential to making claims of empirical knowledge as
well. For example, the empirical claim "There is a big yellow dog
sleeping on the love seat" is a determinative judgment, for in
rendering it I possess both the particular being judged (i.e., particular
84
sensory phenomena) and appropriate universals (i.e., fixed concepts

such as dog and love seat).39 In such judgments I not only encounter
a given particular (e.g., one with four legs, yellow hair, long black
nose, and a propensity for barking at authority figures), but I also
possess the concepts that allow me to determine, or think, this
particular in a rule-like manner. Determinative judgments are
constitutive of all knowledge claims, providing the phenomenological
unity needed for the Understanding to subsume nature under
concepts (see Critique 0/ Pure Reason).
Yet while determinative judgments are the stock in trade of scientific

inquiry, Kant recognized they do not characterize our experience of
things aesthetic. Aesthetical judgments cannot be determinative
because there exists no fixed concept of beauty to serve as determining
criterion. Here the Understanding possesses only particulars, and it
can proceed only by reflecting upon these particulars to find/or itself
an appropriate concept, to find for itself a way of thinking these
particulars. This process aptly describes the reflective nature of
political judgments, as well. When judging politics we reflect upon
particular situations or actions, seeking to discern their meaning
and significance. Kant considered reflective judgments far more
difficult to render than determinative judgments, for reflective
judgments require not only an act of the Understanding but also of
the Imagination. 40 The Imagination is integral to reflective judgment,
for only through imagination is it possible to "rise above particulars
as given in sensory perception in order to subsume them under a
universal, rather than remaining wholly bound to the given
particulars ... (In this way], imagination enters into the very structure
of judgment."41
While Kant's account of aesthetic judgment does capture the

structure of political judgments, it actually leaves us with an even
85
CHAPTER THREE
bigger question to address. That is, if reflective judgments are

subjective, i.e., not determined by concepts, on what grounds can
we assess their validity? Explicating Kant's resolution of this problem
is the key to understanding how he resolves the antinomy of taste.
Fortunately, it is also where the political relevance of his account
appears most clearly. We have already seen Aristotle grapple with
this problem, which he sought to resolve by claiming phronesis
produces a kind of nonscientific knowledge. 42 Kant rejects this strategy,
insisting that genuine knowledge is possible only through
determinate concepts. To resolve the antinomy, Kant either must
provide some means of adjudicating competing judgments, or he
must be willing to accept all judgments as equally valid.
Characteristically shunning relativism, Kant responds that sound
reflective judgments exhibit a nonepistem%gica/ validity. While not
equivalent to scientific knowledge, this validity provides a basis for
discriminating between judgments. Here Kant seeks none other than
the epistemic middle ground discussed by Aristotle, a validity
residing somewhere between the extremes of objective certainty and
subjective guessing. As Steinberger describes it, Kant seeks "to
vindicate the Aristotelian defense of nonlogical, nonscientific
thought ... that seems nonetheless to embrace an important part of
what it means to have genuine knowledge."43
Kant explicates this validity by deducing the qualities of exemplary

aesthetic judgments. Strictly speaking, these qualities adhere not to
the judgments themselves but to the conditions under which particular
judgments are rendered. Three of the exemplary conditions Kant
describes bear greatest political significance: (1) that judgments of
taste are disinterested; (2) that judgments of taste are public; and (3)
that the validity of judgments of taste is one of subjective universality.
A person of taste, then, is someone who has cultivated the tendency
to assume these conditions when judging. In this way judging the
86
aesthetic requires not only imagination but also discipline, "For if

the imagination is left in lawless freedom, all its riches [in ideas}
produce nothing but nonsense ... "44
Disinterestedness is for Kant an essential moment of pure aesthetic

judgments. Clearly reminiscent of Smith's judicious spectator, Kant's
basic idea is that pure judgments of taste involve no existential
interest in the existence of the object being judged. Taking an interest
results in impure judgment, an admixture of taste and desire. To
take a simple example, I may contemplate the presentation of an
aesthetically pleasing plate of gourmet food, and I may judge
disinterestedly that this plate offood is beautiful (e.g., by reflecting
on its formal arrangement as well as its shapes and textures). However,
if I reflect on this presentation while very hungry, perhaps having
just returned from a long wilderness expedition, I may have a keen
interest in whether this sensory representation exists as something
that can gratify my hunger. Such an existential interest will likely
skew my judgment. For instance, I may overestimate the
representation's aesthetic status, perhaps judging it beautiful when
in fact it is merely pleasing or gratifying to me. Kant writes
[I}f the question is whether something is beautiful, what

we want to know is not whether we or anyone cares, or
so much as might care, in any way, about the thing's
existence, but rather how we judge it in our mere
contemplation of it ... 45
Such bias can operate in the opposite direction as well. In an example
with clear political implications, Kant writes
Suppose someone asks me whether I consider the palace

I see before me beautiful. I might reply that I am not
fond of things of that sort, made merely to be gaped
87
CHAPTER THREE
at ... [and} I might even go on, as Rousseau would, to

rebuke the vanity of the great who spend the people's
sweat on such superfluous things. 46
Here Kant describes how existential interests, in this case about the
existence of social inequalities, can negatively bias our aesthetic
assessments. From this Kant concludes
We can easily see that, in order for me to say that an

object is beautiful, and that I have taste, what matters is
what I do with this presentation within myself, and not
the [respect} in which I depend on the object's existence.
Everyone has to admit that if a judgment about beauty
is mingled with the least interest then it is very partial
and not a pure judgment of tasteY
In constructing an account of political judgment, disinterestedness

may seem an inappropriate and even incoherent suggestion, for many
would define politics precisely as a battle of competing interests.
Nonetheless, disinterestedness is the characteristic Hannah Arendt
relies upon most heavily in applying Kant's aesthetic theory to
politics. As in aesthetics, it is the political spectator rather who is in
best position to judge, for judging requires "disinterestedness,
detachment, distance ... [and} the paradigm for understanding [these
characteristics} is the case of the aesthetic spectator. "48 Once again,
Smith's judicious spectator looms large. Engaged in the heat of battle,
the political actor lacks the perspective needed to perceive events
fully and without overwhelming bias. It is here that a skill developed
through engaging art, i.e., the propensity to bracket personal interest
and prejudice when judging, has clear value for democratic
deliberations. About the spectator, Arendt writes
88
What he saw counted most; he could discover a meaning

in the course taken by events, a meaning that the actors
ignored; and the existential ground for his insight was
his disinterestedness, his nonparticipation, his
noninvolvement. The onlooker's disinterested concern
characterized the French Revolution as a great event ....
[This notion} is as old as the hills; it is, in fact, among
the oldest, most decisive, notions of philosophy. The
whole idea of the superiority of the contemplative way
of life comes from this early insight that meaning (or
truth) is revealed only to those who restrain themselves
from acting."49
Sheldon Wolin alludes to this duality of public life when he writes

"If people are to act effectively, they must be able to make rational
judgments about their real interests. Such judgments presuppose
the capacity of the self to stand back from its immediate feeling and
acquire some 'distance.'"
A second aesthetic ideal with political relevance is Kant's claim that

aesthetic judgments are always public. This condition manifests in
two ways, both of which echo Aristotelian phronesis. First, just as
Aristotle thought practical wisdom involves common sense rather
than theoretical intellect, the potential for aesthetic taste is not
limited to persons of exceptional intellect. Kant writes "we are talking
here not about the power of cognition, but about the way of thinking
[that involves} putting this power to a purposive use; and this [is
possible} no matter how slight may be the range and the degree of a
person's natural endowments."5o Kant refers to this broadly-held
capacity for judging as common sense, or sensus communis.
Common human understanding which ... is looked upon
89
CHAPTER THREE
as the least we can expect from anyone claiming the name

of man, has therefore the doubtful honor of having the
name of common sense (sensus communis) bestowed upon
it; and bestowed, too in an acceptation of the word
common ... which makes it amount to what is
vulgar ... However, by the name sensus communis is to be
understood the idea of a public sense, i.e., a critical faculty
which in its reflective act takes account (a priori) of the
mode of representation of everyone else, in order, as it
were, to weigh its judgment with the collective reason of
mankind."51
Initially, this passage seems to resonate with Aristotle's notion of

fellow-feeling between a judging subject and her community. But it
is important that we not attribute this requirement to Kant. In fact,
Kant specifically rejects the possibility that pure judgments of taste
are bound to the standards of a particular community. For if the
sensus communis were solely the product of community standards,
aesthetic judgments could not aspire to pronouncements of the truly
beautiful. Instead, they would be merely contingent claims about
what is pleasing or estimable within that particular community. Kant
has little interest in any such empirical consensus, for empirical claims
are of no help in accounting for the objective pole of his antinomy.
Kant seeks to account for necessary judgments of beauty, which by
their nature are "binding upon all men. "52
Crucial for assessing the political significance of Kant's aesthetic

theory is his insistence that exemplary judgments are those rendered
from a broadened, public perspective. While again reminiscent of
Aristotle's fellow-feeling, Kant is not appealing here to any sort of
social consensus. In a passage Arendt takes as the foundation of a
robust political liberalism, Kant writes
90
The following maxims may serve to elucidate the

principles [of the sensus communis}: (1) to think for oneself;
(2) to think from the standpoint of everyone else; and (3)
to think always consistently. The first is the maxim of an
unprejudiced, the second of a broadened, the third of a
consistent way of thinking. 53
While each of these maxims recommends itself as desideratum of public

discourse, it is broadened thinking I want to emphasize here.
Described by Arendt as the "sine qua non of right judgment,"
broadened thought is crucial because it grounds Kant's contention
that judgments of taste are necessary and universaP4 This is implicit
when Kant describes sensus communis as " ... a critical faculty which in
its reflective act takes account (a priori) of the mode of representation
of everyone else." Kant expounds by saying it
indicates a man with a broadened way of thinking if he

overrides the private subjective conditions of his
judgment, into which so many others are locked, as it
were, and reflects on his own judgment from a universal
standpoint (which he can determine only by transferring
himself to the standpoint of others).55
It is easy to lose sight of the fact Kant is writing here about aesthetics
rather than politics. Right judgment-whether political or
aesthetical-requires imagining ourselves into the position of all
judging subjects. The capacity for this imaginative reflection is the
ground for hoping our judgments will be universally binding.
It must be emphasized here that while judgments of taste assert

universal validity, this universality is never objective. For Kant,
aesthetic judgments do not yield knowledge because they do not
91
CHAPTER THREE
utilize determinate concepts. An important corollary of this is that

without determinate concepts, the validity of aesthetic judgments
cannot be proved deductively. As Steinberger explains
[S}uch concepts make it possible to specify rules of

subsumption such that one can objectively decide
whether or not a particular judgment has ptoceeded
according to the rules and is, therefore, correct. In
aesthetic judgment, on the other hand, where
determinate concepts are unavailable, ... one cannot
demonstrate the validi ty of bringing together a universal
and a particular. There is, in short, absolutely nothing
that I can do or say to prove or justify my claim that the
flower is beautiful. 56
The validity of aesthetic judgments is thus subjective universality.

While my judgments are thoroughly subjective, they do not assert
that a particular scene is merely pleasing to me; rather, they assert the
scene should please everyone. That is, pure aesthetic judgments issue
as if grounded in an objective concept.
Without recourse to conceptual proof, I can defend my aesthetic

judgment only by persuading others of its validity. As in political
disputes, I may persuade opponents that they have been prejudiced
in their assessments, or they have not viewed the issue from a
sufficiently enlarged perspective. Of course, my opponent may
respond in kind, seeking to convince me hers is a better interpretation.
But regardless of whether the judgment concerns art or politics, the
aim is to convince others that a particular judgment more closely
reflects an unbiased sensus communis. For sensus communis is what allows
us to
92
compare our own judgment with human reason in general

and thus escape the illusion that arises from the ease of
mistaking subjective and private conditions for objective
ones, an illusion that would have a prejudicial influence
on the judgment. Now we do this as follows: we compare
our judgment not so much with the actual as rather with
the merely possible judgments of others, and [thus} put
ourselves in the position of everyone else, merely by
abstracting from the limitations that [may} happen to
attach to our own judging .... Now perhaps this operation
of reflection will seem rather too artful to be attributed
to the ability we call common sense. But in fact it only
looks this way when expressed in abstract formulas.
Intrinsically nothing is more natural than abstracting
from charm and emotion when we seek a judgment that
is to serve as a universal rule. 57
The ideal of abstracting from one's particular situation has led some
to criticize Kant's account as overly formalistic. For example, Ronald
Beiner has argued that no plausible account of judgment can exclude
a contentful, teleological component such as found in Aristotelian
phronesis. To do otherwise is to risk ignoring what Alisdair MacIntyre
terms the constitutive narrative of life, the hermeneutic horizon
necessary to all interpretation and judgment. 58 According to Beiner,
Kant's account is insufficient because "he offers no principle (say, a
conception of wisdom) by which one might discriminate,
epistemologically amongst various bearers of judgment."59
This is an important criticism. Beiner correctly emphasizes that a

plausible account of judgment must provide some means for
adjudicating competing judgments. And he is also correct, strictly
speaking, to say Kant offers no substantive account of wisdom.
93
CHAPTER THREE
Nonetheless, Beiner overstates his criticism because he underestimates

the resources that Kant does provide for discriminating between
judgments. More specifically, he underestimates the ideal of exemplary
validity. Expressly avoiding any appeal to teleology, Kant explicates
this transcendental ideal in describing the subjective conditions that
make valid judgment possible. And while ideals are just that-never
fully attainable-it seems uncontroversial that a person who
habitually strives for a measure of disinterestedness and enlarged
thought will judge with greater sophistication and public-mindedness.
Such effort enriches one's stock of perspectives, generating additional
reasons to draw upon in constructing a persuasive defense of that
judgment.
I will conclude this section by explicating a few points of resonance

with Chapter Two. First, by conceptualizing sound judgment in terms
of validi ty conditions rather than epistemological correctness, Kant's
aesthetic theory resonates with the intuition that political problems
rarely admit of a single correct answer. Amy Gutmann reminds us
that deliberative democracy
[L}egitimates the collective judgment resulting from

deliberative procedures, even if deliberation does not yield
a uniquely correct resolution to a political controversy
(What process could produce a uniquely correct
resolution?) ... 60
This also recalls the ideal that democratic procedures rightly privilege
self-sovereignty over either epistemological correctness or best
outcomes. While we expect a person of judgment to get things right
with greater than average frequency, sound judgment does not imply
infallibility. While a particular judgment might have resulted in
bad outcomes, we often can honestly claim the judgment was sound
94
given the facts of the situation. We may even maintain that if faced
with identical circumstances today, we would judge no differently.
This is often true if the bad consequences resulted from an unrelated
and unforeseeable externality. This account of judgment thus allows
for discriminating a range of validity. This range of validity occupies
the relative mean between two untenable extremes: political questions
have only one valid answer; or, all political answers are equally valid.
A second resonance with Chapter Two concerns the logic of judgment.

As discussed above, judgments convince through persuasion rather
than conceptual proof. As Steinberger points out, this characteristic
derives from the public communicability of our judgments. This
communicability implies that
the validity of judgment is quite different from that of

logic or cognition. Logical or cognitive validity means
truth, and that in rum involves notions of proof and
universality .... But as we have seen, judgment is not
primarily concerned with truth at all. The validity of
judgment thus involves not proof or demonstration but,
rather, the possible and acrual assent of others. My
judgment is valid if! can persuade others to subscribe to
it. 6l
Steinberger's claim also resonates with the ideal that robust

democratic citizenship implies "the willingness and ability to shape
one's private or public life through deliberation, informed reflection,
evaluation, and persuasion that allies rhetoric to reason."62 Of course,
while both traditions cast persuasive reason-giving as the final arbiter
of judgment, each arrives at this conclusion through very different
arguments. One tradition proceeds by critical reflection on the act
of judging. The other proceeds through conceptual analysis of
95
CHAPTER THREE
democracy's foundation-political autonomy. Or as Gutmann points

out,
In a deliberative democracy, people collectively shape

their own politics through persuasive argument.
Persuasion is of course a form of power; it is the most
defensible form of political power because it is the most
consistent with respecting the autonomy of persons, their
capacity for self-government. 63
It is also worth emphasizing that the validity Kant ascribes to

aesthetic judgments-subjective universality-is also the kind of
validity our political and moral judgments actually exhibit. Peter
Steinberger adopts this view in a strong sense when he claims that
Moral!political thinking, as distinct from logical!

scientific thinking, is a matter of 'subjective universality.'
As such it is noncognitive and involves no element of
knowledge, proof, or rational justification ... and is
entirely nonobjective. [Yet} it does presuppose a rejection
of mere caprice and private satisfaction, and hence a quest
for, and presumption of, universality.64
To take an example, many people today espouse value pluralism,

i.e., the view that there are many valuable ways ofliving. Yet, while
a person may well espouse pluralism intellectually, her particular
judgments rarely if ever take the form of open-minded suggestion.
Rather, particular judgments take the form of universal assertions.
Imagine a citizen who genuinely espouses pluralism and who happens
also to judge infidelity immoral. It would be praiseworthy-but
highly unlikely-for this citizen to communicate her judgment by
saying "While intellectually acknowledging the value of tolerance
96
and diversity, and while recognizing I have no proof that my values

are universally correct, I nonetheless judge this instance of infidelity
to be at odds with my particular moral compass."
Much more likely is the simple and broad assertion "Infidelity is

wrong!" As with judgments of beauty, moral and political judgments
assert universal validity even though each is in fact thoroughly
subjective. Joseph Raz describes this sort of moral phenomenology
in his discussion of toleration. Raz writes
Competitive pluralism not only admits the validity of

distinct and incompatible moral virtues, but also of
virtues which tend, given human nature, to encourage
intolerance of other virtues ... one is tolerant only if one
inclines or is tempted not to be. 65
Without pushing this too far, toleration is conceptually possible only

when our convictions are strong enough to incline us toward
intolerance. Even if we believe human value is thoroughly pluralistic,
we defend our particular values as if they were objectively correct (i.e.,
our judgments assert universal validity). Developing this point would
require defending a comprehensive phenomenology of value,
something far beyond my present scope. So rather than argue the
point conclusively, I offer it only as additional evidence for the
political relevance of Kant's aesthetic theory.
III
Until now the argument for subsidy has relied solely on claims about
the formal structure of judgment. In describing the ideals of reflective
imagination, the properly-distanced spectator, and art's metaphorical
ontology, I have suggested ways that engaging artworks practices
97
CHAPTER THREE
the interpretive and reflective skills inherent to all sound judgments.

This section explores whether a contribution of similar value might
accrue through engaging artistic content. While it is notoriously
difficult to sunder the form of an artwork from its content, I think a
workable distinction can be drawn between benefits derivable from
engaging artistic form (i.e., from engaging metaphorical expressions)
and benefits derivable from engaging particular artistic content. This
section shall briefly describe the nature of these benefits.
An initial interpretation might cast artistic content as making novel

contributions to society's marketplace of ideas. This is an interesting
interpretation because it resonates with the liberal argument that
vibrant society depends upon a perpetual influx of ideas. As Mill
describes this dynamic in On Liberty, progressive society flourishes
only within an atmosphere of innovation and diversity, which it
winnows for truth through fearless and frequent debate. Given the
overtly political nature of much contemporary art, it seems plausible
to claim that artistic content contributes greatly to society's
intellectual market. Furthermore, given the trend in contemporary
art toward depicting and celebrating nontraditional lifestyles, this
strategy is supported by Mill's contention that society needs not
only diversity in thought but also in lifestyles.
Yet while artistic content no doubt contributes ideas to the cultural

market, casting its value solely in these terms is problematic. On a
practical level, a justification based on this claim casts the subsidy
net too widely. Rather than supporting the arts exclusively, this
argument would justify subsidies for newspapers, magazines, radio
and television news programs, think tanks, and citizen debates, just
to name a few. Perhaps these activities indeed warrant subsidy, but
this would stretch the argument for art subsidy far beyond its
intended boundaries. More importantly, conceiving artistic content
98
in this way understates its potential for democratic education.

Lumping artistic content into the same category with discursive
expression glosses over its complex, metaphorical structure. As
discussed earlier, it is precisely this structure that distinguishes
artworks from other forms of expression and representation.
If the appeal to artistic content is to be used in justifying subsidy,

the political value of this content must be cast in terms faithful to
the nature of art. One possibility would be to argue that art engages
the mind in ways discursive expression is simply incapable. For
instance, Schiller famously maintained that aesthetic experience
cultivated moral sensibility and virtue. 66 More recently, some have
argued for subsidy based on art's potential for psychological
transformation and therapy, and for "alleviating social pathologies. "67
But while promising, this strategy encounters many of the same
political criticisms dogging perfectionism. For example, as apolitical
justification Schiller's argument immediately raises questions about
whether a government should be in the business of promoting
morality, not to mention the question of whose morality should be
promoted. What the argument needs is a less controversial aim,
something art can promote and that enjoys broad public support.
For example, it would be of real public value if an artistic
representation could reduce public acrimony over a contentious issue.
Adopting a strong form of this claim, one might argue that a
particularly subtle and moving representation could actually foster
consensus among quarreling citizens about how best to manage that
Issue.
But it is unclear that even artistic virtuosity would consistently foster

agreement about a contentious issue. It seems just as likely that it
would increase acrimony over that issue. This pessimistic assessment
is borne out by recent public outcry over the subsidized art of Robert
99
CHAPTER THREE
Mapplethorpe. In depicting and celebrating homosexual life,

Mapplethorpe's photographs impressed and intrigued some, but more
often they offended, angered, and incited vocal opposition. Of course,
John Stuart Mill would counter that occasionally it is a good thing
for people to have their cherished moral beliefs offended. Responding
to vigorous challenge not only sharpens the foundation of one's beliefs,
but it also protects against their degenerating into unexamined
dogma. While Mill's is a compelling argument, I do not pursue it
here. Nor will I push the idea that art fosters agreement among
political opponents, although I think sometimes it does. Instead I
shall emphasize art's potential for fostering empathy.
This returns us once again to phronesis. According to Aristotle, there

are only two ways of obtaining the skills, experience, and wisdom of
practical life. One is the trial and error oflife itself, for as Aristotle
reminds us
[l]t is thought that a young man of practical wisdom

cannot be found. The cause is that such wisdom is
concerned not only with universals but with particulars,
which become familiar from experience, but a young man
has no experience, for it is length of time that gives
experience ... 68
While life experience is no doubt how we obtain most of our wisdom,

the drawback is that mistakes in real life can be truly tragic.
Countering Plato's criticism that the arts corrupt rather than teach,
Aristotle offers an alternative route to practical wisdom. In the Poetics
Aristotle argues that artworks, especially literary tragedy, constitute
genuine vehicles of practical knowledge. Tragedy leads us to pity
good characters who make bad choices, and it evokes fear that without
wisdom a similar fate awaits us, as well. The real virtue of this method
100
is that we learn through engaging the particularities of a difficult

choice, but then no matter what the outcome of this choice we leave
the theater unscathed.
It is this educational aspect of literature that motivates Martha

Nussbaum's recent work PoeticJustice. Nussbaum argues that a robust
literary imagination greatly supplements the processes of sound
public reason. Nussbaum claims "that the arts serve a vital political
function, even when their content is not expressly political-for they
cultivate imaginative abilities that are central to the political life. "69
Drawing on ideas such as Adam Smith's judicious spectator and Walt
Whitman's poet-judge, Nussbaum argues that vibrant literary
imagination is a direct precondition of vibrant public life, for it
fosters the ability to imagine oneself into the particular situation of
another. Literature "gets its readers involved with the characters,
caring about their projects, their hopes and fears, participation in
their attempts to unravel the mysteries and perplexities of their
lives."7o To the extent literature fosters an attitude of participation
in the lives of others, it encourages judgments based on empathetic
understanding rather than preconceived stereotyping. Literature
encourages us to move beyond generalizations and focus on particular
persons in particular situations.
One of Nussbaum's most effective examples of how readership can

promote empathy is E.M. Forster's novel Maurice. The novel describes
how Maurice struggles between an inner life of homosexual desire
and the persecution he faces if he makes this inner life public. This
persecution deprives Maurice of his ability to have true friends and
confidantes, leaving him isolated and disenfranchised. The novel
explores in detail the genesis of Maurice's emotional quandary,
including an anatomy lecture in which the teacher's "quasi-biblical
praise of the naturalness of heterosexuality makes the boy feel his
101
CHAPTER THREE
own 'nature' and impulses to be shameful and deformed .... [Maurice

is} a story of average humanness forced into a situation of repression,
fear, and guilt." Nussbaum claims that by engaging the particularities
of Maurice's life, we come to understand his choices and his character.
This understanding leads us to empathize with Maurice, for viewing
his life from the inside lets us "imagine for a moment what it may
be like to be him," and allows us to see that under different
circumstances this person could have been oneself or a loved one. 7l
In many ways Nussbaum's work is right on target in describing the

political value of artistic content. And while she attributes her
arguments mostly to Aristotelian phronesis and its reliance on
fellow-feeling, her argument is surprisingly compatible with Kant's
aesthetic theory. Especially congenial is Nussbaum's emphasis on
imagination, which as we saw is a constitutive element of reflective
judgment. However, if it is to succeed as a political justification of
subsidy, one interpretation of Nussbaum's thinking must be strictly
avoided. That is, while Nussbaum is right to claim novels can foster
empathy, this must not be taken to mean we come to know the
actual ideas of another person-in this case the fictional character
Maurice. \Vhile predating her work by several decades, Hannah
Arendt anticipates this risk in Nussbaum's approach. Arendt agrees
that sound judgment requires seeing issues from multiple
perspectives, yet she also asserts
I must warn you here of a very common and easy

misunderstanding. The trick of critical thinking does
not consist in an enormously enlarged empathy through
which one can know what actually goes on in the mind
of all others. To think, according to Kane's understanding
of enlightenment, means Selbstdenken, to think for oneself,
"which is the maxim of a never-passive reason. To be
102
given to such passivity is called prejudice."72
Thus, while Arendt thinks sound judgments--either political or

aesthetic-require thinking from the standpoint of others, she does
not advocate agreement for agreement's sake. Rather, we must learn
to enlarge our thought in a way that respects our integrity as
autonomous thinkers. Arendt follows Kant in seeking to enlarge
our thought while still thinking for ourselves. Paul Guyer describes
this tension in Kantian aesthetics as the competing demands of
autonomy and integrity.73 If our judgments aspire only to the actual
assent of others, then genuine judgments of taste become passive,
empirical claims about what happens to please.
How then are we to make out the seemingly plausible claim that
engaging a diversity of artistic expressions brings benefits for a
politically diverse society? What we need is a way of reconciling the
enrichment available from art with the transcendental requirement
that judgments of taste are necessary, not contingent. While Kant's
analysis of judgment makes this problem explicit, it also contains
seeds for it resolution. Digging out of this impasse requires delving
into a different aspect of Kant's argument, which is his insistence
that aesthetic judgments are highly mediated. This mediated quality
arises from the fact that the pleasure associated with judging beauty
is intellectual rather than empirical. That is, judgments of taste are
grounded not in direct sensation of an object but in intellectual refleaion
upon a re-presentation of that object. Beiner describes this dynamic
when he writes
[T}he judgment of taste, as opposed to the judgment of

sense, is 'reflective,' because, while it refers to the feeling
of pleasure evoked in the subject, this pleasure arises from
a second-order representation that is not limited to
103
CHAPTER THREE
experience of the object as immediately pleasing but,

rather, 're-flects,' or turns back upon, the object of our
experience. The pleasure on which aesthetic judgment
is based is a mediated or second-order pleasure, arising
out of reflection; it is not immediate gratification. 74
Conceiving judgment as a mediated act allows Kant to account for

the conditions for the possibility of aesthetic distance. We have
already canvassed the political relevance of exemplary spectatorship,
including its reliance on imagination. It is the "Imagination alone
[that} enables us to see things in their proper perspective, to put
that which is too close at a certain distance so that we can see and
understand it without bias and prejudice."75
Yet the issue here is not distance but engagement, i.e., the political
value of engaging artistic content. Nonetheless, Kant's model of
mediated judgment is helpful because it suggests a way to
reconceptualize artistic content. Perhaps we have again been
oversimplifYing the nature of artistic content, conceiving it too much
as literal expression. If we are to successfully appeal to the value of
artistic content, we must resist casting artistic content as a mode of
discursive expression, as literal exhortation for public debate. For as
Kant writes, true artistic genius resides
... in the ability to exhibit aesthetic ideas, and by an

aesthetic idea I mean a presentation of the imagination
which prompts much thought, but to which no
determinate thought whatsoever, i.e., no [determinate}
concept, can be adequate, so that no language can express
it completely and allow us to grasp it. 76
Returning to Forster's novel, we empathize with Mautice because
104
we have imagined ourselves into the particularity of his life. But

within an artwork this particularity is always more than the sum of
the facts, always more than the identical facts presented in a
newspaper story. The difficulty thus comes when we try to explain
our engagement with artistic content. Because explanations are
discursive, they tend to present artistic content in discursive terms,
in terms of facts rather than metaphor. Thus, it is all too easy to
reduce the indeterminate richness of aesthetic ideas down to the
determinate fixity of a rational concept. This is because rational
concepts are the stock in trade of explanatory thought. To the extent
artworks can foster empathy, this empathy does not emanate from a
literal cataloguing of the artistic content. The mediated character of
aesthetic reflection allows artworks to present us with much more
than the literal ideas of others, for as Kant suggests, great art generates
thought more than it argues the correctness of any particular thought.
Enlarging thought is indeed where we should locate the political

value of artistic content. Yet we must conceive this value carefully.
Using Rembrandt as his point of departure, Arthur Danto argues
that the interesting thing about art is
... the spontaneous ability the artist has of enabling us

to see his way of seeing the world-not just the world as
if the painting were like a window, but the world as
given by him. In the end we do not simply see that naked
woman sitting on a rock, as voyeurs stealing a glimpse
through an aperture. 76
Here Danto appeals to the sort of distinction I am drawing between

literal and figurative conceptions of artistic content. It is important
to press this distinction further. To use Danto's terms, if we conceive
artistic content literally, then we risk reducing artworks to mere
105
CHAPTER THREE
windows or apertures. While windows enlarge our thought in one

sense, this sort of enlargement is roughly equivalent to reading a
newspaper or watching a documentary. What this overlooks is that
the relation between an artwork and its content is one of
representation, not explication. And as we have seen, artistic
representations never represent in the way diagrams represent
empirical data. An essential corollary of this is that only art offers
the possibility of style. Unlike artworks, diagrams have no style.
Style in art emanates from an artist's choosing to represent her content
in a particular way, choosing this particular metaphor rather than
another. It is precisely in this decision that Danto grounds his
assertion that "Style is the man." Said another way, the content of an
artwork does not merely depict some aspect of the world but expresses
an entire way of seeing. "With those qualities referred to as style, the
artist, in addition to representing the world, expresses himself,
himself in relation to the content of the representation ... "77
Thus, perhaps engaging artistic content can indeed enlarge our

mentality while remaining faithful to the transcendental conditions
of judgment. As Paul Guyer reminds us, Kant's ideal "requires a
person to criticize 'his own judgment from a universal standpoint,
which he can only determine insofar as he transposes himself to the
standpoint of others"'78 This enlargement is not a matter of agreement
but of enrichment; it is not a matter of knowing the actual thoughts
of others but of imagining ourselves as others. Returning to the
issue of subsidy, anything that can enrich not just our stock of ideas
but the very breadth of our engagement with the world seems of
obvious political benefit. And if Danto is right about the nature of
style, then engaging art provides us with something even greater, a
glimpse from the inside of another form of life. For when we engage a
work of art, we have hope for achieving nothing less than a new way
of seeing.
106
Dewey, John. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy 0/ Education. New
York: The MacMillan Company, 1926, p. 98.
2 Democracy and Education, p. 58-60.
3 And while Danco's is perhaps the most analytically rigocous statemene of this view, he
cercainly is not the first CO espouse this theory. One important precursor was Kane's category
of the 'aesthetical idea,' which he described as a represeneation that occasions much thought
withom being reducible co any parricular thought. To use his language, aesthetical ideas
put the mind ineo purposive swing. From a more coneemporary perspective, Danco's view
resonates with Max Black's ineeraction view of metaphor, whereby a reader actively com-
bines the often disparate elemenes of a metaphor in order co generate a new, unstated idea.
See Kane, Critique o/Judgment, SS 49; also, see Max Black's essay "Metaphor," in Models and
Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962, pp.
38-9.
4 Of course, they are indistinguishable except for the fact that one is on the grocery score and
the other is in a reputable instimcion of the artworld.
5 Danco, Archur C. The Transfiguration 0/ the Commonplace. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1981, p. 138-9.
6 Transfiguration, pp. 147-8.
7 Transfiguration, p. 179. " ... it being the mark of such [intensional] strucmres that they resist
substitution of equivalent expressions."
8 Transfiguration, pp. 189, 197.
9 Transfiguration, p. 125.
10 Taylor goes so far as co claim that "We have to think of man as a self-interpreting animal. He
is necessarily so, for there is no such thing as the strucmre of meanings for him indepen-
denrly of his ineerpretations of them; for one is woven ineo the other." Taylor, Charles.
Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1985, pp. 26-27. See also Krausz, Ronald. Rightness and Reasons: Interpretation
in Cultural Practices. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
11 Wittgenstein judged such successful language use co be nothing less than the embodimene
of particular forms of life.
12 Dworkin, Ronald. Law's Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986, p. 17.
13 Ricoeur, Paul. The Conflict o/Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics. Don Ihde, ed., Evanscon:
Northwestern University Press, 1974, p. 13.
14 Cercainly some works of arc do contain linguistic elemenes, such as Magritte's Cest n'es pas
lin pipe. However, this literal contene does not exhaust the work's meaning, as is the case
with diagrams and newspaper stories.

15 This has become especially troubling in judgments concerning seneencing. Mandatory
seneencing laws, mosdy drug related and in the United States, stipulate the precise sentence
required upon conviction. Such restrictive laws make true judgment impossible.
16 Law's Empire, p. 10.
17 In developing this parcicular example, I am indebted to several very enjoyable discussions
with J. Hemstreet and N. Fitzgerald.
18 The Concept 0/ Political Judgment, p. 68.
19 "The Disharmony of Democracy," p. 140.
20 There is a large debate in the literamre over the status of ineerpretations, including whether
107
CHAPTER THREE
an interpretation can be true or false, and whether only one or more than one interpretation
can be true. For a good overview of this debate, see Margolis, Davies, and Stecker in the
Symposium Issue "Relativism and Interpretation" of The Journal 0/ Aesthetics and Art Criti-
cism, vol. 53, no. 1, Winter 1995.
21 I think the best way to account for the tole of such historical information is to consider it as
a factual difference. That is, if one interpreter possesses important historical knowledge that
the other lacks, then the two interpreters are not in fact interpreting the identical object.
Once they both come to possess the same historical knowledge, they may still interpret the
work differently, but at least they will then actually be interpreting the 'same' work. It is
also important to note that some may disagree with my sharply distinguishing fact from
interpretation, claiming that one does not come to know the facts without interpretation as
well. I think this is correct, but nonetheless I believe that a working distinction between the
two can plausibly be drawn. Furthermore, if interpretation is indeed essential in discerning
facts, the value of developing interpretive skills becomes even greater.
22 Some might question the appropriateness of including phronesis in an account of political
judgment, claiming that it is more properly a moral rather than a political skill. In response
I might say that because my argument depends much less on phronesis than it does on
Kantian aesthetic judgment, criticisms ofphonesis per se miss the mark and so can be ignored.
Yet while this may be true, I believe a stronger response is simply to show that Aristotle
would most likely agree with my general claim. Now clearly,phronesis is most often inter-
preted as the exercise of moral virtue, sometimes cast as the 'master virtue' by which one
comes to order, possess, and exhibit each of the particular moral virtues. Nonetheless, it is
also clear that Aristotle saw phronesis as having at least some political relevance, as evidenced
by his straightforward assertion that "Political wisdom and practical wisdom are the same
state of mind ..... (Ethics, 1141 b). Furthermore, in places he seems virtually to equate the
two (Ethics, 1141a, 20). And yet even if one does maintain that phronesis is more properly a
moral notion, I think that the distinctly public nature of its primary constitutive compo-
nent-deliberation-not only justifies a claim of contemporary political relevance bue also
accounts for Aristotle's own tendency to associate phronesis with the political. That is, the
common state of mind Aristotle is referring to reflects the fact that both morality and
politics involve particularistic, socially-situated encounters that by their very nature re-
quire-perhaps even command-the taking of concrete action. One might well wonder if it
is morality or politics that Aristotle has in mind when he writes that" ... [N]o one deliber-
ates about things that are not directed ro some end, an end that is a good attainable by
action" (Ethics, 1139a; 1141 b).
23 Beiner, Ronald. PoliticalJudgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983, pp. 73-4.
24 Political Judgment, p. 92.
25 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, W.D. Ross, trans., in The Complete Works 0/ Aristotle. Richard
McKeon, ed., New York: Random House, 1941, 1139a; 1141b.
26 Nichomarbean Ethics, 1142b.
27 Nichomachean Ethics, 1139a, 1142b. Aristotle. Rhetoric. W. Rhys Roberts, trans., in The
Basic Works 0/Aristotle, Richard McKeon, ed. New York: Random House, 1941, p. 1357a1-2.
28 Nichomachean Ethics, 1142b.
29 Nichomachean Ethics, 1139a, 1142b. Rhetoric. 1357al-2.
30 Political Judgment, 78. Also, as we will see in the next section, Aristotle argued that engag-
ing certain forms of art could in fact help develop one's practical wisdom. Engaging art-
works, especially literature, not only develops one's ability to render critical judgments, but
108
it also helps one's empathetic understanding of other characters and their sometimes tragic
choices. As we will see, this is precisely the point that Marrha Nussbaum emphasizes when
she extols the public value of the literary imagination.
31 Political Judgment, 80.
32 Gadamer describes rhis phenomenon when he writes that "We discover that the person with
understanding does not know and judge as one who stands aparr and unaffected; but rather,
as one united by a specific bond with the other, he thinks with the other and undergoes the
situation with him." Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, New York: Seabury Press, p.
288, 1991.
33 Steinberger sings the praIse of Kant's efforts in writing that "The modern theory of judg-
ment culminates in Kant's Third Critique, and it is there that we find for the first time a
systematic attempt to provide a satisfactory philosophical account of the faculty of judg-
ment. Among other writers, the notion of good judgment or taste is presented largely with-
out analysis, as though its features were self-evident, and the fact of its existence merely
asserred ... Kant's effort, on the other hand, is to describe the logic of aesthetic judgment,
and to provide a 'transcendental proof' of its existence. As such, his work provides by a good
measure the most imporrant and powerful account of judgment that the West has yet pro-
duced." The Concept 0/ Political Judgment, p. 130.
34 Critique a/Judgment, SS 56-57.
35 Technically, aesthetic judgment for Kant involves the Understanding and the Imagination
achieving a state of harmony or 'free play,' and it is this harmony that accounts for the
pleasure we feel from experiencing beauty. Yet it is important to note that the aesthetic
judgment is not based on the pleasure we experience in contemplating beauty, bur rather it
is judgment itself (i.e., the harmonizing of the faculties) that gives rise to the pleasure. See
Critique a/Judgment, SS 9.
36 Arendt, Hannah. Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1982, p. vii,
37 Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, p. vii. Some may object here that while Kant may have
not offered a formal account of political judgment, constructing an account of Kantian
political judgment must surely draw on his moral philosophy as much as-if not more
than-his view of aesthetic judgment. However, I think this view is mistaken. Rather, I
would argue that while many of Kant's substantive moral insights were indeed profound
and exactly correct, the model he recommends for conducting everyday practical reasoning
is notoriously suspect. Moral judgments, just like political and aesthetic judgments, cannot
be rendered universally in abstraction but rather require substantive situational content and
must be informed by practice. For an in depth treatment of this line of criticism of Kant's
moral philosophy, see the work of Charles Larmore.
38 Critique a/Judgment, IV, 18-19.
39 Judgments of pure logic and geometry are also determinative judgments. They are extreme
cases involving no particulars bur only universals or concepts. Some may counter that Kant's
a priori principles of experience are the only ttue determinative judgments.
40 Political Judgment, pp. 52-3.
41 PoliticalJudgment, pp. 48-9.
42 For Aristotle, a knowledge of what is good for humans serves as the criterion of good judg-
ment.
43 The Concept o/Politi(aIJudg,&nt, pp. 128, 133.
44 Critique a/Judgment, SS 50.
45 Critique a/Judgment, SS 2.
109
CHAPTER THREE
46 Critique ofjudgment, SS 2.
47 Critique ofjudgmmt, SS 2.
48 Politicaljudgment, p. lO4.
49 Lectures on Kant's PolithlZl Philosophy, pp. 54-5.
50 Quoted in Politicaljudgment, p. 104.
52 Political judgment, p. 50. Critique of judgment, SS 40; I: 151. Kant thinks a proof of the
existence of this common sense can be found in the fact that we can universally communi-
cate our judgments ("'(W]e assume a common sense as the necessary condition of the univer-
sal communicability of our knowledge.")
53 Politicaljudgment, p. 43.
55 Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, p. 73.
56 The Concept of Political judgment, pp. 138-9.
58 In fact, such an exclusion is precisely the Kantian legacy strongly criticized in Truth and
Method, a work in which Gadamer rejects both Kant's restricting of knowledge to the cog-
nitive sphere, as well as the thoroughly 'subjectivized aesthetic' to which such a restriction
ultimately leads. See Truth and Method, Section 1.
59 Political judgment, p. 62.
60 The Concept of Political judgment, pp. 66-7.
61 "The Disharmony of Democracy," pp. 140.
62 "The Disharmony of Democracy," pp. 140-1.
63 The Concept of Political judgment, p. 147.
64 The Morality of Frf£dom, pp. 403-4.
65 Friedrich Schiller. On the Aesthetic Education ofMan: In a Series ofLetters. New York: Frederick
Ungar Publishing Co., 1977.
66 Carroll, Noel "Can Government Funding of the Arts Be Justified Theoretically," in the
Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 21, No.1, Spring 1987, pp. 21-35.
67 Nichomachean Ethics, 1142a, 12-15.
68 Nussbaum, Martha. "Compassion: The Basic Social Emotion," in Social Philosophy and Policy,
1996.
69 Nussbaum, Martha C. Poeticjustice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1995, p. 31.
70 Poetic justice, p. 32.
71 Poeticjustice, pp. 97-lO0.
72 Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, p. 43.
73 Guyer, Paul. "Autonomy and Integrity in Kant's Aesthetics," The Monist, vol. 66, no. 2,
April 1983, pp. 167-188.
74 Beiner, "Hannah Arendt on Judging," in Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, p. 132.
75 Critique ofjudgment, p. 182.
76 Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, p. 46.
77 Tramjiguration, p. 207.
78 Tramjiguration, p. 198.
79 "Autonomy and Integrity," p. 168.
110
4
THE POLITICS OF SUBSIDY
This chapter turns away from aesthetics and back to politics. This
return is necessary because as we discovered in Chapter One, justifying
arts subsidies consists of two distinct tasks. One requires answering
an aesthetic question: what value does art have for society? The second
requires answering a political question: to what extent should a
government be in the business of making people's lives go better?
The need to address the political dimension of subsidy cannot be
overemphasized, for it is conceptually prior to the aesthetic
dimension. This is true not only because making a person's life go
well involves quite a bit more than just exposing her to art; it is also
true because even someone who considers art absolutely essential to
the good life can with no inconsistency oppose giving it government
subsidy. Perhaps this citizen loves both art and state neutrality,
wishing for subsidy but arguing that the state ought not promote
any particular conception of the good life. Having examined the
aesthetic dimension of the proposed democratic justification, this
chapter evaluates whether the proposal can meet the argumentative
burdens of political philosophy. It does this by evaluating whether
the justification offers cogent responses to the best arguments against
subsidy, many of which appeared in Chapter One as criticisms of
perfectionism.
111
CHAPTER FOUR
I
In evaluating the political success of the democratic justification,
the initial point to emphasize is that this proposal classifies arts
subsidy as an educational expenditure: subsidizing art creates
important educational opportunities outside the classroom. More
specifically, engaging the arts helps foster democratic virtue, which
is Amy Gutmann's term for the skills and attitudes needed to
"consciously reproduce" democratic society. 1 Compared to
perfectionists'lofty aspirations of creating intrinsic value, conceiving
art as a form of education may sound mundane. Yet I think this is
more a sign of strength than weakness. Rather than vague references
to developing human potential, fostering democratic virtue offers a
tangible statement of the benefits to be had from publicly funding
the arts. Further, the political nature of these benefits better explains
why a government should take interest in the arts at all. In these ways
the argument complies with an important desideratum of political
justification, one which Harry Brighouse terms "publicity. "2
As a bdef aside, it is interesting to note that while the justification

is grounded in Gutmann's concept of democratic education, it differs
fundamentally from her own defense of subsidy. In Democratic
Education, Gutmann defends subsidy using a strategy she calls
"democratic perfectionism." This is an attempt to preserve the basic
perfectionist insight while avoiding its traditional criticisms. 3
Democratic perfectionism seeks to avoid the thorny political
problems of perfectionist policies, i.e., the risks of paternalism and
repression, by letting the citizenry decide for itself what values the
government may promote. 4 Thus, while Gutmann wants to justify
arts subsidies through democratic means, she never claims that art
is itself a vehicle of democratic education. Rather, her strategy
amounts to what I would call a "collective pride" argument. In her
112
defense of subsidy, Gutmann writes that democratic perfectionism
... adds another intrinsic value to that of artistic

excellence: collective identification with high culture.
This value must be democratically appreciated and
supported to justify public subsidies of culture. It is
therefore appropriate for public officials to invoke the
value of high culture and collective identification with
that culture in making a democratic case for
governmental subsidy of art. A necessary (but not
sufficient) condition of justifying public support for high
culture is that it be democratically approved, but it need
not be approved for instrumental reasons.'
Her argument is perfectionist in that it casts art as intrinsically

valuable, not as an instrumentality for skills-building or training in
judgment. Gutmann's argument is motivated by a desire to refute
those who claim the taxation need to finance subsidy is unjust, a
topic we will address shortly. Unfortunately, space here does not
permit a comprehensive evaluation of democratic perfectionism.
Nonetheless, I will say that while democratic perfectionism marks
an improvement over traditional perfectionism, it remains plagued
by many of the same criticisms. 6 Yet in the end its success or failure
is irrelevant, for I mention it only to emphasize what my project is
not: I am not advocating we simply resolve the arts subsidy issue by
popular vote. Rather, my proposal is that engaging artworks is itself
a form of democratic education. 7
With this preliminary out of the way, we must now look at how the
proposal fares against the major political criticisms of subsidy. The
first criticism focuses on the taxation needed to finance arts subsidies,
while the second claims that supporting art goes beyond the
113
CHAPTER FOUR
legitimate sphere of government action. The claims underlying both

criticisms are related, and in some cases the differences are only a
matter of emphasis. Such is the case with libertarianism, where
fundamental claims about taxation drive conclusions about the proper
role of the state. Nonetheless, I will consider each set of objections
in turn, beginning with the objections based on unfair taxation.
Objections from unfair taxation typically assume one of two forms.

One asserts the sanctity of individual property rights, while the other
claims state-subsidized activities must produce universal benefits.
There are three taxation-based objections that warrant consideration:
(1) the libertarian objection; (2) the objection from the benefit
principle; and (3) the objection of the offended taxpayer. The
libertarian objection begins with the intuitively plausible claim that
"each person is the morally rightful owner of his own person and
powers, and consequently that each is free to use those powers as he
wishes, provided he does not deploy them aggressively against
others. "8 From this foundation in Lockean natural rights, most
libertarians conclude that persons have a right to live their life as
they see fit (as long as they do not harm others). Other libertarians
take the argument further, claiming that persons also have full right
over all earnings from applying their labor and talents, as well as
anything acquired through just transfer. On this view, taxing citizens
is unjust unless it is to provide or preserve public goods such as
national defense, clean air, or public roads. In this way libertarians
specifically reject many commonplace government programs,
especially those that redistribute wealth. The taxation to fund such
programs violates individual property rights by coercively taking
the fruits of a person's labor without adequate compensation (hence
Robert Nozick's oft-quoted claim that "Taxation of earnings from
labor is on a par with forced labor. "9).
114
From this brief description, it is not hard to imagine how a libertarian

would argue against subsidizing art. If the state cannot justifiably
tax its citizens to satisfy the demands of distributive justice, how
could it possibly justify taxes to support the arts? Nozick writes
Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal

state, limited to the narrow functions of protection
against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and
so on, is justified; ... any more extensive state will violate
persons' rights .... Two noteworthy implications are that
the state may not use its coercive apparatus for the
purpose of getting some citizens to aid others, or in order
to prohibit activities to people for their own good or
protection. 10
Using Nozick's view, arts subsidies are doomed in two ways. They
are clearly ruled out if viewed as redistributive aid to the artist, and
they are equally in trouble if cast in perfectionist terms, for
perfectionists openly seek to influence how people choose to live
their lives. II In either case, the libertarian will argue that in levying
taxes to support the arts, the state violates a fundamental right of its
citizens. Even the redistributive- minded Rawls reveals his libertarian
leanings on this point. He argues that the only legitimate way to
subsidize the arts (as well as colleges and universities) is through
voluntary contributions to what he calls an "exchange branch."12
An influential expression of the libertarian argument against subsidy

appears in Edward Banfield's The Democratic Muse. In this book,
Banfield praises Nozick for "strenuously affirming" the Lockean
underpinnings of the American system (which he calls narurallaw
liberalism), where "the sole legitimate function of the state is the
protection of its citizens against force and fraud," and where "the
115
CHAPTER FOUR
preservation ofliberty is the only justification for infringement upon

it." Banfield asserts that "to find any warrant for (arts subsidies in
the U.S. Constitution} one must interpret the general welfare clause
in a way that Madison called absurd. "13 And in the end Banfield
thinks even this approach is doomed to fail.
(E}ven if government support of the arts contributed

significantly to the welfare (pleasure, satisfaction,
enjoyment, and so on) of the great majority of individuals,
that in itself would not make it a legitimate activity of
the government. The principles of the American regime
require that the individual be left free to pursue his
happiness in his own way except as governmental
constraints upon him (e.g., taxation for the support of
art) are expected to benefit the body politic (i.e., the
public viewed as an abstract entity).14
How are subsidy proponents to meet the libertarian challenge? One

way is to attack the soundness of libertarian philosophy as a whole.
For instance, it is unclear that individual rights, especially the right
of self-ownership, carry the force the libertarian argument requires.
For example, let us assume the basic idea of self-ownership, i.e., that
persons do have a right to their labor and talents. And let us further
assume that a coercive taking of one's possessions does indeed violate
self-ownership. Yet while it is one thing to claim this person has had
her right of self-ownership violated, it is quite another to claim self-
ownership can legitimize--even through just transfer-an unlimited
acquisition of wealth. Said another way, the argument has not
established that self-ownership leads to world-ownership.15 Citizens
possess myriad duties, and the libertarian has yet to show that self-
ownership carries the seeming lexical priority this argument requires.
This can be seen most clearly in the libertarian dismissal of
116
distributive justice. Indeed, much work remains before one can

conclude self-ownership invariably takes priority over the moral
demands of distributive justice.
Despite the force of this general criticism, the libertarian argument

against art subsidy nonetheless deserves further attention. That is,
because the argument persists as a popular objection to subsidy, it is
necessary to assume its soundness and then seek to construct a cogent
response. In formulating this response, it is helpful to begin by noting
that the argument is most often deployed against justifications that
cast art as a means of either subjective pleasure or objective value.
Fortunately, the proposed democratic justification views art in neither
of these ways. Furthermore, because the justification casts art's value
in terms of educational benefits, it goes a long way toward answering
the libertarian on her own terms. For example, given the libertarians'
emphasis on preserving liberty and free markets, one might plausibly
argue that, because education is essential to democracy, and because
democracy is the mode of governing most conducive to preserving
liberty and free markets, taxation to fund public education-
especially democratic education-is justified.
But while this response is plausible, it rests on several empirical

assumptions in need of defense, most notably that democracy in fact
promotes individual liberty and free markets. Besides, one need not
be this elaborate to defeat the libertarian. The question to ask
ptoponents of this view is whether public education is a legitimate
state activity. If she denies the legitimacy of levying taxes for
education, then the entire libertarian project must be called into
question. Quite simply, public funding of education enjoys consensus
support not only among Western societies but among a wide (nearly
universal) range of contemporary societies. \'Vhile there is plenty of
disagreement about u,hctt should be taught (and whether the state is
117
CHAPTER FOUR
the best organ for teaching it), it is widely believed the state may-
and perhaps morally ought-to ensure broad access to education
through public funding. Even within Nozick's game-theoretical
utopia, it seems that any truly utopian community, i.e., any
community "that people will want to live in and will choose
voluntarily to live in," would never be one that did not provide for
the citizenry's education. 16
While this discussion may seem far afield from arts subsidy, it
constitutes real progress. For if we have won consent from libertarians
that funding education is a legitimate state function, the issue of
arts subsidy can be focused away from questions of taxation and
toward questions of educational authority-i.e., who decides the
content of educational curricula? As will be explored in Chapter
Five, decisions concerning curricular content in a democratic society
are ideally made through some process of open deliberation and
choice. But while libertarians are quick to extol the value of open
choice, the effect of their argument is actually to reduce choice by
prohibiting the issue from even appearing on the public agenda.
That is, in claiming it is in principle illegitimate, libertarians have
decided the subsidy question before deliberation can even begin. A
democratic polity may of course choose to exclude a given subject
from its educational curricula, as has occurred with sex education in
some areas of the United States. But whatever legitimacy this
exclusion may carry comes not from a point of abstract argument
but from public deliberation and decision-making. It certainly does
not imply sex education should have been blocked from public
consideration. Blocking ideas from open deliberation is the most
unreasonable of all views. In fact, it runs counter to the libertarian
enterprise itself, which aims to promote maximal liberty. Limiting
public debate on any topic-much less an important issue like public
education-is an odd way to maximize liberty.
118
Having addressed the libertarian argument, I now turn to a second

taxation-based objection to subsidy, the objection concerning
universal benefits. This objection has been most forcefully argued
by Joel Feinberg, who conceives the task of justifying art subsidies
as that of persuading the indignant taxpayer, or indignant philistine.
While himself a proponent of subsidy, Feinberg writes
The problem raised by the indignant taxpayer is whether

there is justification for using government funds derived
from mandatory taxation of all citizens in order to
promote the esoteric projects of a small number of people.
Indeed there is a prima facie case for the proposition that
such subsidies are unfair to those who are made to pay,
not to protect their neighbors from harm, but to secure
benefits for some of their neighbors that they (the
complaining taxpayers) are not able to share. The
principle invoked by the indignant taxpayer is that
'J ustice requires that persons pay for a facility 1fi
proportion to the degree they benefit from it.'17
The benefit principle creates a great argumentative burden for

proponents of subsidy, for it requires them to show that "artistic
endeavors supported by general tax revenues ... are somehow
universally and equally beneficial."18 Something like the benefit
principle underlies economists' notion of a public good. Public goods,
such as clean air or secure national borders, may be subsidized through
mandatory taxation because the benefits they secure cannot be
withheld from any member of society, i.e., their benefits accrue
universally. But the benefits of arts funding do not accrue universally,
the argument goes, because many taxpayers never have the
opportunity or the desire to engage art. Thus, the only way to satisfy
the benefit principle, i.e., the only way to satisfy the indignant
119
CHAPTER FOUR
taxpayer, is by charging user fees to those who actually choose to

engage the art. Such fees would be similar to admission fees currently
levied at America's national parks. Here the intent is to allocate the
financial burden of public assets more directly upon those who
actually utilize them. 19 Many find the benefit principle appealing
because of the high argumentative burden it generates. That is, any
justification that actually meets such a stringent standard of benefit
would almost certainly constitute a valid justification of subsidy.
This strategy also resonates with the libertarian argument, although
it stops short of delineating a limit to proper government activity.
Instead, it simply argues that if a citizen pays taxes, justice demands
she realize a benefit proportionate to the burden incurred.
At this point, it is tempting to agree with Feinberg's suspicion that

when it comes to subsidizing art, the Benefit Principle creates "too
great an argumentative burden to sustain. "20 Yet even Feinberg is
not prepared to give up. Seeking to defend subsidy in spite of the
benefit principle, Feinberg makes the move of denying that benefit
and value are synonymous, and then arguing that some activities
have value even if they do not produce direct benefits. Here Feinberg
quotes Thomas Nagel: "Some things are wonderful in a measure
quite beyond the value of the experiences or other benefits of those
who encounter them."21 In effect, Feinberg responds to the indignant
taxpayer by appealing to art's intrinsic value. He argues that the
very logic of value judgments is to express the worthiness of a
particular attitude toward what is being judged. And, he reasons
If that is correct, it would seem odd to admit that

something is objectively worthy of being valued
(esteemed, treasured, cherished, etc.) and then deny that
the possession of such a property is any kind of reason-
or a reason of significant weight-for requiring people
120
to protect or support it. Even the egoistic philistine

taxpayer, I should think, would have to admit that the
possession in high degree of intrinsic value is not a gross
irrelevancy... 22
Feinberg thus reinterprets the benefit principle in a way that

accommodates appeals to objective value. It is now a perfectionist
argument, resting on the familiar assumption that a government
may act to promote objective value, even when doing so goes against
citizens' preferences.
Yet while works of art may indeed have objective value, Feinberg's
reinterpretation no longer reflects the complaint of the indignant
taxpayer. By shunning the requirement of direct benefit, Feinberg
begs the question the benefit principle was intended to capture.
Richard Manning captures this point succinctly when he writes "Since
the benefit principle is indifferent to intrinsic value, a showing that
art objects are intrinsically valuable is simply irrelevant to challenges
based on that principle. "23 While Manning himself thinks arts
subsidies can be justified, he recommends an alternate strategy.
Instead of trying to meet the benefit principle head-on, Manning
suggests we reject the principle altogether. 24
The demands of justice may be met even where a taxpayer

receives no benefit whatever from a project funded with
her dollars ... A tax levied for purposes of sending aid to
starving Somalis may beyond question be just even if
the interests of the burdened taxpayers are positively
hindered, let alone not advanced. The third world is
simply overpopulated and dangerous from the point of
view of our mundane interests; it cannot benefit us to
help feed its masses. Imagine a taxpayer who, on top of
121
CHAPTER FOUR
this, just dislikes Somalis, so that he receives no good

feeling of any kind from altruistic measures. Justice
permits his taxation, which certainly cannot be reconciled
with the benefit principle ... So the benefit principle is
false. 25
Of course, it is not clear Manning's analogy is entirely appropriate,

for very little about art subsidy approaches the moral significance of
losing human life. Perhaps Manning's analogy could be made more
appropriate, but the point is his argument demonstrates that the
benefit principle admits of exceptions. Even if the benefit principle
is not false, Manning has pushed the burden of argument back onto
its proponents. Their task is to show why the benefit principle
necessarily applies to subsidizing art.
It is important to note that even if Manning is correct in claiming

the benefit principle is false, his response (as well as Feinberg's) seems
somehow disingenuous, as if a straw man were lurking. While both
philosophers seek to answer the indignant taxpayer's challenge,
neither takes this challenge seriously, for neither responds to the
indignant taxpayer on her own terms. Feinberg and Manning each
start their arguments using one model of political justification-
satisfying the benefit principle-but then each slides into a very
different model of political justification-demonstrating the
existence of objective value. Put as a dilemma, either the task of
justifying arts subsidies is one of persuading the philistine taxpayer
or it isn't. If it isn't, then we need not concern ourselves with the
claims of the indignant taxpayer at all. But if it is, then we clearly
must construct a relevant response, something neither Feinberg nor
Manning have done.
Feinberg and Manning seem both to have real ambivalence about
122
the benefit principle. I suspect their ambivalence stems from a conflict

between the desirable strength of the principle itself and a suspicion
that art can never really satisfy its burden of argument. As to the
validity of the principle itself, Manning seems closest to the mark in
saying that while the benefit principle is false "this does not mean
that prudence does not support something like a benefit principle.
It is perhaps good for government to forego programs that do not
benefit those who pay for them."26 Space here does not permit an
exhaustive examination of the benefit principle. Yet clearly, such
examination would need to evaluate the moral tradeoffs that strict
adherence to the principle would require. This is the force of
Manning's Somali example, in which the demands of the benefit
principle conflict with the moral imperative to save human life. The
evaluation would also need to determine the status of the principle
vis a vis the obligation to comply with the outcomes of democratic
procedures. Can the benefit principle justify noncompliance with
democratically-sanctioned public decisions, such as to build roads
or to fund the arts? My intuition is that it cannot.
Yet regardless of the ultimate truth or falsity of the benefit principle,

the complaint of the taxpayer retains its intuitive force. Fortunately,
the proposed democratic justification goes a long way toward
answering this complaint. Rather than resorting to intrinsic value
or claiming it is impossible to account for art's benefits, my claim is
that art instrumentally serves something virtually everyone values-
democratic self-rule. If engaging art can indeed foster democratic
virtue, this is a reason of considerable weight even for the indignant
taxpayer. Of course, our imagined taxpayer may disagree with the
empirical fact of the matter, but this response is philosophically
preferable to merely dismissing the objection by claiming art has
some mysterious, inexpressible, benefitless value. Thus, even if the
benefit principle is right on target, the democratic justification goes
123
CHAPTER FOUR
some distance toward satisfying the high standard of argument that

makes this principle so appealing.
Before examining objections concerning the proper role of the state,

I want to examine briefly one other taxation-based objection, the
objection of the offended taxpayer. Unlike the indignant taxpayer,
who objects that art subsidies do not provide universal benefits, the
offended taxpayer objects to subsidy because it sometimes finances
artworks that she finds morally offensive. This objection has become
commonplace among those wishing to abolish subsidy as well as
those seeking to impose restrictions on the content of artworks
receiving public money. While I believe the objection can be defeated,
its frequent appearance in public discourse makes it worthy of further
attention.
One of the most publicized instances of this objection occurred in

1987 involving the American artist Andres Serrano. At the center of
controversy was Serrano's photograph entitled Piss Christ, which
"depicted a crucifix submerged in what [the artist} says was his [own}
urine"27 (see Figure 3). Some time after it went on display, the artwork
and the NEA's involvement with it were attacked by the American
Family Association (AFA) and its director, Reverend Donald
Wildmon. Wildmon and others demanded that the work be
withdrawn from public view, that the NEA retrieve all taxpayer
monies, and that the NEA official responsible for the grant be fired.
Their demands all centered on the claim that the work offended the
group's religious beliefs and traditions. 28
In evaluating this notorious case and its implications for subsidy

policy, two facts are often overlooked. First, none of Serrano's
government funding came directly from the NEA. Rather, the NEA
made a broad grant to the Southeastern Center for Contemporary
124
Figure Three-PiH ChriJt, by Andres Serano. Primed by permission of

Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY.
125
CHAPTER FOUR
Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, NC, which in turn awarded Serrano

$15,000 as part of its annual Awards in the Visual Arts Program.
Second, Serrano claims the intent of the work was not to attack
religion but to protest those unscrupulous few who commodify
religion for personal gain. 29
Regardless of Serrano's intent, I seek neither to defend Piss Christ

nor to minimize the real offense Wildmon and others apparently
experienced because of it. Instead, I wish to pursue the philosophical
question of whether moral offense renders the taxation of subsidy
illegitimate. In examining this question, it is first essential to
distinguish between taxpayers being morally offended by an artwork
and taxpayers merely objecting to that work. Clearly, the offended
taxpayer must be doing more than simply objecting to subsidy. For
if mere objection renders a government policy illegitimate, then
democracy itself becomes close to impossible. 30 The objection must
therefore involve the much stronger assertion that particular artworks
offend taxpayers' most deeply-held beliefs and values.
Yet even this stronger interpretation the objection appears to have

only limited force. To see why, consider these examples. First, imagine
a taxpayer with strong pacifist convictions, perhaps religious in
origin. While this taxpayer may acknowledge the need for basic law
enforcement and national defense, she finds many particular law
enforcement tactics and military technologies abhorrent. Another
taxpayer may be morally offended by her government spending
billions of dollars on advanced weaponry while many citizens go
hungry and homeless. Or, to take a nonmilitary example, imagine a
zealously self-reliant taxpayer who considers public welfare morally
offensive, arguing that government entitlement programs (i.e.,
handouts) violate the recipients' personal dignity.
126
In all these examples it seems that moral offense, while a factor in

determining the legitimacy of government actions, cannot by itself
render a public action or its requisite taxation illegitimate. The
welfare example is perhaps most instructive. That a citizen finds
welfare degrading does not render the associated taxation illegitimate,
if for no other reason than that many other citizens find it offensive
that persons could be allowed to starve or go homeless. The objection
moves too quickly from an individual claim of moral offense to a
generalized claim of political illegitimacy. One citizen's moral offense
simply does not equate to political illegitimacy.
Regarding arts subsidy, the offended taxpayer can be defeated on

virtually any interpretation of her argument. For instance, one
interpretation is that the offended taxpayer should be exempted from
that portion of her taxes dedicated to art subsidy. This raises both
practical and theoretical problems. On the practical side, paying
taxes is not a pick and choose affair, where one pays only for the
programs one supports. If citizens were allowed to do this, or if they
were required only to support verifiable public goods, problems of
free riders and fair use would abound. 31 And from a theoretical
perspective, exempting persons from paying taxes due to moral
offense raises deep issues of representative government and democratic
compliance. A fundamental tenet of political representation is that
citizens abdicate significant political power to elected representatives.
In return, these citizens receive the benefits of leadership and
compromise only possible within the machinations of a small,
deliberative body of professional legislators. This representative
arrangement would be impossible if each citizen could, upon finding
moral offense, issue her own private veto. Further, allowing citizens
to opt out whenever they deem a particular program or decision
morally offensive undercuts the fundamental notion that democracy
depends on rule of law, including compliance with the outcomes of
127
CHAPTER FOUR
valid democratic procedures.
Another interpretation of the objection claims that because art

produced with state monies may offend some tax-paying citizens,
the government should subsidize no art whatsoever. Typically, this
interpretation is cited by those who have experienced moral offense
yet also appreciate the difficulties and dangers of defining public
standards of decency. Yet again, this interpretation accords the
offended taxpayer too much weight. The burden of argument should
be on those who claim moral offense necessarily takes priority over
other competing considerations. One such consideration is that a
majority of citizens staunchly supports art subsidies, even while they
recognize some subsidized works deeply offend. Presumably these
citizens believe the benefits outweigh the harms; or, perhaps they
consider art intrinsically valuable. But if we abolish all subsidy in
order to assuage the offended taxpayer, what does this mean for the
majority who do derive benefits from subsidy? Would not halting
subsidy cause them to lose something of significant value? Again,
the welfare example seems instructive, for it demonstrates how
political justification requires considering issues from multiple
perspectives. In the case of the offended taxpayer, perhaps we must
somehow rank the moral offense incurred by the (presumably) few
with the loss of benefits incurred by the (presumably) many. At the
least, the benefits foregone by suspending subsidy cannot simply be
dismissed as irrelevant. As things stand now, the offended taxpayer
has yet to offer sufficient grounds for concluding that moral offense
has the (seemingly lexical) priority this argument assumes. And if
one is less concerned about balancing benefits and burdens than
providing sound reasons, the democratic justification offers a weighty
reason for the taxpayer's offense. The reason is weighty because of its
direct, instrumental relation to a common and deeply held value:
the commitment to self-rule.
128
There is another, more controversial interpretation of the offended

taxpayer objection that merits attention. This interpretation asserts
that a government may only subsidize artworks that do not offend.
This may be the most plausible interpretation yet considered, for
the objection originated from a handful of offensive works and not
from art as a general category. The interpretation is controversial
because it is the reasoning behind the so-called Helms Amendment,
considered and rejected by the U.S. Senate in 1989. The Helms
Amendment would have denied federal funding for any art deemed
indecent, pornographic, or obscene, or that "denigrates the objects
or beliefs of the adherents of a particular religion ... "32
While it may displease many subsidy advocates, the proposed

democratic justification is compatible with-and in some situations
even endorses-this version of the offended taxpayer's claim. While
the objection itself may lack the argumentative force its adherents
would have us believe, it is not politically insignificant that an activity
funded with federal tax dollars strongly offends the citizens who
must cough up those dollars. Of course, the trick comes in
determining how much political weight this consideration actually
carries. Given the justification's democratic grounding, this is best
done by assigning to the objection a strength proportionate to its
actual strength within the citizenry. For instance, assuming offended
taxpayers are in the minority, then subsidy policies should not only
guard against offended taxpayers trumping the wishes of the majority,
but they should also guard against offended taxpayers becoming a
persistent minority with no real say in the matter.
A significant virtue of the democratic justification is that it suggests

a plausible means of avoiding these extremes. That is, the justification
suggests how we might respect the preferences both of the offended
taxpayer and the subsidy advocate: by privileging state and local
129
CHAPTER FOUR
control over subsidy allocations. Given that moral offense from art
often stems from moral differences across geographical regions,
increasing local control would allow and encourage expression of
these differences in a manner proportionate to their actual location
and strength. Subsidy opponents would receive greater relative voice
concerning what gets funded, resulting in subsidy decisions that
more accurately reflect local community standards. Furthermore,
this does not exclude the possibility of localized restrictions on
offensive content. Again, I am neither advocating such restrictions
nor saying they would make good policy; I would hope that the vast
majority of citizens would want to argue against such restrictions.
Nonetheless, a robust democratic commitment requires these
decisions be made through citizen deliberation, not by abstract
argument or political fiat.
It will be helpful to end this discussion of taxation-based objections

by offering some general observations and conclusions. As a whole,
the objections from unfair taxation overestimate the strength of self-
ownership and individual rights. Although they begin from
seemingly reasonable premises, the objections fail to balance these
premises against other relevant factors. As a result, many of the
conclusions drawn are implausible. This is especially true with the
indignant taxpayer's plea that "If I don't want it, then you can't tax
me to pay for it." Second, the taxation-based objections rely on an
incomplete account of political justification. Politically justifying a
government activity or program involves more than simply
responding to every individual claim of unfair taxation. Political
justification requires providing and evaluating reasons why an activity
should or should not be supported. Third, taxation-based objections
present an incomplete and distorted view of the relationship between
government and citizen. In the case of the benefit principle, this
relationship is cast too heavily in terms of market players. The
130
relationship between a government and its citizens is much more

complicated than the market model allows, often arising precisely
because society has needs the free market is not suited to provide.
Furthermore, the benefit principle ignores the fact that not every
government action produces benefits for every citizen who pays taxes.
Not only are benefits sometimes absent for some citizens, but
sometimes citizens receive benefits that are not always deserved. This
is not only due to schemes of rotational justice, where in the end
everyone receives about the same level of benefit, but also because,
as Manning writes
Increases in the property of individuals routinely result

from governmental action which are in no measure
compensation for the benefited individual's labor, and
which in like fashion decrease the property of others
without regard to desert. To suggest that government
may on the one hand bestow upon me a significant
financial benefit I cannot be said to merit but that it
cannot then tax my additional wealth unless it gives me
additional benefit back is absurd. If there was no
obligation for government to create my extra wealth,
there can be no obligation for government to let me keep
it, let alone to compensate me for the additional tax I
incur.oJ
Again, regardless of the ultimate truth or falsity of the benefit

principle, a significant virtue of the proposed democratic justification
is that it offers a plausible account of how art subsidies might actually
satisfy even this most stringent desideratum of political justification.
131
CHAPTER FOUR
III
This section examines the proposed democratic justification in light
of objections concerning the proper role of the state. We have
encountered many of these objections already, mostly in Chapter
One's look at the debate between perfectionists and neutralists. Recall
that neutralists claim it is illegitimate for a state to privilege and
promote particular conceptions of human good. More specifically,
they argue against the perfectionists' view that the state may
justifiably promote activities possessing intrinsic value (i.e., value
grounded in something other than the subjective preferences of
citizens). As we saw in Chapter One, the case for neutrality is not a
single argument but a collection of arguments, which George Sher
groups into three general types: (1) arguments from autonomy; (2)
arguments from safety and stability; and, (3) arguments from
skepticism. Some of these arguments warn against the practical
dangers of a government acting on claims of intrinsic value; others
claim nonneutrality in the end causes more harm than good; and
still others express skepticism about the existence of intrinsic value,
or about the possibility of gaining any knowledge of it. Sher and
others have shown there is reasonable doubt about the various
arguments for neutrality, and if these arguments fail then my proposal
need not respond to them. However, since I sided with neutralists
back in Chapter One, I must offer some responses to these arguments
now.
To begin, I would reiterate that the arguments for neutrality all aim
at a common opponent-the perfectionist-whose fundamental
claim is that a state acts properly when it actively encourages citizens
to live in intrinsically valuables ways. But while perfectionists may
be absolutely right in claiming art has intrinsic value, my response
to the neutralist is that the proposed democratic justification does
132
not appeal to intrinsic value. Indeed, one of the original goals of this
project was to avoid appeals to intrinsic value. Thus, the neutralist
criticisms carry little force because the proposed justification casts
art's value strictly in instrumental terms: art may be subsidized by
virtue of its instrumental value to the democratic process.
Critics may counter that I have simply switched the burden of

argument. That is, while I have avoided claims about the intrinsic
value of art, I now must defend claims about the intrinsic value of
democracy. But this is incorrect as well, for the commitment to
democracy described in Chapter Two is historically-contingent. It
does not claim democracy is necessarily or universally the best way
to govern. Rather, it rurns on the more modest assertion that we are
committed to democratic self-rule as a matter of historical fact. As
John Gray describes, our commitment to democracy is one part of
our historical inheritance that is civil society. While it may be correct
to claim democracy possesses intrinsic value, the proposed
justification neither assumes nor depends on such a claim.
At this point, a critic might counter that while the proposed

justification does not attribute intrinsic value to art or democracy, it
nonetheless privileges a particular way ofliving. George Sher captures
this response nicely in explicating what he terms the "respect for
autonomy" argument. This argument rests on two fundamental
premises. One is a strong Kantian foundation that every person, "as
a rational agent who is capable of shaping his own destiny," must be
treated with respect and dignity.34 The second premise is that when
a government acts non-neutrally by encouraging persons to live in
certain valuable ways, it fails to render such respect. The argument
casts autonomy not as one value to be weighed against others but as
a constraint on the pursuit of vaiue that simply cannot be weighed,
balanced, and sacrificed against other values. Preserving autonomy
133
CHAPTER FOUR
thus becomes a deontological requirement: governments may seek

to promote value, but they may not do so in a way that disrespects
citizens' autonomy. Actively encouraging certain lifestyles over others
may well promote the good, but it disrespects autonomy and thus is
paternalistic.
It is easy to see how a critic might use this line of thought to argue
that my justification is paternalistic. Even if the critic agrees my
justification does not make claims of intrinsic value, it still involves
the state's promoting certain ways ofliving over others. For example,
it encourages citizens to make art an active part of their lives. It also
encourages citizens to live within a particular form of government.
In response to this criticism, I would admit that in a strict sense the
justification is paternalistic. It privileges democracy over other forms
of government, and it sanctions state action aimed at improving
citizens' performance within such a system. But having said this, it
must be realized that this criticism not only cuts against subsidies
for arts but also against subsidies for public education in general.
Rather than a damning criticism of arts subsidies, what we have
encountered here is the age-old criticism that all education is
paternalistic. Some have called this the "liberal problem" of education,
for it embodies a tension between the nature of education and the
nature of the liberal state. That is, many liberals believe governments
should both remain neutral and provide education; but because
education entails making choices about what to teach, it privileges
some ideas over others and thus can never be truly neutral.
While the democratic justification may indeed be paternalistic in

this narrow sense, two lines of thought suggest this paternalism is
relatively benign. The first utilizes a distinction between strong and
weak paternalism. When a government seeks to promote the desired
ways of living using means that violate individual rights or that
134
restrict civil liberties, it acts paternalistically in the strong sense.

On the other hand, if a government utilizes less intrusive means
such as limiting (or increasing) opportunities, it acts paternalistically
in the weak sense. Each is paternalistic because the aim is to effect a
state of affairs citizens might not select on their own; the difference
resides in the means used to bring about the desired state of
affairs. 35 The paternalism of education seems clearly to be the weaker
sort. For instance, the most important and controversial educational
decisions focus on the particular classes that will be taught, the
content of those classes, and the books students will be required to
read. Here the state is choosing to provide certain educational
opportunities rather than others, but this hardly constitutes a
violation of rights or a restriction of civil liberties.
About the only sense in which public education IS strongly

paternalistic concerns laws that render it compulsory. For instance,
it is an act of strong paternalism that most localities in America
require children to engage in formal education until age 16 (either
inside or outside the home). But this objection is not really germane
to the arts subsidy issue for two reasons. First, paternalistic measures
are more often justifiable in connection with children than with
adults. Extending this objection to arts subsidy would require
separating paternalism toward children from paternalism more
generally. Second, no program of art subsidy makes it compulsory
that citizens engage the subsidized art. Now as will be discussed
further in Chapter Five, a robust commitment to democracy may
argue for implementing arts education while students are still in
the compulsory stages of schooling, and here the issue of strong
paternalism might indeed arise. But traditional subsidy programs
such as those administered by the NEA seek only to encourage the
production and availability of art. As long as citizens may freely
ignore the art produced and disseminated, any paternalism will
135
CHAPTER FOUR
remain of the weaker variety.
Here it is also useful to draw on Ronald Dworkin's distinction

between primitive and sophisticated paternalism. Dworkin claims
that
Paternalism is primitive when those in charge act in

defiance of the preferences of those they govern, though
supposedly in their interests .... Paternalism is more
sophisticated when those in charge try, not to oppose
preferences already established, but to create preferences
they think desirable c:nd avoid those they think harmfu1. 36
Paternalism that encourages the perpetuation of democratic self-rule

clearly cannot be paternalism of the primitive sort. If it is true that
society has a general commitment to living democratically, then the
proposed justification seem actually to promote established preferences.
Nor is sophisticated paternalism implicated here, for the democratic
justification seeks not to create new preferences but to increase
citizens' ability to act on extant preferences. Such extant preferences
came into being quite independently of, and prior to, the introduction
of art subsidies.
Finally, it should be noted that our commitment to democracy may

in some sense require that we use education to foster democratic virtue.
Gutmann asserts a strong form of this view when she claims
'[P}olitical education'-the cultivation of the virtues,

knowledge, and skills necessary for political
participation-has moral primacy over other purposes
of public education in a democratic society. Political
education prepares citizens to participate in consciously
136
reproducing their society, and conscious social

reproduction is the ideal not only of democratic education
but also of democratic politics ... 37
If Gutmann is anywhere close in her claims about the moral primacy

of democratic education, and if I am anywhere close in my claims
about art's potential as democratic education, then the stakes of arts
subsidy rise dramatically. In subsidizing the arts, perhaps we are not
merely beautifying our cities or edifying our minds but fostering
the mental pre-conditions of our sovereignty. Depending on how
strongly we value democracy, we may even have a mf.fYal obligation to
subsidize art! Of course, such an ambitious claim would require much
more examination and defense, tasks I cannot pursue here.
Nonetheless, that the democratic justification can plausibly entertain
such a notion demonstrates its challenge to the received wisdom
concerning art's social value.

2 Such specificity bestows the argument with what Harry Brighouse terms the virtue of "pub-
licity" in political justifications. Brighouse, Harry. "Neutrality. Publicity, and State Fund-
ing of the Arts," in Philosophy and Public Affairs, Octobet, 1995, pp. 35-63.
3 Gutmann summarizes Rawls' criticism as follows: "The problem with perfectionism, as
Rawls suggests, is that it provides an inadequate response to the criticism that governments
should not force citizens to subsidize goods that do not contribute to their own or the public
welfare. The claim that citizens must supporr arr because it is intrinsically valuable not only
is unlikely to persuade anyone not already convinced, it opens the door to more troubling
claims. If the intrinsic value of gteat arr is great enough, it may be invoked as a sufficient
ground for restricting the liberry of some citizens to pursue lower forms of culture. It is, as
Rawls suggests, both easy and dangerous to fall back on notions of excellence and inttinsic
value when appeals to justice fail." Gutmann, Amy. Democratic Education. Princeton: Princeton
University Ptess, 1987, p. 258.
4 Gutmann wtites "Democratic petfectionism sanctions state subsidy of culture only if it is
publicly apptoved, and then only if it satisfies the standards of nonrepression and nondis-
ctimination." Quoting Thomas Scanlon, Gutmann goes on to asserr "[There is} nothing
objectionable about an argument among egual citizens about what is to be recognized as
good." Democratic Education p. 259.
137
CHAPTER FOUR
6 Now clearly democratic perfectionism is less objectionable than is perfectionism in irs more
elitist varieties, for in maximizing the citizenry's role in determining which values to en-
courage, paternalism is minimized. And questions regarding the existence and knowability
of so-called 'objective' values are at the least side-stepped. However, while these improve-
ments are real, democratic perfectionism remains problematic for two reasons. One is that
the possibility of repression simply appears in another guise: repression by an elite few is
exchanged for repression by the majority, which typically carries with it a dangerous air of
legitimacy. Furthermore, democratic perfectionism still faces the problem discussed in sec-
tion III of Chapter One, that perfectionist justifications for subsidy simply do not accom-
modate much critically-acclaimed contemporary art.
7 I believe the explanation of this difference relates to differing accounts of democratic edu-
cation itself. In describing her ideal of democratic education, Gutmann exclusively empha-
sizes the rational, discursive elements of educating democratic citizens. If citizens are to be
able to consciously reproduce their society, they must for instance be literate, and they must
be capable of rationally deliberating about competing conceptions of the good life. But as
should be clear from the arguments of Chapter Three, I believe that in addition to this
rational dimension there is also an essential I y metaphorical dimension to educating demo-
cratic citizens. Learning ro judge the significance of one's actions and decisions cannot occur
solely though discursive analysis. One does not (and cannot) judge the subtleties of public
life solely through rational thought and debate, although these are indeed important com-
ponents of the process. Rather, the more complete ideal of a democratic citizen entails being
able ro assign meaning to political events, and this occurs in much the same way that a
spectator, critic, or historian assigns meaning to such events. One arrives at judgments of
meaning only through the trial and error process of interpretation.
I see nothing inherent to this extension of democratic education that makes it incom-
patible with Gutmann's scheme. Whether or not there are such difficulties is a matter of
independent interest, but one that cannot be further pursued here. A promising point of
departure in exploring these differences is Gutmann's claim that the ideal of democratic
education is to bring each citizen up to the 'democratic threshold,' meaning that "no edu-
cable child may be excluded from an education adequate to participating in the political
processes that structure choice among good lives." With this starting point, one might then
ask whether the kind of interpretive training I am suggesting is a necessary part of an
'adequate' democratic education. If so, then Gutmann's ideal of a 'threshold' of democratic
education should be extended. If not, then perhaps what I have identified is a kind of train-
ing that brings students not to the 'threshold' of democratic participation but to something
beyond the threshold. But in either case, the aims of the education itself remain unchanged.
8 Cohen, G.A. "Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality: Part II." Social Philosophy
and Policy. Vol. 3, no. 2, Spring 1986, p. 77.
9 Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 169.
10 Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. ix.
11 Strictly speaking, this last argument is more an argument based on claims about the proper
role of the state. Its appearance here reveals the close interrelation of such claims with claims
about just taxation.
12 Rawls writes: "[T}he principles of justice do not permit subsidizing universities and insti-
tutes, or opera and the theater, on the grounds that these institutions are intrinsically valu-
able, and that those who engage in them do not receive compensating benefits. Taxation for
these purposes can be justified only as promoting directly or indirectly the social conditions
138
that secure the equal liberties and as advancing in an appropriate way the long-term inter-
ests of the least advantaged." A Theory ofJustice, p. 332. For a discussion of the exchange
branch, see pp. 282-3.
13 Furthermore, although the drafters of the American Constitution did "allow a large sphere
for such intervention by government as the people deem necessary ro establish precondi-
tions for the development of a competent citizenry," they nonetheless "ruled out projects for
the regulation of private life by the national government." The Democratic Muse, pp. 8-10.
14 The Democratic Muse, pp. ll, 197-98.
15 See G. A. Cohen and Keith Graham, "Self-Ownership, Communism and Equality," in Social
Philosophy and Policy, pp. 25-44. See also Cohen, "Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and
Equality: Part II," pp. 77-95.
16 Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 319.
17 Feinberg, Joel. "Not with My Tax Money: The Problem of Justifying Government Subsi-
dies for the Arts" in Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 8, No.2, April 1994, p. 102.
18 "Not with My Tax Money," p. 102.
19 This is of course not to say that such fees would perfectly satisfy the demands of justice, for
because such fees would likely not cover the entire cost of the projects, some additional
taxation from general sources would be needed. But the fees would at least allocate some of
the burden in a way that that directly reflected the degree to which a given citizen received
any of the benefits.
20 "Not with My Tax Money," p 102.
21 Nagel, Thomas. "Symposium on the Public Benefits of the Arts and Humanities," in Co-
lumbia Journal of Artand the Law, vol. 9 (1984), p. 236.
22 "Not with My Tax Money," p. 120.
23 Manning, Richard M. "Intrinsic Value and Overcoming Feinberg's Benefit Principle," in
Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 8, No.2, April 1994, p. 134.
24 However, Manning does agree with Feinberg's claim that the government may justifiably
support an activity even in the absence of any direct, universal benefits for the indignant
taxpayer. That is to say, Manning believes that the demands of the benefit principle may be
met even when the indignant taxpayer claims to be receiving nothing that he or she consid-
ers to be of any value. To hold otherwise, Manning maintains, is either to embrace a false
empirical asswnption that a person is always the best judge of her own good, or to embrace
a false metaphysical view of the self as 'individual creator.' Public Affairs Quarterly, pp. 134-
138.
25 "Overcoming Feinberg's Benefit Principle," pp. 138-9.
26 "Overcoming Feinberg's Benefit Principle," p. 139.
27 Source: "Chronology of Controversy," a fact sheet prepared by the National Endowment for
the Arts, 1992, p. l.
28 "Chronology of Controversy," p. 1.
29 As a side note, if this were in fact Serrano's intention, he would have been well-served by
making that fact a bit more clear up-front, for it is difficult to believe that he did not realize
that his work would be devisive and controversial. This case raises interesting issues in
interpretive theory, namely the relevance and propriety of considering the artist's intentions
in evaluating a work of art. See Montoe Beardsley'S classic article "The Intentional Fallacy,"
with William Wimsatt, in The Verbal Icon, Chapter I, University of Kentucky Press, 1954.
30 Furthermore, 'disharmony' in a democracy is neither inescapable nor undesirable. See
Gurmann and Thompson, "The Disharmony of Democracy."
139
CHAPTER FOUR
31 Although we do make some concessions of this type when we exempt pacifists from combat
duty by granting them the status of 'conscientious objector.' At the same time, however, we
do not exempt such persons from paying the taxes needed to fund military operations.
"Chronology of Controversy," p. 2.
32 NEA has traditionally been required by Congress to award 28.5 percent of its funds directly
to state arts agencies who in turn distribute these monies as they see fit. Beginning in FY
1996, however, this percentage has increased to 40 percent. Furthermore, the NEA no longer
grants any funds directly to individuals, with the 60 percent of their funds not awarded to
states awarded directly to local arts institutions and arts companies. Data from talk given at
the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, by A.B. Spellman, Director of Guidelines and
Panel Operations, National Endowment for the Arts, February 21, 1996.
33 "Overcoming Feinberg's Difference Principle," pp. 138-9.
34 Beyond Neutrality, p. 153
35 I draw this distinction, based on conversations with George Sher, and from "Paternalistic
Behavior," by Bernard Gert and Charles M. Culver, Philosophy and Public A//airs 6, no. 1
(Fall 1976).
36 Dworkin, Ronald. "Can A Liberal State Support Art," in A Matter 0/ Principle. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1985, p. 230.
140
5
PUBLIC POLICIES AND

CONCLUSIONS
Having now defended the democratic justification in light of the

best arguments against subsidizing art, this chapter steps back to
reflect on the project as a whole. It begins by discussing several
concrete policy implications of the argument's bedrock appeal to
democracy. These implications concern important practical issues
such as how best to administer subsidy monies and whether it is
permissible to fund morally offensive artworks. The chapter concludes
by reflecting on the overall success of the project. This involves
anticipating specific criticisms of the argument, sketching a response
to these criticisms, and offering some final observations.
I
Justifying art subsidy as democratic education is a strategy that
curiously undercuts itself. By this I do not mean some portion of the
justification is in error; rather I mean that a robust commitment to
democracy limits the political efficacy of any theoretical argument.
This is because in a democracy, political legitimacy emerges neither
through a priori argument nor from the expert knowledge of
professional educators. Instead, democratic ideals suggest that
141
CHAPTER FIVE
decisions concerning educational curricula--decisions integral to

what future citizens will be taught and ultimately how democratic
society will reproduce itself-must be made through a process that
is itself suitably democratic. l As Gutmann explains
[AJ democratic state recognizes the value of political

education in predisposing children to accept those ways
of life that are consistent with sharing the rights and
responsibilities of citizenship in a democratic society. A
democratic state is therefore committed to allocating
educational authority in such a way as to provide its
members with an education adequate to participating in
democratic politics, to choosing among (a limited range)
of good lives, and to sharing in the several sub-
communities, such as families, that impart identity to
the lives of its citizens. 2
Democratic education aims to prepare citizens not only for effective

political participation but also for the more reflective task of
"consciously reproducing" democratic society. This broader aim
implies it is the citizenry itself that should render the substantive
decisions concerning educational curricula. That is, democratic
principles imply that the authority to select educational curricula
should never be fully relinquished to panels of educational experts,
no matter how wise or knowledgeable such experts may be. In that
democracy's value is grounded not on citizens deciding rightly but
on citizens deciding for themselves, decisions concerning the content
of public education should emerge from democratic-and thoroughly
fallible-public deliberation.
How is educational aurhority best allocated given a strong

commitment to democracy? Not surprisingly, privilege should go
142
PUBUC POUCIES AND CONCLUSIONS
to the outcomes of local democratic procedures. These procedures

include public referenda as well as the machinations of local school
boards and other representative bodies. At the same time, however,
Amy Gutmann rightly emphasizes that a mechanism is needed for
disregarding these outcomes when they turn out to be either
repressive or discriminatory.3 Such an allocation of authority gives
families and localities primary control over education while
recognizing that local decisions may clash with democratic ideals.
If our commitment to democracy indeed entails a commitment to

allocating educational authority democratically, then no claim about
the content of public education can escape the need for democratic
sanction. For this reason my argument for subsidy-no matter how
theoretically sound-constitutes merely a set of reasons in favor of
subsidizing art. While I believe they are good and perhaps compelling
reasons, they do not prove that subsidy is politically legitimate. In
offering these reasons, my intention is that they be entered into public
deliberation and considered in light of the competing educational
priorities. 4 This intention is grounded not only in the need for
democratic legitimacy but also in a belief that the engine of political
judgment is persuasion rather than conceptual proof.5
Moving to the realm of public policy, several concrete implications

emerge from the argument's bedrock appeal to democracy. First,
federal subsidy dollars should be administered as much as possible
from the state and local levels. One method of doing this is by
disbursing funds through federal block grants to state and local arts
groups. America's National Endowment for the Arts has already
instituted this approach in much of its funding, although motivated
more by fiscal necessity than democratic principle. This method
bolsters local influence over decisions about which projects and which
artists ultimately receive funding. Localized decision authority was
143
CHAPTER FIVE
endorsed earlier as a means of assuaging the offended taxpayer, thus

casting the arts subsidy selection process as roughly analogous to
the process of selecting school textbooks. While the democratic
commitment may not require complete delegation of federal
authority, states and localities should in general be able to allocate
these monies as they see fit--or even to refuse them entirely.
While the justification's emphasis on localized decision-making is

undeniable, there are important practical reasons for maintaining a
federal presence. Administering the block grants themselves requires
significant federal involvement. Perhaps most significantly, federal
authorities must evaluate state and local arts programs and determine
which are most worthy of public support. And once the block grants
are awarded, federal oversight may be necessary to insure decisions
made on the local level comply with the democratic tenets of
nontepression and nondiscrimination. 6 This watchdog function could
be tailored in a variety of ways, some more substantive than others.
A minimal presence might involve no more than formulating
informational guidelines on running an effective subsidy program,
or guidance on distributing funds in nondiscriminatory and
nontepressive ways. A more active presence might include periodic
audits of local procedures and expenditures, as well as incentive
programs to encourage complia~ce with specialized, federal arts
initiatives. A "federal presence could also serve to adjudicate disputes
or grievances that arise at the local level.
Some arts advocates will no doubt desire that a portion of subsidy

funds be excluded from the block grant system and distributed
directly from the federal level. These advocates may be uncomfortable
with taking selection authority away from blue-ribbon panels of
artists and critics, perhaps fearing it will lead to the funding oflower-
quality art. States and localities, the argument goes, are more likely
144
PUBLIC POLICIES AND CONCLUSIONS
to select artworks that reflect the lowest common denominator of

public taste rather than true artistic excellence. Retaining a pool for
direct federal funding would thus serve as a catch-all for artistically
valuable projects rejected at the local level.
But while there is a kernel of truth in this argument, it should be

flatly rejected. Theoretically, such a policy conflicts with a
commitment to democracy and marks a return to perfectionism.
Such a policy would thus reintroduce the very problems the
democratic justification was designed to avoid. Furthermore, the
argument's underlying criticism of local decision-making is
empirically shaky at best. Quite apart from substantive disagreements
about what constitutes good art, this criticism assumes that regional,
state, and local arts organizations lack sufficient expertise or resolve
to make competent subsidy decisions. This assumption is simply
false. In recent years, regional and state arts councils have been among
America's most vibrant cultural engines. Furthermore, these
organizations have shown remarkable resolve in the face of public
scrutiny and criticism. For example, it is often overlooked that one
of the most controversial of all NEA-subsidized works, Andres
Serrano's Piss Christ, was selected for funding not by the NEA itself
but by a regional arts organization-the Southeastern Center for
Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC.
The second policy implication of the democratic justification is that

it privileges the dissemination of existing artworks over the creation
of new works. The democratic constraint of nondiscrimination entails
that whatever curricula the polity selects, these curricula must be
accessible to all citizens, regardless of geographical location or
financial ability. To the extent geographic remoteness is indeed
irrelevant in deciding whether a citizen should receive a public
education, then insuring access to publicly-subsidized culture would
145
CHAPTER FIVE
also assume priority over creating highly innovative new works.

Gutmann describes this clash of ideals when she writes that
"Channeling federal and state funds to local theater and art groups
may produce less excellent performances but more exciting
experiences for people who otherwise could never attend a live
professional performance."7
The democratic justification of subsidy indeed places greater emphasis

on dissemination than creation. As an example, imagine an arts
council faced with an exclusive decision between two competing
proposals. One proposal would fund a set of expensive, artistically
groundbreaking works, while the other would fund works that are
less novel artistically but also much less expensive to produce, with
the cost differential providing sufficient residual funds to allow for a
travelling exhibition of the artworks. Unlike the perfectionist
argument, the democratic justification would likely privilege the
latter proposal on the grounds it maximized public access while
maintaining acceptable artistic quality. Of course, over time trade-
offs could be made between the two goals, and thus in some years
the more expensive projects could receive funding. But while
occasional trade-offs would be permissible, the democratic argument
could not condone any policy that persistently omitted funding for
public access. From this perspective, subsidizing art exhibits a
similarity to funding for public libraries.
This raises the question of whether the democratic justification

actually requires subsidy policies that emphasize dissemination
exclusively. That is, as long as there are citizens who live in remote
areas or who otherwise lack cultural opportunities, perhaps
democratic principles require government support to focus on
bolstering these under-served areas rather than enhancing the
resources of well-established cultural institurions. Yet just because
146
PUBUC POUCIES AND CONCLUSIONS
the democratic justification emphasizes dissemination, this emphasis

need not be exclusive. It is true that the democratic justification
does not privilege artistic excellence as its primary selection criterion;
nonetheless, this does not mean artistic excellence can be given no
weight at all in subsidy decisions. It is more realistic to interpret the
justification as privileging dissemination while also recognizing the
relevance of desiderata such as artistic innovation and novelty. 8
Determining the most appropriate mix of these factors is once again
an issue best left for local deliberations.
A third policy implication of the democratic argument concerns the

funding of controversial artworks. If one takes seriously the
democratic ideal that authority over education should be
decentralized, then a state or local arts agency would seem politically
justified in refusing to fund projects that local citizens find distasteful
or offensive. This idea was discussed earlier in connection with the
Helms Amendment, a proposal which would have prohibited
government funding for artworks deemed indecent or immoral. At
the time it was proposed, many subsidy advocates-most notably
performance artist Karen Finley-assailed the Helms Amendment
as censorship. But while it would no doubt have been bad policy,
this amendment would not have constituted censorship. In fact, the
issue of \lrt subsidy makes little, if any, contact with the issue of
censorship. A government is guilty of censorship when it prevents
an artist from creating or displaying particular artworks. But refusing
to finance particular works is a different matter entirely. Even denying
funding for explicitly political reasons is not censorship, for in no
way does it prevent the artist from creating or displaying her art or
anything else. A refusal to fund a particular artwork is analogous
to-and perhaps even less problematic than-a state textbook
committee deciding to reject a particular textbook for classroom
use. Denying subsidy may make an artist's life more difficult, but it
147
CHAPTER FIVE
is hardly censorship.
This discussio~ suggests there is a profound tension between an

artist's freedom of expression and the public narure of subsidy. While
artists may create their works in relative privacy, and while artistic
expression enjoys the same political protections as other non-harmful
speech, publicly funding an artist's work is neither private nor apolitical.
This tension between artistic expression and democratic control was
clearly in evidence during the furor over Richard Serra's publicly-
funded sculpture, Tilted Arc. In 1979, the U.S. General Services
Administration, on recommendation of an NEA review panel,
commissioned Serra to conceive and construct a site-specific sculpture
for permanent display at Federal Plaza in New York City. Serra
completed the commission in 1981, with the installation of Tilted
Arc: a curved steel wall eight feet tall and 120 feet long (Figure 4).
Almost immediately, the sculpture drew vehement criticism from
local citizens. Some complained Tilted Arc diminished social
interaction on the plaza because it disrupted established patterns of
pedestrian traffic. Others considered the work an aesthetic disaster,
transforming Federal Plaza into a space that was no longer an
enjoyable place to spend time. Over the next eight years Tilted Arc
was blamed for a whole host of municipal problems, including
increased litter and growth of the local rodent population. 9
In this clash between artistic freedom and democratic control,

democratic control prevailed when, in 1989, government officials
dismantled the work and placed it in storage. Many arts advocates
testified before Congress that this constituted censorship and violated
Serra's "artistic rights." But while subsidy and censorship are often
conjoined in this way, the two are thoroughly distinct. A
government's coercively closing a private exhibition because it
contained offensive artworks would clearly constitute censorship. 10
148
Figure 4: Tilted Arc, by Richard Serra. Photograph reproduced by permission

of the artist.
149
CHAPTER FIVE
But a government's refusing to fund the production of artworks-

controversial or otherwise-simply is not censorship. Again,
censorship involves prohibiting or otherwise preventing an artist
from making or displaying her work. Not only did the government
not impede creation of Tilted Arc, it paid Serra to create it. Nor was
Serra prohibited from displaying Tilted Arc at another location. Serra
in fact rejected an offer from the General Services Administration to
move the work, free of charge, to an alternative site.
It is interesting to note that given sufficient citizen objection,

democratic control may even require the state to deny funding for
particular works. A program of government subsidy will always be
subservient to the outcomes of democratic procedures, and in
particular instances these outcomes may be incompatible with the
radical freedom of our best artists. Yet if the alternative is no
justifiable subsidy program at all, perhaps arts advocates should be
willing to accept a few strings attached.
II
A strategic assumption of this book has been that the debate over
arts subsidy stands in need of new ideas. This assumption has led me
to push the claims about art and democracy as far as they might
reasonably go. The goal was to justify subsidy while avoiding the
problems inherent to perfectionism. \Vhat has been offered is an
instrumental justification that exploits a connection between art and
a political commitment shared by virtually all citizens. Yet the success
of the Justification cannot be determined solely by the formal
soundness of its argument. There remains one nagging empirical
question: Will engaging art really improve a person's political
judgment?
150
The meaning of this empirical question can be interpreted in two

different ways. The first interpretation asks: do people actually engage
art in the interpretive, reflective way the justification requires?
Skeptics might argue that only a small minority engage art in this
active way, and that the vast majority-if they view art at all-
merely gaze passively at objects they have been told are important.
To use Danto's language, they are simply looking at aesthetic objects
rather than actively achieving them as artworks.
In response, I would first say that this criticism seems to rest on the
assumption that most people are either unable or unwilling to engage
art in an active, interpretive manner. That people are unable to engage
art in this way is untrue, and it is unfair. No doubt many artworks
are confounding. But that citizens have the ability to engage them
is evidenced by the fact that most citizens, if pressed, can give reasons
to support their assessments of an artwork. They may hate the
artwork, or they may find it trivial. But even a negative assessment
implicates precisely the kind of interpretive judgment the democratic
justification requires. Condemning an artwork requires one to first
engage the work aesthetically, making interpretations of its value
and meaning. Of course, some citizens will have more practice
engaging art than others, and their responses will often be more
thoughtful. But lack of practice does not imply lack of ability. Rather,
I think Kant was right when he said the ground of taste is a sensibility
common to all persons, even though some no doubt cultivate this
sensibility more than others.
Rather than cutting against subsidy, this objection illustrates the

educational value of discussing artworks. Discussion is a powerful
catalyst of the interpretive attitude, encouraging participants to
articulate aesthetic experiences explicitly and to support their
interpretations with evidence and reason. In the West, this pedagogy
151
CHAPTER FIVE
most often occurs in the study ofliterature. By reading literary texts

carefully, interpreting them reflectively, and discussing competing
interpretations critically, we practice the same processes of
deliberation and judgment the democratic justification extols. From
this, some may counter that the justification only really justifies
subsidies for literature. Yet the mere fact this ideal has traditionally
been realized with literature does not mean it is the only art form
capable of providing similar benefits. The democratic justification
is meant to encompass the visual arts as well. And this is something
it can do because it employs a broadly inclusive account of art, i.e.,
metaphorical representation. Because metaphorical structure
characterizes not just literature but many forms of art, the justification
is inclusive.
As to the claim people are unwilling to engage art in an active,

interpretive manner, I have ~everal responses. First, there will inevitably
be indignant philistines (to use Feinberg's phrase) who choose not to
engage the arts. Some may even deny art offers any benefit at all. But
as we saw in Chapter Four, the Benefit Principle overstates the force of
this objection by giving taxpayers veto power over any program that
does not secure benefits universally. Extending that argument, we
should question here whether a few persons unwilling to engage art
actively can justifiably disallow these opportunities for the many. If
an overwhelming majority refused to participate, then perhaps the
justification would founder. But surely my argument, like any political
argument, does not depend on there being unanimity. Thus, the issue
turns on the percentage of citizens who refused to participate. My
suspicion is that the number of citizens unwilling to engage art actively
is small. Of course, not all of those willing to participate actually will,
often because of limited income and opportunity. Yet limitations of
opportunity are precisely the sorts of problems a redistributive
government program is best suited to address.
152
A second response to the criticism is that even if some citizens are

unwilling to engage art, this would be nothing peculiar to the
democratic justification. Consider the perfectionist claim that art
realizes human potential. Unless potential can be realized through
passive osmosis, the perfectionist argument depends every bit as much
on citizen participation as does the democratic argument. Both
arguments assume a willing citizenry, even if they differ significantly
in their accounts of artistic engagement. In point of fact, I do not
think the two accounts really differ all that much, for interpretive
judgment would seem valuable to a perfectionist as well. That is, it
seems unlikely one will be inspired by any artwork without having
first reflected upon it and interpreted its meaning.
A more fruitful criticism of my argument would be to question the

efficiency of using educational funds to support the arts. This criticism
could be run in a variety of ways. One argues that the benefits
generated through subsidizing art accrue to fewer people than do
the benefits of more traditional forms of education. A major reason
for this is because, unlike primary and secondary schooling, engaging
subsidized art is not compulsory. Thus, because art will reach fewer
citizens, perhaps sound fiscal stewardship requires limiting subsidy
to compulsory programs, for these programs are most likely to bring
benefits to the majority of citizens. However, one might also conclude
from this that rather than being scrapped, engaging subsidized art
should be made compulsory! Given that much public education is
compulsory, this suggestion cannot be dismissed merely on principle.
Yet rather than pursue this more controversial idea, I would instead
point out only that if the efficiency criticism is taken to its full
conclusion, public funding would be ruled out for a variety of non-
compulsory yet highly beneficial programs. Most significantly, this
criticism would deny the political legitimacy of state-funded colleges
and universities, and public libraries. As we saw in the critique of
153
CHAPTER FIVE
libertarianism, merely dismissing the possibility of such beneficial

programs runs counter to basic intuitions about the purpose and
function of government. This criticism also assumes a questionable
criterion of educational success. Even compulsory education offers
no guarantee of efficiency, or even of success. Yet such inefficiency
does not render public spending on education illegitimate, for what
these funds create are educational opportunities. Such spending is
both justified and wise, even if some citizens will inevitably squander
their opportunities.
A second version of the efficiency criticism focuses not on breadth of

participation but on the educational efficiency of art. While
recognizing that the arts offer democratic benefits, it questions
whether other educational activities would accomplish these aims
more efficiently. Is engaging art the most efficient means of fostering
deliberation and judgment? In response, I would certainly admit
that using art as democratic education has its inefficiencies. But at
the same time, is not the trial and error of all educational activity
inherently inefficient? One must wonder whether this criticism is
overly idealistic. And while efficiency is a troubling criterion to apply
to art, two considerations mitigate concerns about its efficiency as
democratic education. The first is that engaging art, inefficient or
not, may well be the only means of practicing reflective judgment
outside political participation itself. As we have seen, public
judgment accrues not through study of abstract theory but through
struggles with the particularities of concrete, difficult decisions.
For example, engaging the particular struggles of Forster's

protagonist Maurice provides opportunities for engaging a difficult
life situation in all its detail, nuance, and messiness. Such engagement
is simply not the coin of theoretical inquiry, no matter how rigorous
or logically sound. It should also be remembered that the democratic
154
justification encourages citizens to practice the skills of judgment

within a venue that is politically insulated. For unlike mistakes in
politics, mistakes in judging art typically cause little harm to others.
As Aristotle points out, art can foster character by allowing patrons
to engage the particularity of a tragic choice and then simply leave
the theatre and go home to their rea/lives.
The second mitigating factor concerns the quality of benefits received

from art. Even though engaging art may not be perfectly efficient as
a means of democratic education, the benefits it does generate are of
high quality. For example, the benefits of improving citizens'
interpretive judgment are-from a political standpoint--exceedingly
more valuable than the very real benefits of bolstering tourism or
fostering public pride. Concerns about inefficiency are further
assuaged given that the arts can be robustly supported with relatively
miniscule levels of government spending. 11
So far, we have considered only whether citizens can and will engage
art in the manner the justification requires. Yet there is a second
interpretation of the empirical question, one that persists even
assuming an adequate answer to the first. This interpretation asks:
will even widespread, active engagement with art actually improve
political judgment? In evaluating this interpretation, it is crucial
that we be precise about exactly what the justification is claiming.
Perhaps the most common misconstrual of the argument is that
engaging art will transform each citizen into a political statesman.
The claim defended here is not so grandiose, despite the existence of
a persistent philosophical tradition linking aesthetic education with
social and moral sensitivity. 12 Will everyone who engages art become
a statesman? Certainly not. Will engaging art insure that you always
make wise practical decisions? Certainly not. If one construes the
argument this ambitiously, the justification is certain to disappoint.
155
CHAPTER FIVE
Defending the democratic justification requires distinguishing a more

modest level of benefit. While it is implausible to claim that engaging
art induces statesmanship, it is both plausible and important to
defend the claim that engaging art practices many of the requisite
skills and abilities of democratic citizenship. The justification turns
on a claim that engaging art develops the humeneutic preconditions,
or mental tools, of citizenship. Engagement with art encourages
persons to be more reflective and less prone to judging on transient
impulse. It promotes the value of seeking distance when judging
and of incorporating a variety of perspectives and competing
interpretations. And it gives citizens practice in tolerating the
discomfort of proceeding without fixed rules of conduct. Competence
in judging political meaning does not guarantee wise choices, but
incompetence almost certainly dooms one's chances for judging wisely.
It is perhaps most accurate to say art fosters skills that are necessary,
but not alone sufficient, for sound judgment.
To anticipate one other criticism, some may insist I defend the

justification with something other than principled argument. Most
importantly, they may ask whether there is empirical evidence to
support my argument. Not surprisingly, there have been few
empirical studies of art's effectiveness as civic education. Nonetheless,
one recent study clearly supports the existence of such benefits. In a
ten year study of over 25,000 secondary students across the United
States, researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles
(UCLA) found a "robust" and "systematic" correlation between arts
engagement and educational performance. 13 This correlation obtained
across several educational categories. As would be expected, the study
found correlation between artistic engagement and the development
of skills in aesthetic appreciation.
More interesting was the study's finding of a positive correlation
156
between arts participation and general educational achievement. The

study found that students actively engaged with the arts tended toward
higher achievement across a range of subjects, both hermeneutical
pursuits such as English and history and applied pursuits such as
reading and geography. 14 The study concluded that secondary students
who had little involvement with the arts were more often "bored in
school" and had a drop-out rate 45 percent higher than students highly
involved with the arts. IS Because researchers designed the study to
isolate for family income and parental education, they were also able
to claim similar correlation among students from "the lowest parent
education and income quartile."16
In the category most germane to my argument, the UCLA study

found correlation between ar::s participation and citizenship.
Researchers found that exposure to the arts corresponded to an
increased likelihood of community service. In wording reminiscent
of Aristotle and Nussbaum, the report concludes that arts
participation appeared to engender an "empathy and general
attachment to the larger values of... society."l7 James Catterral, the
study's principal investigator, notes that his research team did not
pursue "the theoretical rationales for why the arts might matter in
the ways suggested, although much could be said about such
foundations." I submit that the argument for arts subsidy offered
here is in fact an exploration of these theoretical foundations. The
Kantian/Aristotelian model of judgment is clearly compatible with
Catteral's findings, and it seems a plausible explanation of these
findings given the many phenomenological similarities it posits
between political and aesthetical judgments.
In deciding whether or not to subsidize the arts, it is important to

remember that judgments in politics-as in art-proceed not by
logical deduction but by persuasion. The question is whether we as
157
CHAPTER FIVE
democratic citizens judge the benefits of subsidy to justify its costs.

And if we do judge art worthy of public funds, this undoubtedly
justifies any taxes needed to act on that judgment. For if this book
has shown nothing else, it has shown that public spending on the
arts is not illegitimate in principle. On the contrary, democracies
need this type of education. Democratic citizens should benefit greatly
from the challenge of engaging metaphors. Applied educational
pursuits such as business administration and computer science are
tremendously beneficial economically and technologically. But when
it comes to developing the interpretive, reflective skills essential to
sound judgment, art's metaphorical nature gives it a categorical
advantage.
In evaluating competing subsidy arguments, it is important to

remember that unlike both the perfectionist and neutralist views,
the democratic justification enumerates benefits from art that are
distinctly political. Fostering the preconditions of judgment is
perhaps the most compelling benefit one could hope for in justifying
public spending. Given its civic relevance, this criterion might even
help us understand the propriety of government subsidies more
generally. As Robert Nozick has observed, when it comes to
government subsidy, we seem mired in a double standard.
Nobody asks why we subsidize farmers the way we do.

Is it justified by the public interest, by this that and the
other thing? ... Perhaps the correct principles wouldn't
yield subsidy of the arts and humanities, but right now
in our society, the correct, stringent principles are not
being applied to any other area except the arts and the
humanities. What kind of public announcement does
this society make about valuing the arts and humanities
when these are now held to a criterion and a standard
158
that no other arena is held to? For other arenas, nobody

is demanding they be shown to be public goods in the
strict economist's sense.... There is a special insult to that.
So, at least there is a case for either stopping the rest of
the subsidies or starting one here. IS
Perhaps there are not only economic public goods but also political
public goods that warrant subsidy. Analogous to the public benefits
of a sound economy and infrastructure, the latter tending to foster,
in this case, robust democratic participation and sound democratic
procedures. If this idea of a political public good is plausible, it
might consequently prove a useful criterion when prioritizing
competing demands on government funds. It might also be a reason
for raising the arts much higher in our policy priorities.
Many disparate issues go into deciding whether to subsidize the arts.

As we have seen, this judgment implicates political concerns about
the justice of taxation, the proper role of the state, and the nature of
representative democracy. It implicates profound aesthetic questions
about the nature of art and its value to society. Making a sound
judgment about the art subsidy issue no doubt requires that we consider
each of these perspectives. More unsettling is that we must first decide
how to consider them. Reflection, deliberation, debate, rational analysis,
and persuasiveness are all relevant, though not in equal measure.
Knowing how to proceed amidst such uncertainty is precisely the
challenge of judgment. As Aristotle said, practical wisdom is knowing
how to proceed when there are no arts or rules to guide us. Ironically,
this was precisely Kant's definition of artistic genius-a consistent
ability to "give the rule" to fine art, despite the impossibility of ever
teaching or learning how to do this using discursive rules. And while
Kant was right to claim artistic genius cannot be taught, he was also
right to claim good judgment can be developed through practice. If
159
CHAPTER FIVE
art yields anything close to the educational benefits I have argued for
in this book, the paltry sums needed to support them represent a wise
investment. Our successors may well judge us foolish should we not
make it.
In drawing out the implications of this democratic consideration, it is helpful to review

several of the competing ways one might choose to allocate educational authority. Gutmann
describes four such possibilities: the family state; the state of families; the state of individu-
als; and, the democratic state. The family state is Platonic. Because it assumes both that
there is an objectively best life for each citizen (i.e., to live in accordance with one's talents
and character type) and that the role of the state is to 'inculcate' in citizens a desire to pursue
this life above all others, the family state model suggests that educational decisions are most
effectively made by a central educational authority. In contrast, the 'state of families' view
allocates educational authority exclusively to parents, thus recognizing not only a moral
obligation of parents to educate their children, but also a parental right to "predispose their
children, through education, to choose a way of life consistent with their familial heritage."
A third view of educational authority is the 'state of individuals.' This view rejects the
family state and the state of families on the grounds that both bias children away ftom some
ways of living and toward others. It proposes instead that educational decision-making
should remain neutral toward particular conceptions of the good, emphasizing the value of
maximizing citizens' futute freedom and opportunity for choice. The fourth account of
educational authority, the democratic state, is both endorsed by Gutmann and assumed
here. Although it is perhaps closest in nature to the state of individuals in that it seeks to
develop citizens' capacities for deliberation, the democratic state of education is not itself
neutral, Rather, it seeks to inculcate a particular kind of virtue, what Gutmann terms 'demo-
cratic virtue.' Democratic Education, p. 28. See also John Stuart Mill's discussion On Liberty
concerning the moral obligation of parents to raise their children.
2 Democratic EdNcation, p. 42.
4 However, in emphasizing these democrati~ constraints I am not at all suggesting that the
justification as it now stands amounts to nothing, for in providing a plausible account of
why the arts merit serious consideration among our competing educational priorities, we
now have something of real justificatory value-a reply to the libertarian. Unfortunately,
we can now begin to see that this victory brings with it some further argumentative bur-
dens. This is because in defeating the libertarian we really have defended art subsidies in a
relatively weak sense, for what we have done is to block the claim that subsidizing the arts
is somehow illegitimate in principle. One might say that the case for subsidy as it has been
presented so far possesses roughly the same status as Gutmann's 'collective pride' argument
discussed in Chapter Four, where subsidies were justified only on the condition that they
have been democratically approved.
But it is unclear whether this is sufficient for justifying arts subsidy programs on
anything but the local level. While it may indeed be plausible to justify a federal subsidy
program such as the NEA by classifying it as a national education initiative, national edu-
160
cation initiatives by their narure require a highly-centralized authority distribution that is

more akin to Plato's family state than to Gutmann's democratic state, and thus the problem
of justification seems to arise anew. Because of this we must consider whether there exists a
fundamental conflict between the justification's underlying commitment to democratic
decision-making and the narure of a federal arts subsidy program. This question is impor-
tant because if such a conflict indeed exists, then my proposal may only be able to justify
locally-sanctioned programs and not a federal institution such as the NEA.
In working out of this impasse, it may help to consider the issue from a broader
perspective. That is, instead of considering the issue as exclusively one of arts subsidy, or
even as one of democratic education, it is appropriate to view this issue as raising the more
general question of whethet out commitment to democracy entails that the state acts legiti-
mately only when its actions have first been directly endorsed through direct democratic
procedure. Can the state justifiably enact national educational incentives in the absence of a
direct procedural endorsement? Clearly the answer to this question is 'yes: Only in a direct
democracy or under the strict 'mouthpiece' view of representation could this not be the case,
and our particular commitment to democracy entails neither of these views. We endorse a
representative rather than a direct democracy, and we adhere to at least a weak form of the
'leadership' view of representation, whereby an elected representative may legitimately ig-
nore or even go against the expressed wishes of the citizenry if he or she believes that doing
so will promote the public interest. Thus, while our commitment to democracy does re-
quire that educational authority be allocated in a way that is sensitive to local views and
preferences, the 'leadership' account of representation surely allows enough discretion for
enacting federal programs of educational leadership and incentive, which I believe is a very
plausible way of construing the work of an institution such as the NEA.
5 Viewing the issue from the perspective of representative democracy also gives us an addi-
tional perspective from which to view the actual work of a political justification. Whenever
a government, through its elected leaders, is no longer bound to act in strict accordance
with the expressed desires of its citizenry, then there will inevitably be 'gaps' between the
actions that these leaders take and the wishes of the citizens they represent. Typically, this
gap has two components. One is the gap that exists between the majority and the minotity.
Assuming that the leader is acting in accord with the wishes of the majority, then this gap
consists of a mismatch between the action taken (i.e., the views of the majority) and the
wishes of the minority. This sort of gap really is not peculiar to representative democracy at
all and would exist even in a direct democracy, unless the particular issue being considered
happened to enjoy unanimous support. On the other hand, if the leader acts against the
wishes of the majority, then not only is the gap greater because the action goes against the
preferences of more citizens, but it also requires more justification because it is in a sense an
instance of minority rule.
With this conceptual frame in mind, a political justification might well be defined as
the response that the leader can or should give to those who fallon the 'wrong' side of the
gap between citizen preference and government action. The gteater this gap is, the greater
the need for a cogent political justification. In the case of arts subsidies, a leader might
respond to dissenters by saying "While it is true that there has been no direct vote on the
issue, this program was enacted because it may well foster a stronger democracy, which I
presume is something to which we are all committed." And again, the goal of strengthen-
ing democracy itself may well be the best possible answer that a democratic leader can give
to justify an action that goes against the citizenry's wishes. It certainly seems more likely to
161
CHAPTER FIVE
be garner acceptance than does the perfectionist response, which might run something like,
"While it is true that there has been no direct vote on the issue, this program was enacted
because a life with art is objectively superior to a life without art." The primary difference
between these two responses is that while the democratic justification appeals to a value
that is presumably held even by those on the other side of the justificatory gap, the perfec-
tionist approach can offer no such conciliatory gesture. Furthermore, in allocating educa-
tional authority to localities, the proposed justification may also actually help to reduce the
size this gap, for the more that funding authority is exercised at the local level, then the
greater the chance that local citizens, who on a regional basis may likely see the issue of
whether or not to subsidize with much greater homogeneity, will be able to influence sub-
sidy decisions.
6 Democratic EciNcation, pp. 72-4.
7 Democratic EciNcation, pp. 265-6.
8 The democratic ideal of nondiscrimination may also argue for increased accessibility in
another sense. If citizens are to realize the educational benefits of engaging art as proposed,
then they must also possess the minimal level of skills needed to engage the artworks. This
is an especially important pre-requisite given that the educative claims being made for art
require that citizens engage artworks in a very specific way, namely that they render inter-
pretations of its meaning through acts of reflective judgment. Because such skills will not
naturally develop in an equal way across the citizenry and may be a function of wealth and
prior educational advantage, democratic nonexclusion seems also to justify additional (prob-
ably pre-adult) educational instruction in engaging the artworks in the 'active' manner
desired.
9 For a detailed chronology of this case see The Destruction 0/ Tilted Arc: Documents. Clara
Weyergraf-Serra and Martha Buskirk, ed. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991.
10 There would of course be standards of local decency to deal with, but even if the works were
deemed indecent, this would be a decision based on claims of prurience, not educational
standards.
11 At its zenith, the NEA's budget totaled $175 million dollars (fiscal year 1993). In subse-
quent years, NEA's budget has hovered around $I 05 million dollars. As a percentage of
total federal spending in the United States, the 1997 NEA budget represents 0.004 per-
cent. Data from talk given by A.B. Spellman, National Endowment for the Arts to the
Houston Museum of Fine Arts, January 1996.
12 See Friedrich Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education 0/ Man, as well as Herbert Read's Education
Through Art, both cited earlier.
13 Catterall, James S. "Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School." Report by
the UCLA Imagination Project, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies,
University of California at Los Angeles, April 1997, p. 10.
14 "Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School," pp. 5-6.
15 "Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School," p. 11.
18 Robert Nozick, "Symposium on the Public Benefits of the Arts and Humanities," Art and
the Law, vol. 9, no. 2 (1985): 166.
162
INDEX
Page references to illustrations are and rational activity, 16,81

included (e.g., 149f) art: connection with beauty, 34-
abstract expressionism, 34, 37 36; and democratic education,
Ackerman, Bruce, 30 67-68,72,77,113,137,156;
democratic justification of, 117,
aesthetical ideas, 44n49, 70, 104,
145-147, 158; and democratic
107n3
self-rule, 45-46, 123; and
aesthetic appreciation, 2, 17-18,
democratic virtue, 112, 123;
33-34,68,156-157 instrumental justification of, 1,
aesthetic judgment, 83, 157; and 6-7,9,67,123,133,150;
determinate concepts, 92; and intensionalityof, 70;
determinative judgment, 84- interpretation of, 72, 75, 77-
85; exemplary qualities of, 86- 79,151-153; intrinsic value of,
87; and existential interests, 88; 1,5-6,13,67,113,120-121,
and Kant,44n49,84-94, 103- 123,132,137n3;and
104, 108n22, 109nn33,35; judgment, 62, 80; and
public nature of, 86, 89-90; meaning, 72, 74-75,151; as
reflective nature of, 84 metaphorical representations,
American Family Association 70-72,152,158; modern
(AFA), 43n20, 124 theory of, 68-71; potential for
decreasing public acrimony of,
anti-realism, 30
99-100; potential for fostering
Arendt, Hannah, 8, 65n29, 84,
diversity of thought of, 68, 98,
88,90-91,102-103
103; potential for fostering
Aristotle, 8,155,157; on beauty, empathy of, 100, 105; potential
42n7; and fellow-feeling, 82, for psychological
90; perfectionist philosophy of, transformation and therapy of,
15; and phronesis, 80-83, 86, 99; and practical wisdom, 82;
89, 100, 102, 108n22, 159;
163
INDEX·
as a primary good, 22 block grants, federal, 143-144

artistic appreciation. See aesthetic Brighouse, Harry, 112
appreciation Brillo Box (Warhol), 69
artistic content, 98-107 broadened thought, 91, 94,103,
artistic form, 98 105
artists: contractual production Butger, Pieter, 44n48
requirements of, 17; and cult of Carroll, Noel, 34-36
genius, 37; and cultural
Catterral, James, 157
excellence, 37-39; freedom of
censorship, 147-148
expression and democratic
control, 148; intentions of, Cest n'es pas un pipe (Magritte), 74
139n29; and originality, 38- civil society, 32-33, 64n20, 133
41; perfectionists' emphasis on,
Cohen, Carl, 55-56
16-17; reconstructive, 41
collective pride, 112, 160n4
arts councils, 145
common sense (sensus communis),
arts education, 135
89-93
artworld, 11n2, 36 consequentialist justification, 52-
autonomy of citizens, 23-25, 52, 54, 64n15
55-58, 133-134 constitutional democracy, 48, 50,
avant-garde, 38-39 62n3. See also democracy
Banfield, Edward, 115-116 cubism, 34
Barber, Benjamin, 57-58, 62, cult of genius, 37
65n29,82 cultural excellence, 36-41
beauty, 18,34-36, 42n7, 44n49, cultural perfection. See
83,85 perfectionists/perfectionism
Beiner, Ronald, 93-94, 103-104 DadalDadaists, 3, 34, 69
benefit principle, 114, 119-125, Danto, Arthur C, 8, 33,151; and
130-131,152 artistic content, 105-106;
Berlin, Isaiah, 31 formulation of philosophy of
Bernstein, Richard, 65n29 art, 69-71; and intensional
nature of artworks, 70; and
Black, Max, 107 n3
164
INDEX
interpretation, 72 145-147; and interpretive

deconstructive art, 40--41 judgment, 151; and proper role
of the state, 132-137; and
deliberative character, 60, 65n29
state/local control of subsidies,
deliberative democracy, 56-61,
10, 129, 144
65n22; and persuasion, 96;
democratic perfectionism, 112-
skills for, 8, 77, 88; and
113
validation of judgment, 94
democratic self-rule, 49, 128, 133;
democracy: commitment to, 7-8,
and art, 45-46, 123; and
49-59,67,133,135,141,145;
democratic education, 62; and
consequentialist justification of,
paternalism, 136
52-54, 64n15; and government
sponsorship of values, 27-29; democratic virtue, 112, 123, 136,
and imagination, 60, 68; and 160n1
individual rights, 50; determinate concepts, 86, 92
instrumental justification of, determinative judgment, 84-85
48,50-56; intrinsic value of,
Dewey, John, 9, 60, 68
49,54; justification of, 63n7;
and liberalism, 8, 46-49; and discourse of originality, 38-41
morally offended taxpayers, disinterestedness, 87-89, 94
127-128; participatory diversity of thought, 68, 98, 100,
justification of, 52-53, 63n14 103
democratic education, 8,59-62, Dworkin, Ronald, 18,20-21,73-
112, 136-137, 142; and art, 2, 75, 136
67-68,72,77,113,137,156;
education: achievement in, 157;
and artistic content, 99; and
arts, 135; curricular content in,
democratic self-rule, 62; and
118, 142; local authority in,
interpretation, 138n 7; and 142-143, 160n1; public, 117-
taxation, 117
118,134-135,153-154. See
democratic judgment, 82 also democratic education
democratic justification: and elitism, 42n15
benefit principle, 131; and
empathy, 82, 100-103, 105
benefits of art, 117, 158; and
enlarged thought, 91, 94,103,
democratic self-rule, 123, 128;
105
and dissemination of artworks,
165
INDEX
existential interests, 87-88 112-113; and democratic

expressive art, 71 virtue, 112, 160nl; and
political judgment, 65n29
Feinberg, Joel, 11n8, 44n46, 119,
120-122,152 Guyer, Paul, 103, 106
fellow-feeling, 82, 90. See also Haksar, Vinit, 15

empathy Hamilton, Alexander, 58
Finley, Karen, 147 happiness, 15, 16
Fitzgerald, Neil, 107n17 Hayek, Friedrich, 50
formalist aesthetics, 44n47 Helms Amendment [sponsored by
Forster, E.M., 101-102, 105, 154 Sen. Jesse Helms], 129, 147
Gablik, Suzi, 39,40 Hemstreet, Julie, 107n17
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 65n29, Hicks, Edward, 77-79

109n32,110n58 High Aestheticism, 44n48
General Services Administration, historical knowledge and
U.S., 148 interpretation, 108n21
genius, 37, 159-160 human flourishing: and civil
the good life, 15-16, 20, 29, 132 society, 32; as goal of
government, 18; perfectionists'
government: and neutralism, 20-
belief in, 6,15-16,36,62,
30; proper role of, 2, 3-5, 9,
112,153
13 2-13 7, 138n 11 ; provision of
cultural options by, 26-27; and Hume, David, 3, 5, 82
role in promoting morality, 99 Hutcheson, Francis, 82
Gray, John, 25, 31-33, 64n20, imagination: in democratic life,
133 60, 68; in Kant's aesthetic
Greenough, Horatio, 3, 4f theory, 85, 104, 109n35; and
literature, 101-102, 109n30;
Gutmann, Amy, 48, 82, 146; and
in reflective judgment, 85
deliberative character, 65n29;
on deliberative democracy, 56- indignant philistines, 119, 122,
58, 59-60, 65n22, 94, 96; on 152
democratic education, 61, 112, indignant taxpayers, 11 n8, 119-
136-137, 138n7, 142-143; 125
and democratic perfectioni~m,
166
INDEX
instrumental justification: of art, and determinative judgment,

1,6-7,9,67,123,133,150;of 84; and imagination and
democracy, 48,50-56 understanding, 85, 102, 104,
interpretation, 72-80, 138n 7, 109n35; influence on theory of
151-153 judgment, 109n33; and
liberalism, 90; and mediated
interpretive judgment, 151-153
judgment, 103-104; and
Jones, Peter, 54, 64n15 political judgment, 65n29,
Jones, Ronald, 39 109n37; on reflective
judgment, 8, 60-62, 80-97, 158. judgment, 84, 86; and respect
See also specific types e.g., for persons, 24, 56,133; and
aesthetic judgment, political sensus communis (common sense),
judgment, etc. 89-93; Critique o/Judgment, 8,
83,84
judicious spectators, 82, 87, 88,
101 Krauss, Rosalind, 38
justifications: consequentialist, Kymlicka, Will, 24, 42n16

52-54, 64n15; democratic, laws, 51-52,73,75-76
117,123,128,129,131,132- Levine, Sherrie, 40
137,144,145-147,151,158;
liberals/liberalism, 64n20, 134;
instrumental, 1,6-7,9,48,
and democracy, 8, 46-49; and
50-56,67,123,133,150;lotty
Kant, 90; perfectionism
approach, 18,20,21,112;
critizied by, 20, 25
participatory, 52-53, 63n14;
perfectionist, 14-15; political, libertarians, 3, 9,19-20,114-
10,112,122,128,130-131, 118,120,160n4
161n5 literal meaning, 74-75
Kant, Immanuel: on aesthetical literary texts, interpretation of,
ideas, 44n49, 70, 104, 107n3; 73-74,101-102, 109n30, 152
aesthetic theory of, 82-97, lofty approach to subsidies, 18, 20,
102-106, 107n3, 109n33, 151, 21,112
157; and artistic genius, 159-
Macintyre, Alisdair, 93
160; on beauty, 44n49, 83, 85;
Madison, James, 50, 116
on broadened thought, 91; and
determinate concepts, 86, 92; Magritte, Rene, 74
167
INDEX
Manning, Richard, 121-122, 123, 124, 145; and Serra's Tilted Are,
131 148; state and local funding by,
Mapplethorpe, Robert, 2, 100 140n32, 143; views on artists'
use of subsidies, 42nlO
market decisions, 57
negative liberalism, 46
Maurice (Forster), 101-102, 105,
154 Nelson, William, 51, 54, 63n7,
63n14
meaning: and art, 72, 74-75,151;
political, 58,76,80, 138n7; neutralists/neutralism, 20-30, 32-
social, 82 33,132,158
mediated judgment, 103-104 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 16-17
mental states, 34 nihilism, 30, 31, 40-41
metaphoric nature of art, 70-72, Nozick, Robert, 8, 34,114-115,

152,158 118,158-159
Mill, John Stuart, 52, 160n1; on Nussbaum, Martha, 8, 101-102,

autonomy of the individual, 23; 109n30, 157
on government's concerns for objective goods, 18,29,34-36
citizens, 25; and need for objective pluralism, 16,31-32
diversity of thought, 98, 100;
objective values, 122; lists of, 34;
and negative liberalism, 46
and nihilism, 30, 31; Parfit's
Monet, Claude, 74 list of, 18, 34; perfectionists'
Moore, G.E., 34 belief in, 5-6,15-16,29,30,
moral incommensurability, 31, 33, 62, 121, 138n6
63n12,64n20 offended taxpayers, 124-130, 144
moral knowledge, 29-30 originality, 38-41
morally offensive art, 2, 124-126, Owens, Craig, 40
147 Parfit, Derek, 18, 34
moral ontology, 31 partici patory justification, 52-53,
Nagel, Thomas, 120 63n14
National Endowment for the Arts Pateman, Carole, 52-53, 63n14
(NEA), 1; budget of, 162n11; paternalism, 20, 25, 134-136,
perfectionist philosophy of, 13- 137n6
15; and Serrano's Piss Christ,
168
INDEX
A Peaceable Kingdom (Hicks), 77- 80; reflective nature of, 84, 85

79,78f political justification, 10, 112,
Peirce, C.S, 65n29 122, 128, 130-131, 161n5
perfectionists/perfectionism, 5-6, political meaning, 58, 76, 80,
145, 158; argument for, 15-18; 138n7
and artists, 16-17; and beauty, Pop Art, 3, 69
18,34-36; criticisms of, 6, 19-
populist democracy, 48. See also
33,99, 113, 137n6;and
democracy
government's role in the good
life, 20, 132; and human post-modernist criticisms, 64n20
flourishing, 15-16,62, 153; practical wisdom (phronesis), 80-
lofty approach of, 18,20,21, 83,86,89, 100, 102,108n22,
112; and objective values, 5-6, 159
15-16,29,30,62, 121, 138n6 primary goods, 21, 119, 159
persuasion, lIn8, 158 public education, 117-118, 134-
persuasive reason-giving, 11n8, 135, 153-154
75-76,79,95 publicity, 112
philistines, 11n8, 119, 122, 152 public libraries, 146, 154
phronesis, 80-83, 86, 89, 100, 102, rational activity, 16, 81
108n22, 159
Rawls, John, 17,21-23,115,
phronimos, 82, 83 137n3
Piss Christ (Serrano), 2, 43n20, Raz, Joseph, 16, 26-27, 32, 97
124-126, 125f, 145 readymades, 34
Plato, 100, 161n4
reconstructive artists, 41
poet-judges, 101 reflective judgment, 75, 84-86,
political education. See democratic 102-104,151
education respect for persons, 24, 55-56,
political judgment, 57-58, 150, 133
155,157; and Aristotle's Ricoeur, Paul, 74
phronesis, 108n22; and
Rorty, Richard, 65n29
disinterestedness, 88; and Kant,
65n29, 109n37; and meaning, Rosenberg, Harold, 38
169
INDEX
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 52, 55, Contemporary Art (SECCA),

63n7 124, 126, 145
Schiller, Friedrich, 99 Steinberger, Peter, 95; and
scientific inquiry, 80-81,85 determinate concepts, 92; on
Kant and genuine knowledge,
SECCA. See Southeastern Center
86; on Kant's influence on
for Contemporary Art
theory of judgment, 109n33;
Serrano, Andres, 2, 43n20, 124-
on persuasive reason-giving, 76;
126, 145
on subjective universality, 96
Serra, Richard, 148-150, 149f
sryle in art, 71, 106
Sher, George, 8, 20-21, 140n35;
subjective universality, 86, 92, 96-
and arguments for neutrality,
97
23, 132; on autonomy of
subsidies: and censorship, 147-
citizens, 24, 133; on democracy
148; democratic justification of,
and values, 28; on democratic
117,123,128,129,131,132-
education, 61; and mental
137,144,145-147,151,158;
states' role in values, 44n46; on
as educational expenditure,
moral knowledge, 30; on
112; impact on artworld of,
perfectionism and
11n2; instrumental justification
discrimination, 27-28; on
of, 1,6-7,9,67,123,133,
perfectionism and public policy,
150; justification based on need
23; and skeptical arguments,
for diversity of thought, 98;
29-30
justification based on potential
Singer, Peter, 54-55 for psychological
skepticism, 29-30 transformation, 99; libertarians'
Smith, Adam, 82, 87, 88, 101 objections to, 114-118, 120,
160n4; lofty approach
social meaning, 82
justification of, 18, 20, 21,
Sorrow (Van Gogh), 71
112; morally offended taxpayers
sound judgment: and empathy, objections to, 124-130, 144;
102-103; and interpretation, and National Endowment for
75; skills for, 82, 98, 156, 158; the Arcs, 42n10; objections
validity of, 86, 94 based on benefit principle,
Southeastern Center for 119-125,130-131,152;
170
INDEX
political benefit of, 106; state Washington, George, 3, 4f

and local governments' role in, Water Lilies (Monet), 74
10, 129-130, 143-145;
Whitman, Walt, 101
unjustness of, 22
Wildmon, Donald, 43n20, 124,
Suprematism, 34
126
syllogism, 84--85
Wise, Henry, 3
taxation supporting subsidies:
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 73,
libertarian objections to, 19,
107n11
114-118,120, 160n4; morally
Wolin, Sheldon, 89
offended taxpayers objections
to, 2, 124-130, 144; objections
based on benefit principle,
119-125,130-131,152;
Rawls' view of, 22; unjustness
of, 113,114-131
taxpayers: indignant, 119-125;
offended, 124-130, 144;
philistine, 11n8, 119, 122
Taylor, Charles, 16, 65n29,
107nlO
thought: broadened or enlarged,
91,94,103,105; diversity of,
68,98, 100, 103
Tilted Arc (Serra), 148-150, 149f
tourism, 7,14
tradition of the new, 38
understanding, 85, 109n35
United States. General Services
Administration, 148
value pluralism, 16,33,96-97
Van Gogh, Vincent, 71
Warhol, Andy, 69
171
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ackerman, Bruce. Socialjustice in the Liberal State. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1980.
Almond, Gabriel A. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five
Nations. New York: Little Brown, 1965.
Arendt, Hannah. Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982.
Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics. W.D. Ross, trans., in The Basic Works ofAristotle,
Richard McKeon, ed. New York: Random House, 1941.
Aristotle. Poetics. Ingram Bywater, trans., in The Basic Works ofAristotle, Richard
McKeon, ed. New York: Random House, 1941.
Aristotle. Rhetoric. W. Rhys Roberts, trans., in The Basic Works of Aristotle,
Richard McKeon, ed. New York: Random House, 1941.
Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Brian Wallis, ed. Boston: The
New Museum ofConremporary Art, 1984.
Arthur, John. Democracy: Theory and Practice. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing
Co., 1992.
Barry, Brian. "Is Democracy Special?" in Peter Laslett and James Fishkin, eds.
Philosophy, Politics and Society, 5th series. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1979,pp.156-171.
Banfield, Edward. The Democratic Muse: Visual Arts and the Public Interest. New
York: Basic Books, 1984.
Barber, Benjamin R. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
Barber, Benjamin R. The Conquest of Politics: Liberal Philosophy in Democratic
Times, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
173
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beardsley, Monroe. "The Inrentional Fallacy," with William Wimsatt, in The

Verbal Icon, Chapter 1, University of Kenrucky Press, 1954.
Beardsley, Monroe. "Aesthetic Welfare, Aesthetic Justice, and Educational
Policy," in The Aesthetic Point o/View. M. Wreen and D. Callen, eds. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1982.
Beiner, Ronald. Politicaljudgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Beiner, Ronald. "Hannah Arendt on Judging," in Lectures on Kant's Political
Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 89-156.
Berlin, Isaiah. "John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life," On Liberty: In Focus,
John Gray and G.W. Smith, eds. London: Routledge 1991, pp. 131-161.
Berman, Marshall. All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience 0/ Modernity.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.
Bernstein, Richard J. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics,
and Practice. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.
Black, Max. "Metaphor," in Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and
Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962.
Brighouse, Harry. "Neutrality, Publicity, and State Funding of the Arts,"
Philosophy and Public Affairs, October, 1995, pp. 35-63.
Brustein, Robert. "Culture by Coercion," The New York Times, November 29,
1994, p. A25.
Burger, Pieter. Theory 0/ the Avant Garde. Frankfurt: Surkamp, 1974.
Carrol, Noel. "Can Government Funding of the Arts Be Justified
Theoretically?", journal 0/ Aesthetic Education, Vol. 21, No.1, Spring 1987,
pp. 21-35.
Catterall, James S. Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School. Report
by the UCLA Imagination Project, Graduate School of Education and
Information Studies, University of California at Los Angeles, April 1997.
Clinton, Bill. Excerpt from a speech delivered in Bryn Mawr, PA, on 12/13/93,
as reprinted in The Washington Post, 12/14/93, p. A1.
Cohen, Carl. "The Justification of Democracy," The Monist, Vol. 55, January
1971, pp. 1-19.
174
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cohen, G. A. "Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality: Parr II," Social

Philosophy and Policy. Vol. 3, no. 2, Spring 1986, p. 77.
Cohen, G. A. and Graham, Keith. "Self-Ownership, Communism and Equality,"
injustice and Equality: Here and Now. Frank S. Lucash, ed. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1986.
Cohen, Ted, and Guyer, Paul. "Pleasure and Society in Kant's Theoty of Taste,"
in Essays ill Kant's Aesthetics. Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer, eds. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Cummings, Milton c., Jr. "Government and the Arts: An Overview." in Public
Money and the Muse: Essays on Government Funding for the Arts. Stephen
Benedict, ed., New York: W.W Norton and Company, 1988.
Danto, Arthur C. The Transfiguration of the Commollplace, Cambridge: Harvard
Danto, Arthur C. "Hand-Painted Pop," The Nation, vol. 257, No.9, September
27,1993.
Danto, Arthur C. Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present. New
York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1990.
Danto, Arthur C. Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical
Perspective. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1992.
Dewey, John. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of
Education. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1916.
Dworkin, Ronald. "Can A Liberal State Support Art? ," in A Matter ofPrinciple.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 221-233.
Dworkin, Ronald. Law's Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Engelhardt, H. Tristram., Jr. The Foundation of Bioethics. New York: Oxford
Feinberg, Joel. "Not with My Tax Money: The Problem of Justifying
Government Subsidies for the Arts," Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 8, No.2,
April 1994, pp. 101-123.
Fishkin, James S. Democracy and Deliberation. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1991.
175
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Post-Modern Culture. Hal Foster, ed., Seattle: Bay
Press, 1983.
Gablik, Suzi. The Reenchantment 0/ Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, Ltd.,
1992.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G.
Marshall, trans. New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1989.
Gert, Bernard, and Culver, Charles M. "Paternalistic Behavior," Philosophy and
Public Affairs, Vol. 6, no. 1 (Fall 1976).
Reading Rodney King: Reading Urban Uprising. Robert Gooding-Williams, ed.,
New York: Routledge, 1993.
Goodman, Nelson. Languages 0/ Art: An Approach to a Theory 0/ Symbols.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1976.
Graham, Keith. The Battle o/Democracy. Totowa: Barnes and Noble, 1986.
Gray, John. Post-liberalism: Studies in political thought. New York: Routledge,
1993.
Gutmann, Amy, Democratic Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1987.
Gutmann, Amy and Thompson, Dennis. "Moral Disagreement in Democracy,"
in Contemporary Political and Social Philosophy. Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D.
Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge Press Syndicate,
1995.
Guyer, Paul. "Kant's Conception of Fine Art," TheJournal 0/ Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, vol. 52, no. 3 (1994), pp. 275-286.
Guyer, Paul. "Autonomy and Integrity in Kant's Aesthetics," The Monist, vol.
66, no. 2, April 1983, pp. 167-188.
Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claims o/Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1979.
Haksar, Vinit. Equality, Liberty, and Perfectionism. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1979.
Harries, Karsten. The Meaning 0/ Modern Art: A Philosophical Interpretation.
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968.
176
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Heartney, Eleanor. "The Politics of Protest: A Conversation between Richard

Storr and Eleanor Heartney," The New Art Examiner, Vol. 20, No. 1.,
September 1992.
Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language and Thought. Albert Hofstadter, trans. New
York: Harper and Row, 1975.
Hirsch, E.D. "In Defense of the Author," in Validity in Interpretation. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1967, pp. 1-23.
Hollingsdale,J.R. Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1965.
Hume, David. "Of the Standard of Taste," in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary,
Eugene F. Miller, ed., Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985, pp. 234-5.
Jones, Peter. "Political Equality and Majority Rule," in The Nature of Political
Theory, D. Miller and L. Siedentop, eds. Clarendon: Oxford University Press,
1983, pp. 155-182.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Norman Kemp Smith, trans. New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1965.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique ofJudgment. Werner S. Pluhar, trans. Indianapolis:
Hacket Publishing, 1987.
Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Lewis White Beck,
trans. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969.
Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1974.
Kraus, Ronald. Rightness and Reasons: Interpretation in Cultural Practices. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1993.
Krauss, Rosalind. "The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist
Repetition," in Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Brian Wallis,
ed. Boston: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984.
Kymlicka, Will. Liberalism, Community, and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1989.
Lyotard, J.F. The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
177
BIBLIOGRAPHY
McEvilley, Thomas. "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian, Chief: 'Primitivism' in 20th

Century Art at the Museum of Modern Art in 1984," Art/orum, November,
1984 pp. 28-39.
Manning, Richard. "Intrinsic Value and Overcoming Feinberg's Benefit
Principle," Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 8, No.2, April 1994, pp. 125-
139.
Marcuse, Herbert. The Aesthetic Dimension. Boston: Beacon Press, 1977.
Mawyer, Martin. "Pull the Plug: Abolish the National Endowment for the
Arts," special report (undated) by the Christian Action Network, Forest,
VA.
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1947.
Mill, John Stuart. Principles of Political Economy, vol. 2. New York: Collier &
Sons, 1900.
Miller, James. Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1984.
Nathan, Daniel O. "Liberal Principles and Government Support for the Arts,"
Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol.8, No.2, April 1994, pp. 141-151.
Nelson, William. On Justifying Democracy. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1980.
Nagel, Dworkin, Nozick, et al. "Symposium on the Public Benefits of the
Arts and Humanities," Columbia Journal of Art and the Law, vol. 9 (1984).
"Chronology ofConttoversy," press release from the National Endowment for
the Arts, 1992.
National Endowment for the Arts, "Statement of Mission," Application Guidelines
Document, OMB No. 3135-0049, August 1991.
Nehamas, Alexander. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge: Harvard
Nelson, William. OnJustifying Democracy. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1980.
Netzer, Dick. The Subsidized Muse: Public Support for the Arts in the United States.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974.
178
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Nussbaum, Martha C. Poetic justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Li/e.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
Nussbaum, MarthaC. Love's Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
The Voice 0/ Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education. Timothy Fuller,
editor. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.
Pateman, Carole. Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge
Pennock, J. Roland. Democratic Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1979.
Rawls, John. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
Rawls, John. A Theory 0/ justice. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard
Raz, Joseph. The Morality 0/ Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
Read, Herbert. Education Through Art. London: Faber and Faber, 1943.
Ricoeur, Paul. The Conflict 0/ Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics. Don Ihde,
ed., Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974.
Rosenberg, Hatold. The Tradition 0/ the New. New York: Dove Press, 1961
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. Maurice Cranston, trans. New York:
Penguin, 1968.
Ryan, Alan. "John Stuart Mill's Art of Living," in On Liberty: In Focus, John
Gray and G.W. Smith, cds. London: Routledge 1991, pp. 162-68.
Sagoff, Mark. "On the Aesthetic and Economic Value of Art," The Britishjournal
0/ Aesthetics, vol. 21, no. 4, Autumn 1981.
Seabrook, John. "The Big Sellout," New Yorker, October 1997, pp. 182-95.
Schiller, Friedrich. 011 the Aesthetic Education 0/ Man: In a Series 0/ Letters. New
York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1977.
Schwartz, David T. "Can Intrinsic Value Theorists Justify Subsidies for
Contemporary Art'" Public AI/airs Quarterly, Volume 9, Number 4, October
1995.
Singer, Peter. Democrac), and Disobedi.ilce. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
179
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy. Harriet F. Senie
and Sally Webster, eds. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992.
The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents. Clara Weyergraf-Serra and Martha
Buskirk, eds. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991.
Sher, George. "Educating Citizens." Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 18, no.
1, pp.68-80.
Sher, George. Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge
Steinberger, Peter J. The Concept of Political Judgment. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993.
Tamineaux, Jacques. Poetics, Speculation, andJudgment: The Shadow ofthe Work of
Art from Kant to Phenomenology. Michael Gendre, ed., trans., New York: State
Taylor, Charles. "Atomism," Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical
Papers, Vol.2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 187-
210.
Taylor, Charles. "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man," The Review of
Metaphysics, Vol. 25, No.1, September 1971, pp. 3-51.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making ofthe Modern Identity. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1989.
Tussman,Joseph. Obligation and the Body Politic. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1965.
Verba, Sydney. Participation in America.' Political Democracy and .:locial Equality.
New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
Wills, Gary. "A Cinema of Private Lives," Atlantic Monthly, April 1998, pp.
88-91.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. G.E.M. Anscombe, trans.
New York: Macmillan, 1958.
Wolff, Robert Paul. In Defense of Anarchism. New York: Harper and Row, 1970
Yardley, Jonathan. "When Art Goes on the Dole," Civilization, Volume 2,
Number 5. New York: Library of Congress, pp. 31-35.
180
Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture
H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Series Editor
Kevin William Wildes, S.J., Associate Editor
1. G. Motzkin: TIme and Transcendence. Secular History, the Catholic Reaction and the
Rediscovery of the Future. 1992 ISBN 0-7923-1773-4
2. H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. and T. Pinkard (eds.): Hegel Reconsidered. Beyond Meta-
physics and the Authoritarian State. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2629-6
3. L.B. McCullough: Leibniz on Individuals and Individuation. The Persistence of
Premodern Ideas in Modem Philosophy. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-3864-2
4. N. Capaldi: The Enlightenment Project in the Analytic Conversation. 1998
ISBN 0-7923-5014-6
5. K. Bayertz (ed): Solidarity. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-5475-3
6. S.A. Erickson (ed.): The (Coming) Age of Thresholding. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-5938-0
7. D.T. Schwartz: Art, Education, and the Democratic Commitment. A Defense of State
Support for the Arts. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6292-6
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS - BOSTON / DORDRECHT / LONDON

Art, Education, and The Democratic Commitment

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Art, Education, and The Democratic Commitment

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

ART, EDUCATION, AND THE DEMOCRATIC COMMITMENT

Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture

Randolph-Macon Woman's Colle!?e, Lynchburg, U.S.A.

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

ISBN 978-90-481-5450-0 ISBN 978-94-015-9444-8 (eBook)

Printed an acid-free paper

AII Rights Reserved

1 THE TRADITION OF SUBSIDY:

2 THE COMMITMENT TO DEMOCRACY 45

3 EMPATHY, INTERPRETATION, AND JUDGMENT:

4 THE POLITICS OF SUBSIDY 111

5 PUBLIC POLICIES AND CONCLUSIONS 141

1 George Washington by Horatio Greenough 4

2 A Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks 78

3 Piss Christ by Andres Serrano 125

4 Tilted Arc by Richard Serra 149

At a deeper level, the book exploits a confluence of contrasting

Today, unfortunately, a strict partition exists between the practice of

Another methodological confluence informing the book is that of

From a personal level, then, it is not surprising I would write a book

Any acknowledgements I make must begin with my family. I thank

Along the way many persons helped me complete this project. My

This book seeks to balance the subsidy debate by offering a

fosters aesthetic appreciation, here it is argued that engaging art

In one sense, defending such ambitious claims about art IS a

It is tempting to judge this objection as more an indictment of

before rogue movements such as Pop Art or Dada. One interesting

The second objection to subsidy argues that supporting the arts is

Figure 1: George Washington, publicly-funded sculpture by Horatio Greenough

delicacy to appreciate the subtleties of a fine wine:

It is with good reason, says Sancho to the squire with the

To the extent Hume's stereotype lingers in our thinking, it is no

Given that art subsidies do not enjoy unanimous public support,

government may promote objectively valuable activities because

Many people find the perfectionist strategy attractive because it

Of course, instrumental justifications are not without difficulties of

all justifications, that subsidizing art promotes tourism. Often

These difficulties notwithstanding, this book pursues an instrumental

In order to generate sufficient normativity, the book appeals to the

to democracy, and it distinguishes this commitment from a more

The instrumental connection between art and democracy is developed

If the case for art as democratic education can be successfully made,

A third virtue of the proposed justification is that it describes art's

Unlike many other justifications of subsidy, this argument also offers

appropriate model for administering an art subsidy program is to

Before moving to the work at hand, a few words should be said

This chapter examines the most prevalent justification of government

charter claims that

Throughout the ages, humanity has striven to go beyond

Therefore, it is proper and justifiable for a

This argument is the philosophical justification of the NEA. Before

Fully appreciating the perfectionist argument requires considering

alms to "bring citizens around" to what IS 10 fact a good and

Of course, that perfectionists agree on the existence of objective values

Mankind must work continually to produce individual

individual life, retain the highest value, the deepest

From this perspective, state funding need not be indexed to the

Yet while this interpretation of perfectionist principles is coherent,

A more plausible interpretation of the perfectionist argument is that

Ronald Dworkin captures the essence of the perfectionist justification

The lofty approach ... concentrates on what it is good for

If correct, the libertarian objection undercuts funding not only for

[T}he lofty approach seems haughtily paternalistic.