Cog Aesthetics Print Must

Beauty and Sublimity
Recent decades have witnessed an explosion in neuroscientific and

related research treating aesthetic response. This book integrates this
research with insights from philosophical aesthetics to propose new
answers to long-standing questions about beauty and sublimity. Hogan
begins by distinguishing what we respond to as beautiful from what we
count socially as beautiful. He goes on to examine the former in terms of
information processing (specifically, prototype approximation and non-
habitual pattern recognition) and emotional involvement (especially of
the endogenous reward and attachment systems). In the course of the
book, Hogan examines such issues as how universal principles of aes-
thetic response may be reconciled with individual idiosyncrasy, how it is
possible to argue rationally over aesthetic response, and what role per-
sonal beauty and sublimity might play in the definition of art. To treat
these issues, the book considers works by Woolf, Wharton, Shakespeare,
Arthur Miller, Beethoven, Matisse, and Kiran Rao, among others.
p a t r i c k c o l m h o g a n is a professor in the Department of English,

the Program in Cognitive Science, and the Program in Comparative
Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut. He
is the author of seventeen scholarly books, including What Literature
Teaches Us About Emotion (Cambridge, 2011), and How Authors’ Minds
Make Stories (Cambridge, 2013).
Beauty and Sublimity
A Cognitive Aesthetics of Literature and the Arts
Patrick Colm Hogan

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C Patrick Colm Hogan 2016
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For Lalita
Contents
Acknowledgments page viii
Introduction: why beauty? 1

1 Literary aesthetics: beauty, the brain, and Mrs. Dalloway 19
2 The idiosyncrasy of beauty: aesthetic universals and the
diversity of taste 46
3 Unspoken beauty: problems and possibilities of absence 76
4 Aesthetic response revisited: quandaries about beauty
and sublimity 107
5 My Othello problem: prestige status, evaluation, and
aesthetic response 162
6 What is aesthetic argument? 178
7 Art and beauty 215
Afterword: a brief recapitulation, with a coda on
anti-aesthetic art 245
Works cited 257

Index 277
vii
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of part of Chapter 1 appeared as “Literary Aesthetics:

Beauty, the Brain, and Mrs. Dalloway,” in Literature, Neurology, and Neu-
roscience, ed. Anne Stiles, Stanley Finger, and François Boller (Boston,
MA: Elsevier, 2014), 319–337. An earlier version of some additional
sections of Chapter 1 appeared as “Attachment System Involvement
in Esthetic Response” in Archives of Neuroscience 1.3 (2014). An
earlier version of Chapter 2 appeared as “The Idiosyncrasy of Beauty:
Aesthetic Universals and the Diversity of Taste,” in Investigations into the
Phenomenology and the Ontology of the Work of Art: What Are Artworks, and
How Do We Experience Them?, ed. Peer Bundgaard and Frederik Stjern-
felt (Dordrecht, Germany: Springer Verlag, 2015, C Peer Bundgaard
and Frederik Stjernfelt and Patrick Colm Hogan, 2015). (The latter
“book is published with open access at SpringerLink.com”; the chapter
of that volume “is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution Noncommercial License, which permits any noncommercial
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
author(s) and source are credited.”) I am grateful to the publishers
for permission to include the revised versions here. Earlier versions of
Chapter 1 and parts of Chapter 3 were presented at the University of
Mainz, the University of Vienna, Duke University, and the University
of Connecticut in 2013. An earlier version of part of Chapter 6 was pre-
sented at the Shakespeare 450 conference (Paris 2014). I am grateful to
the organizers of these events for giving me the opportunity to share my
thoughts on these topics and to the participants for their stimulating com-
ments and questions. I should particularly mention Sibylle Baumbach,
Martha Cutter, Deborah Jenson, Christa Knellwolf, Vanessa Levine-
Smith, Anja Mueller-Wood, Letitia Naigles, Alejandra Rodriguez,
Margarete Rubik, and William Snyder. Many of the ideas of the book
were presented in my seminar on beauty and sublimity at the University
of Connecticut. I would like to thank my students for their comments
and help in clarifying these ideas: Carla Calandra, Nicole Haiber, Rachel
Kinstler, and Paige Kolakowski, with special thanks to Katie Hires, Chris
viii
Acknowledgments ix
McDermott, Georgina Paiella, Evan Reardon, and David Smith. My

good friend Frederick Aldama graciously translated Lorca for Chapter 3.
Keith Oatley facilitated the progress of the manuscript with his usual,
unflagging kindness. Hetty Marx of Cambridge University Press was
everything one could ask for in an editor – thoughtful, communicative,
always helpful. Carrie Parkinson, also of Cambridge University Press,
was an invaluable resource on permissions questions.
Introduction
Why beauty?
The topic of this book is beauty and sublimity – or, rather, the subjective
experience of beauty and sublimity. The opening chapter draws a fun-
damental distinction between what we judge to be “beautiful in itself” –
what I call “public beauty” – and what we experience as beautiful, more
or less what Palmer and colleagues refer to as “feelings that would elicit
verbal expressions such as, ‘Oh wow! That’s great! I love it!’” (189). This
is roughly the difference between works of art that we acknowledge are
aesthetic masterpieces and works of art the affect us aesthetically. In his
memoir, Youth, J. M. Coetzee explains that he stood for fifteen minutes
“before a Jackson Pollock, giving it a chance to penetrate him.” But it
did no good: the painting “means nothing to him.” In contrast, spying
Robert Motherwell’s Homage to the Spanish Republic 24 in the next room,
“He is transfixed” (92). Given the resonances of Motherwell’s title, and
the “Menacing” quality of the work, it is probably better to say that Coet-
zee experienced it as sublime rather than beautiful, but the same point
holds. Both the Pollock and the Motherwell might be publically sublime,
but only the Motherwell was personally sublime for Coetzee.1
The focus of this book is on describing and explaining experiential
or “personal” beauty. In that description and explanation, it draws on
two primary sources: first, empirical research in cognitive and affective
1 In keeping with this distinction, I should, throughout the following pages, write either
“public beauty” and “public sublimity” or “personal beauty” and “personal sublimity”
(or “aesthetic response”). However, in order to avoid tedium, I will often use the simpler
“beauty” when the context makes the precise topic clear.
In connection with this, I should also stress something that should be obvious –
that aesthetic response is different from aesthetic theory as a discipline. It is standard
to begin discussions of beauty with a history of the discipline of aesthetics, most often
narrowly conceived in relation to the use of the term, “aesthetics.” As, for example,
Costelloe notes, “To speak of the ‘birth’ of the discipline and its desiderata, however, is
to say little or nothing about the pleasure (or pain) people have long taken in the states
they experience” (“The Sublime” 2). The usual practice would be akin to trying to
understand cancer not by looking at cancer, but by looking at the history of speculations
coming from people who used the word “cancer.”
1
2 Beauty and sublimity
science; second, works of art.2 In this respect, it continues the project

of my earlier book, What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion, maintain-
ing that successful works of literature and art function much like highly
elaborated thought experiments that can in principle contribute to our
understanding of psychological and social processes. (The esteemed neu-
roscientist, Semir Zeki, recently made much the same point about “Neu-
robiology and the Humanities” in his article of that title.) For example,
successful literary works often have a wealth of details integrated into
highly effective depictions of complex, socially embedded emotions and
interactions. Such details and complexities are usually missing from nec-
essarily simplified empirical research. In this respect, literary works are
a particularly appropriate resource for the study of emotion, including
aesthetic feeling. Of course, literary works do not have the important
experimental controls that characterize research in cognitive and affec-
tive science or social psychology. Thus we would not wish to rely sim-
ply on literary or related representations of, say, emotion. Rather, we
should examine the ways in which works of art converge with the find-
ings of empirical research – perhaps offering new interpretations of those
findings, or extending the range of questions and hypotheses we might
consider.
Aesthetics and Politics

Before we get to any of this, however, we need to consider a prior issue –
is there something politically wrong about aesthetics? The study of beauty
has a long history in the humanities and it has recently been of consider-
able concern in neuroscience and related disciplines. However, in at least
some Humanistic disciplines, it has fallen on bad times. For example, in
literary study, it is rare today to find writers concerned with the aesthetic
value of a literary work. They are far more likely to be interested in its
political merit. Indeed, there seems to be some tendency to view the two
forms of value as, if not mutually incompatible, at least in some degree
2 Some readers have been uncertain about how to understand my characterization of this
project as “cognitive.” There are at least three senses in which “cognitive” is used in
psychology and cognitive science. One usage is opposed to social. My use of “cognitive”
is not at all intended to exclude social psychology – quite the contrary. A second usage
is opposed to “affective” and means, roughly, information processing. I sometimes use the
term in that sense, as should be clear from context. There is, finally, a third, general
sense, where “cognitive” refers to a mental architecture that is distinguished from those
of such alternatives as psychoanalysis and behaviorism, or even folk psychology. In this
sense, “cognitive” encompasses “affective,” rather than being differentiated from it. For
example, cognitive architecture includes emotional memory. I often use “cognitive” in
this broad sense, including in the title of the book. This too should be clear from context.
Introduction 3
of tension with one another. When I discuss beauty in public talks, I

am sometimes faced with this as a worry. I have been fortunate in not
yet confronting outright hostility to discussing aesthetics, but rather the
more subdued concern that there is something politically problematic
with paying attention to beauty.
The possible problem is compounded by the fact that my analysis does
not lead to a critique of beauty – indeed, quite the contrary. The following
chapters are concerned primarily with describing and explaining aesthetic
response, a relatively neutral undertaking. Even so, it will no doubt be
clear to readers by the end of this book that I like beauty quite a bit and feel
that aesthetic enjoyment is a valuable, even crucial part of life. In keeping
with this, I agree with Wendy Steiner that “the pleasures of art, however
scandalous they have come to be seen, are valuable and worth protecting”
(Scandal 80; Steiner contends that there is a certain “hysteria behind the
current condemnation of aesthetic pleasure” [81]). Indeed, I would go
so far as to say that a great deal of what makes a human life worthwhile –
what gives rise to eudaimonia, the experience of “flourishing” (as John
Cooper translates the term) – is the presence of beauty. One of the most
wretched elements of Oceania in Orwell’s dystopia, 1984, is its terrible
lack of beauty. This is not, I think, accidental or some mere idiosyncrasy
of Orwell’s. Of course, the lack of beauty is not the main problem with
the society of Big Brother. But the misery of life there is inseparable from
its ugliness.
This does not mean that having decent shelter and adequate food, or
fundamental civil liberties, is unimportant. These are crucial and neces-
sary. Food is more important than art. Even from an aesthetic point of
view, there is nothing beautiful about people being famished, ragged, and
homeless. However, adequate provisions are only the necessary condi-
tions for existence. The beauties of nature, daily existence (e.g., ordinary
architecture), art, and science are part of what make life more intensely
valuable. I should note that I include science in this list because the
understanding produced by science is not only functional in the satis-
faction of needs or the facilitation of satisfying desires. It is also highly
beautiful. As the Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann has remarked, the
experience of beauty is fundamental to physics. Another Nobel laureate,
S. Chandrasekhar, goes so far as to say that “in the arts as in the sciences,
the quest is after the same elusive quality: beauty” (52).3 The beauties
3 Gell-Mann defines beauty by reference to mathematical simplicity. In terms of the anal-

ysis presented in Chapter 1, this is a form of pattern recognition. The same point holds
for Chandrasekhar, who cites Werner Heisenberg’s definition of beauty as “the proper
conformity of the parts to one another and to the whole” (Chandrasekhar 52; Chan-
drasekhar subsequently cites Francis Bacon to bring out the importance of “surprise”
of nature, quotidian design, art, and science are inseparable from our
cognitive and emotional makeup, the way our minds operate to process
information and the ways we feel about experience and action. Again,
that relation is just what this book sets out to examine.
On the other hand, it is clear that there are some political problems
surrounding beauty. For example, Frederic Spotts has argued convinc-
ingly that Hitler’s success was due at least in part to his manipulation of
aesthetic response. Indeed, Spotts goes so far as to maintain that Hitler
had “two supreme goals.” The first was “racial genocide.” The second
was “the establishment of a state in which the arts were supreme” (30).
Spotts’s book provides at least a caution for writers in literary study who
would like to see art as the salvation of a divided society, bringing empathy
and pro-social action into an otherwise egocentric and cruel world.
In the end, however, Spotts’s argument does not suggest anything
about aesthetics per se (nor would Spotts claim that it does). It rather
indicates two things. First, it points to the prestige value of cultural
achievements. The pursuit of in-group (here, German nationalist) dom-
ination may involve physical force. But it cannot continually be a matter
of force. It must establish itself in times of peace as well as war. Cultural
superiority – prominently including the “high culture” of the arts – is
crucial for that ongoing affirmation of in-group superiority.
But Hitler’s aestheticism is not purely a matter of gathering national or
personal “trophies” (as Spotts rightly characterizes Hitler’s collection of
paintings [219]). The second thing suggested by Spotts’s analysis is that
beauty and sublimity are emotionally powerful in themselves. Moreover,
his work hints that the manipulation of aesthetic feelings may facilitate
the manipulation of other emotions, such as group pride. Indeed, this
is in keeping with most moral discussions of art. In the standard view,
a work’s ethical teachings are made both acceptable and effective by the
pleasure it affords. As Philip Sidney put it, poetry serves “to teach and
delight” and the delight operates “to move men to take that goodness in
as well [71], thus the non-habitual quality of the pattern, which will also be important
in Chapter 1). It is, however, necessary to qualify some of the more enthusiastic com-
ments from scientists. As May points out, “an ugly fact trumps a beautiful theory” (20).
The key point is that the isolation of unexpected patterns produces aesthetic pleasure
in science as well as the arts. It does not follow from this that a particular pattern is
true simply because it is very aesthetically pleasing. Moreover, by this analysis, questions
such as “Does the world embody beautiful ideas?” (Wilczek 43) are not the right sorts
of questions. It is not that there is some objective property that constitutes beauty and
that may or may not turn up in the world. Rather, our isolation of unexpected patterns
gives us aesthetic pleasure. Thus the proper form of the question would be “Does the
world embody unexpected patterns?” – though the answer to this question is perhaps too
obvious to be interesting.
Introduction 5
hand, which without delight they would fly as from a stranger” (138).
The problem with Hitler, of course, was that the teaching was perverse;
it was not goodness, but the contrary. The implication is simply that, like
any other feelings, aesthetic sentiments may be oriented to good, bad, or
indifferent ends.
Other political problems concern human beauty. For example, Deb-
orah Rhode has presented compelling evidence that beautiful people
have unfair advantages in our society – for example, in terms of earn-
ings. “On the whole,” Rhode writes, “less attractive individuals are less
likely to be hired and promoted, and they earn lower salaries despite the
absence of any differences in cognitive ability” (27). Rhode is certainly
correct that this is a serious problem. However, this is not a problem
with beauty per se, not to mention the study of beauty. It is a prob-
lem with the use of irrelevant criteria in evaluation. Clearly, the “beauty
bias” identified by Rhode does not show that beauty is not an impor-
tant object of research. It does not even show that it is not a real value
(nor does Rhode claim otherwise [see, for example, 2]). Indeed, people
who may or may not be beautiful themselves make decisions that favor
others who are beautiful precisely because beauty is pleasing, precisely
because beauty is a value for us. The key point is that our values are not
strictly partitioned and confined to relevant targets of evaluation. Thus
we prefer beautiful people even when their relevant skills are inferior.
This is a general problem with human bias, not a problem with beauty as
such.
There is the further difficulty, directly relevant to the present study, that
a great deal of what Rhode and others address under the label of “beauty”
is not aesthetic response. It is sometimes a matter of conformity –
wearing the sort of clothing one is supposed to wear, for example. It
is often glamour – wearing clothing that is expensive and high prestige,
or simply having an extensive wardrobe. One of Rhode’s examples con-
cerns a taboo on wearing the same outfit to events that are a full year
apart (xii). Surely, this is not a matter of beauty, but of glamour. When
glamour and conformity are combined, we have fashion. As Jacobsen
notes, fashion can lead to such extremes as the association of “(self-)
mutilations” with “an ideal of beauty” (36). Indeed, Rhode stresses that
“dress, grooming, and figure are crucial signals . . . of wealth” (8). There
is no reason to believe that signals of wealth as such promote aesthetic
pleasure. The fact that people commonly use aesthetic terminology for
these signals and related prestige phenomena does not mean they have
much – or anything – to do with actual aesthetic response.
Similar objections to beauty come from feminist writers, such as Sheila
Jeffreys, who see “masculine aesthetics” (1) as highly distortive and
ultimately cruel to women.4 Jeffreys’s analyses are important and conse-

quential. Like some earlier writers (e.g., Susan Faludi), as well as later
writers (including Rhode [see 35–42]), she shows that the beauty indus-
try is harmful to women’s bodies and minds. However, her arguments
too do not undermine either the study of aesthetic response or the accep-
tance of beauty as a value. (I should note that, as far as I am aware,
Jeffreys has never claimed the contrary.)
There are three points to make about Jeffreys’s analyses, points that
should clarify and extend the preceding observations regarding Rhode.
First, to a great extent, the problems isolated by Jeffreys concern not
beauty but sexual desire. The two are, of course, related. Specifically,
there are emotion systems that enhance one another and others that
inhibit one another. In the opening chapter I argue that aesthetic response
is related to attachment feelings. The attachment system is neurochemi-
cally related to sexual feelings (see, for example, Fisher 103 on oxytocin
and vasopressin). Moreover, sexual desire seems to be inhibited by dis-
gust, while beauty tends to involve properties that inhibit disgust system
activation. In consequence, we would expect a man’s or woman’s beauty
to enhance an observer’s sexual response to him or her.5 This is perhaps
the main reason why we tend to think of beauty as sexually arousing –
and why we (perhaps less fully) think of what is sexually arousing as
beautiful. But, despite this tendency, the two are not the same.6 To a
great extent, what Jeffreys identifies as male aesthetics is actually some-
thing more like male fetishism. It is unsurprising that, in sexual relations,
men would often try to force their sexual preferences on their partners.
4 Indeed, the point is more general than the reference to “masculine aesthetics” may
suggest. For example, Yasmin Nair maintains that her cohort of “radical queers and
trans people . . . are heavily invested in their own hierarchies of beauty” (40; see also
Rhode 32).
5 This would be one way of explaining why “a man’s physical symmetry can predict the
likelihood of his female lover having an orgasm” (Chatterjee Aesthetic 18). The removal
of arousal-inhibiting asymmetries may enhance the likelihood of orgasm. Indeed, this
is consistent with work cited by Chatterjee suggesting that “rather than approaching
attractiveness, what we are really doing is avoiding features we find unattractive” (44).
6 Unfortunately, the common tendency to confuse beauty and sexual attractiveness has
consequences for research. For example, research indicates that women’s “preferences”
regarding what they “find attractive in a man . . . vary during their menstrual cycle”
(Chatterjee Aesthetic 15). The point is potentially relevant to aesthetic response, particu-
larly as it bears on changes in attachment sensitivity. However, its most obvious bearing
is on sexual desire.
It is perhaps worth noting that sexual desire is not the only propensity that is confused
with aesthetic response. Much research on “preference” is vague, or even apparently
misdirected. For example, some research on natural beauty involves isolating places that
people “would like to live in or visit” (Chatterjee Aesthetic 49). But aesthetic feeling is
not the same as wanting to live or visit somewhere.
Introduction 7
That is, of course, wrong. But it tells us little about beauty. The proper
way to respond to it is through opposing deleterious sexual practices
and supporting equality in sexual relations as elsewhere – very important
objectives, but irrelevant to the study of beauty.
The second point to make about Jeffreys’s analysis is that many of
the harmful practices she rightly criticizes seem to bear less on aesthetic
response and more on prestige standards of public beauty. It is difficult to
say whether people (men or women) actually find extremely thin, blonde,
button-nosed, teenaged women more beautiful (or, for that matter, more
sexually attractive) than plump, dark-haired, Roman-nosed women in
their mid- to late-thirties. What does seem clear is that a “trophy wife” –
thus a wife satisfying prestige standards – is excessively slender, extremely
young, and so on.7 The idea of a trophy wife is nicely illustrated by a
comment from one of the characters in J. M. Coetzee’s Summertime:
“Mark did not want [his wife] to sleep with other men. At the same time
he wanted other men to see what kind of woman he had married, and
to envy him for it” (27). In short, at least some of the “beauty” crite-
ria deplored by Jeffreys are criteria for giving a woman high appearance
prestige. They are not necessarily criteria that guide people’s aesthetic
response to her. Of course, it may be that many people happen to feel
greater aesthetic pleasure in women who are excessively slender, and so
on. Nonetheless, it seems clear that there is at least much more diversity
in aesthetic taste (i.e., what people experience as beautiful) than there is
in public prestige standards for beauty. In other words, if virtually every-
one agrees that a trophy wife is exceedingly thin, far fewer people are
likely to find exceeding thinness greatly beautiful. Indeed, if the anal-
ysis of the following chapters is correct, our aesthetic responses are in
part a matter of averaging across cases. Thus we would expect to find
that almost everyone’s aesthetic response would not be strongest for the
model-like thinness of the trophy wife. Rather, everyone’s observation of
ordinary women would make his or her aesthetic response at least some-
what more like the average woman, thus less extreme in slenderness.
The same point probably applies to many racial preferences, such as skin
7 Chatterjee notes that cultures differ in preference for slenderness versus plumpness.
He explains that this is related to whether food is plenteous. If it is, then slender is
preferred; if it is not, then plump is preferred. He gives an evolutionary explanation for
the phenomenon (see Aesthetic 20). There may be an element of that. But prestige is
fairly clearly a function of scarcity. Thus the data are at least as compatible with the
view that changes in scarcity produce changes in prestige. Indeed, it is difficult to see
how individual, aesthetic preferences could track the sorts of social trends noted by
Chatterjee. Thus, at least prima facie, it seems more likely that changes in slender/plump
preferences are a matter of shifting prestige standards.
blanching and hair straightening.8 These are commonly seen as a matter

of aesthetic response, but they are probably at least in part a matter of
prestige standards – in some cases, bound up with concrete employment
or other benefits.
Perhaps the most surprising research finding on beauty and politics is
that people tend to support social hierarchies more when they consider
themselves to be attractive (see MacBride for a brief summary of the
findings).9 Belmi and Neale show that thinking of oneself as attractive
fosters a belief that one is part of a higher social class or elite, which in turn
fosters support for social hierarchies. It seems likely that this too is linked
less with aesthetic feeling than with prestige standards and the partial
derivation of prestige standards from class hierarchies. As Belmi and
Neale write, “prescriptive standards of beauty often reflect features that
signal wealth and upper social class membership,” and “most societies
derive the standards of beauty from the features of the upper social class”
(134).10 This again suggests that the political problems with beauty are
at least in most cases not a matter of aesthetic feeling, but of prestige
standards.
On the other hand – and this brings us to the third point about Jeffreys –
it probably is the case that there are some effects of the beauty indus-
try that do bear on aesthetic response to human beauty. These include
some of the deleterious practices discussed by Jeffreys. Specifically, if the
analysis in Chapter 1 is correct, our response to human beauty should
largely be a function of averaging across experiences. As just noted, this
implies that observers’ aesthetic responses to women will favor women
that are heaver than fashion models. However, the prominence of exces-
sively thin women in mass media will also mean that observers’ responses
will favor women who are perhaps much thinner than the actual average.
The result of this is that the majority of women will appear aesthetically
flawed in being “overweight,” not because they are medically overweight,
but because they are heavier than the distorted average produced in one’s
mind by the over-representation of pencil-thin models and actresses. This
is likely to contribute to the distortion of women’s self-perception as well
as their perception by others (both men and other women), thereby fur-
thering body dysmorphia with its resulting pathologies. A parallel point
holds for men and athletic musculature. (On body dysmorphia and mass
media, see chapter 3 of Giles.)
Though body weight is widely discussed in the context of beauty
standards, other issues involve the same general principle. As we will see
8 I am grateful to Bhakti Shringarpure for reminding me of the relevance of these practices.

9 I am grateful to Marilyn Wann for drawing my attention to this work.
10 See Bourdieu’s Distinction on class and aesthetic judgments outside personal beauty.
Introduction 9
in Chapter 1, there are differences in male and female facial luminance

patterns such that there is a larger difference between the luminance of
women’s eyes and cheeks, for example, than between men’s eyes and
cheeks (i.e., the difference between circum-ocular skin and the skin of
one’s cheeks is greater in women than in men). The same point holds
for luminance differences between lips and facial skin. (There is some
reason to believe that the difference is natural [see Russell 1104–1105].
However, the consequences for differential response to male and female
faces follow even if the difference is created by the use of cosmetics.)
One result of this is that we judge women’s faces more beautiful to
the extent that they enhance these contrasts beyond the actual average.
Makeup and lipstick do just this. This is already problematic, given
the effects of makeup and lipstick (see chapter 6 of Jeffreys). However,
it has the further harmful consequence that the makeup distorts our
sense of the average such that women without makeup may come
to appear aesthetically flawed, due to “reduced” facial luminance
contrasts.
Aesthetic response also bears on racial issues. Again, if averaging is a
key factor in the production of aesthetic feeling, then the representations
of beauty in mass media may have a disproportionate effect on aesthetic
feeling. If an African American sees mostly blonde European women in
mass media, then his or her aesthetic preference will be for considerably
lighter skin and considerably straighter hair than if he or she saw only
Africans. In a racist society, then, it is likely that aesthetic preferences will
be distorted. It is important to recognize that aesthetic preferences are
still almost certain to be much less biased than the prestige standards. For
example, the prestige standard may not be influenced by African skin and
hair, whereas an individual’s aesthetic preference will almost certainly be
affected by his or her experience of Africans. Indeed, it is important
to note that the effects on aesthetic preference go in both directions. A
white person living among a large black population – in South Africa or
on a plantation in the pre–Civil War southern United States – is almost
certain to have his or her aesthetic preference strongly affected by African
features, such as skin color. Nonetheless, at least in a society dominated
by mass media, racial hierarchies are likely to have biasing effects on
actual aesthetic preferences, not just on prestige standards, and thus on
personal as well as public beauty.
These are, of course, serious issues. However, they too are not
problems with beauty as such. Class, race, and other biases in aes-
thetic response are, rather, problems with the representation – or
misrepresentation – of women and men in mass media. Moreover, it is
only through analyzing the operation of aesthetic response that we can
come to understand the way dysmorphic and related effects develop. In
short, far from indicating that beauty is not a fit topic for study, they
indicate that it is important to study beauty in part due to its political
consequences.
A further feminist objection to the study of beauty involves the iden-
tification of beauty with femininity. For example, Wendy Steiner notes
that there is a “traditional model” in which the “artwork . . . is gendered
‘female’” (Venus xxi). In connection with this, Steiner sees art as often
involving misogyny. But there are two crucial points here. First, the iden-
tification of beauty with femininity means that the rejection of beauty is
linked with misogyny (xix), so rejecting beauty is hardly the solution to
this problem. Of course, if we continue to identify beauty with femininity
and place beauty on a pedestal, then we are still engaging in a patriar-
chal practice. The second, and more important point, then, is that the
identification of beauty with femininity is itself a function of patriarchy.
Beauty is involved with a wide range of targets – male as well as female,
nonhuman as well as human, abstract as well as concrete. This is why
Steiner is right to say it is an important “task” for us “to imagine beauty”
in a way that is consistent with “empathy and equality” (xxv).
Indeed, in all these cases, the fundamental problem is that women are
not being treated as ends in themselves, but as mere means to sexual plea-
sure, social prestige, or even aesthetic enjoyment. Contrary to common
views, there is nothing wrong with treating someone as a means (e.g.,
in seeking a friend’s advice), as long as one consistently modulates that
impulse by treating the person simultaneously as an end in himself or
herself. The latter requires, for example, restricting one’s self-interested
actions to those that respect the autonomy and well-being of the other
person. In this way, even when beauty is genuinely involved, the fun-
damental issue is the ethical qualification of one’s actions, rather than
beauty per se.
In short, apparent political problems with beauty do not for the most
part concern aesthetic response as such. They bear, rather, on a series
of practices and conditions that surround or, in some cases, substitute
for such response. Even when there are political difficulties with aesthetic
response per se, that should motivate a response to the political conditions
affecting aesthetic response, not a rejection of any value to beauty or the
understanding of beauty. Indeed, such difficulties give us further reason
to study and comprehend beauty.
Beauty and Art

Before continuing, however, we should briefly consider an objection to
the study of beauty that derives not from politics, but from a surprising
Introduction 11
corner – aesthetics. As Wales notes, “aesthetic describes the percep-

tion and appreciation of what is ‘beautiful,’ and is most used in the
criticism of works of art” (9). The problem is that “aesthetics” may
refer to the study of beauty and sublimity, including but not confined
to the study of beautiful or sublime works of art. (As Vartanian points
out, “Aesthetic experiences are common phenomena” [261], not con-
fined to the experience of art.) Alternatively, it may refer to the study
of art, including but not confined to works that are either sublime or
beautiful. The difference is particularly stark in relation to modern and
postmodern art. In fact, I find modern and postmodern art sometimes
exquisitely beautiful. Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire is, to my mind, a won-
drously beautiful composition; Elliott Carter’s string quartets are deeply
aesthetically pleasing. This response is not, I think, wholly idiosyncratic.
For example, in visual art, Jean-Paul Sartre goes so far as to claim that
“in abstract art the fundamental link between creativity and beauty” is
“revealed in its pristine purity” (Essays 61), having been obscured by
traditional, representational painting. He goes on to Picasso’s Guernica –
a representational work, paradigmatic of Modernism – praising “its calm
plastic Beauty” (63). Indeed, in Sartre’s view, “The fundamental pur-
pose of experimentation is to give to Beauty a finer grain, a firmer and
richer consistency” (64). Nonetheless, it is clear that some modern and
contemporary works of art – such as Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (an
inverted urinal)11 – have nothing to do with beauty or sublimity. More-
over, even beautiful and sublime works may have various other purposes
and effects. In consequence, writers such as Silvia criticize aestheticians
for confining themselves to beauty and sublimity because “[t]he emo-
tional aims of literature are many” and “people experience a wide range
of emotions in response to the arts” (263; for an overview of some topics
in emotion and art, as treated by writers from Plato to the present, see
Neill).
Theorists such as Silvia are certainly correct that a great deal is lost if
we fail to recognize that there is more to art than beauty and sublimity.
But this does not in any way diminish the value of studying beauty or the
relation between beauty and art. Indeed, there is a converse danger. Silvia
is right that there are many emotions that bear on works of art. I myself
have discussed many of those other emotions in What Literature Teaches
Us About Emotion. But that does not mean those emotional responses
collectively form a coherent object of investigation. When examining,
say, jealousy in literature, I confined myself to jealousy; I did not try to
combine it with the various other emotions of literature. The same sort
11 See http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/25853
of restriction should hold for aesthetic response (i.e., the experience of

personal beauty or sublimity).
For example, I have nothing but admiration for Gabrielle Starr’s work
to become professionally proficient in neuroimaging and I fully appre-
ciate her attempt to engage in such research. However, her book on
aesthetics places a great deal of emphasis on a study in which she par-
ticipated where test subjects were given the instruction to evaluate works
based on virtually any sort of emotional impact, “how much you find the
painting beautiful, compelling, or powerful . . . rang[ing] from ‘beautiful’
to ‘strange’ or even ‘ugly’” and encompassing “works you find powerful,
pleasing, or profound” (45). This seems simply to create uncontrolled
variables. It is far from clear that the same affective and cognitive pro-
cess governs finding something beautiful, powerful, profound, strange,
ugly, or compelling. Indeed, these seem fairly clearly to be different pro-
cesses – hence the different terms.12 (Who would claim that if they find
something strange they must therefore find it beautiful, or if they find
something profound they must find it ugly and pleasing?) Thus it is not
at all clear what the brain scans reveal in this research. Starr notes that
“being moved by a work of art means different things to different people”
(57). But that further indicates we are dealing with different psycholog-
ical phenomena, phenomena suggested by this list of diverse and vague
or ambiguous terms.
In short, to isolate aesthetic response for study is not to say that other
forms of emotional response to art are unimportant. It is merely to say
that they are different and that aesthetic response is important as well.
To set aside the study of personal beauty and sublimity due to the many
emotions in art would be like setting aside the study of companionate
love because there are many emotions involved in marriage, including not
only companionate love (which is presumably absent in some marriages)
but all other feelings that spouses have for one another, which is to say,
all other human feelings.
Chapter Outline
As already noted, the opening chapter begins by distinguishing pub-
lic from personal beauty or aesthetic response. It goes on to present a
componential account of beauty and sublimity such that the greater the
12 Of course, there are cases where apparently diverse aesthetic concerns involve beauty
under different terms. For example, Zangwill notes that “being beautiful is part of what
it is to be elegant” (328, emphasis in the original). This does not seem to be the case
with the research cited by Starr.
Introduction 13
number and intensity of components, the stronger the aesthetic

experience.13 There are two information-processing components: pro-
totype approximation and non-habitual pattern recognition. In order to
avoid misunderstanding, I should stress right at the outset that the pat-
terning of a work may be (and often is) “formal.” However, we can expe-
rience aesthetic delight in a work when we recognize a (non-habitual)
thematically defined pattern, a pattern in story structure or character
development, a pattern in narration, or other features of the work. Thus
the pattern recognition component is not simply “formalist” (though,
again, it includes formalist concerns). There are several motivational
or emotion system components, two of which are particularly impor-
tant: reward system activation (roughly, “felt need”) and attachment (or
bonding) system activation. This analysis is derived in part from empiri-
cal cognitive and emotional research on aesthetic response. But it is also
derived in part from a reading of Virginia Woolf’s breathtakingly beautiful
novel, Mrs. Dalloway.
This first chapter presents universal principles of beauty, principles
that derive from the operation of the human mind and that should
13 Here and throughout, I am using “aesthetic experience” merely to refer to an experi-

ence of aesthetic pleasure, a subjective feeling that some target is (personally) beautiful
or sublime. I am not using the term in the specialized philosophical sense where it
refers to “a distinctively aesthetic state of mind” (Iseminger 99) that is “surrounded by
an impenetrable, psychological wall . . . that experientially nullifies all relations that the
work has to things outside the experience” (Dickie Introduction, 156). In other words,
in referring to “aesthetic experience,” I do not have in mind anything “distinctively aes-
thetic” in the sense of a feeling that is removed from non-aesthetic experience. Indeed,
each component of my account (prototype approximation, pattern recognition, reward
system activation, attachment system arousal, and so on) occurs routinely outside any
special aesthetic context. Of course, their configuration is in some sense “distinctive”
of the experience of beauty – otherwise we would not speak of aesthetic pleasure at all;
there would be no reason to connect delight in the beauty of a sonata, that a landscape,
and that of a poem. But the same point holds for anything else – from being angry to
watching a baseball game. They are in part continuous with other activities and in part
unique. In this way, one might maintain that the philosophical debate over aesthetic
experience is misguided in the way a debate over a “distinctively baseball state of mind”
would be misguided.
In connection with this, I might note that I do believe that there is such a thing as
an aesthetic attitude. However, it is a simpler and more straightforward matter than
it is usually taken to be. We commonly approach targets with particular purposes in
mind. Those purposes help select what features of the target we attend to. When asking
someone for directions, I focus on certain aspects of his or her speech; when trying to
ascertain whether or not the person is upset about something, I focus on other aspects.
In the aesthetic attitude, my attention is in some ways less selective – and thus open
to patterning across a wider range of properties. At the same time, it is likely to be
oriented by a particular set of cognitive structures that I have found relevant to aesthetic
enjoyment in the past (e.g., meter in poetry). It should be clear that this is not a matter
of being “distanced, detached, or disinterested,” as the aesthetic attitude is commonly
characterized (Iseminger 105).
apply cross-culturally and trans-historically. However, by their nature,

the components predict that there will be a great degree of idiosyn-
crasy in aesthetic pleasure. For example, our prototypes will differ from
one another, formed as they are by different experiences with different
emotional investments. In consequence, prototype approximation will
differ and we will find different targets beautiful or beautiful in different
degrees. Chapter 2 explores the range of idiosyncrasies that are likely
to develop in aesthetic response. To illustrate the point, I consider my
own reaction to a song interlude in a recent mainstream Indian film, an
interlude that I found particularly aesthetically pleasing but that I do not
necessarily expect other viewers to appreciate, certainly not in the same
manner or degree.
The nature of cognitive and affective processing also predicts that, to
a great extent, our aesthetic response to a target is a function of what we
fill in about the target, how we “concretize” (as Ingarden would put it)
or fill “gaps” (in Iser’s term). This aesthetic filling in – “implicit beauty,”
as I call it – is the topic of Chapter 3. Again, Chapter 2 moves from uni-
versality to diversity. This is important. However, there is a risk that our
account of beauty might overpredict or at least overemphasize difference.
Indeed, filling in gaps might appear to be entirely idiosyncratic, purely
a function of individual psychology. Yet, if it were, then artists could
never craft works to produce aesthetic pleasure. After all, artists cannot
anticipate the guiding peculiarities of particular readers. It would seem
to follow that they could not produce widely successful works. But, of
course, many artists do produce such works. In keeping with this, one of
the key tasks of an artist is guiding the recipients’ idiosyncratic responses
to simulate the storyworld and other aspects of the work in ways that
are partially uniform. At the same time, the artist’s skill is also a matter
of leaving open those aspects of the work that are most important for
a reader or viewer to fill in individually and even idiosyncratically – for
example, those that enable the particular activation of his or her own
attachment memories. Chapter 3 explores how artistic guidance might
be calibrated across necessary points of ellipsis or vagueness. In connec-
tion with this, it examines two works by Henri Matisse, a recent art film
from India, and a poem by Federico Garcı́a Lorca, considering a different
aspect of the problem in each case. In short, while Chapter 2 considers the
ways universals may lead to diverse particularities of response, Chapter 3
discusses how the most seemingly idiosyncratic kinds of response (related
to textual absence or indeterminacy) may develop toward forms of
commonality.
Having dealt with these two interrelated complications of aesthetic
response, the book returns in Chapter 4 to the general theoretical issue
Introduction 15
of just what constitutes such response, seeking to explain its components

more fully. Specifically, it explores four questions. First, what other emo-
tions may be involved in beauty and sublimity, and what are their rela-
tions with one another? Second, why are there two apparently unrelated
information processing components – prototype approximation and non-
habitual pattern recognition? Third, what is the nature of non-habitual
pattern recognition? Earlier chapters articulate a technical concept of
prototype approximation; however, they leave the notion of pattern iso-
lation at a more commonsense level. Finally, what is the relation between
public and personal beauty? The two are conceptually distinct, but that
does not mean they have no bearing or influence on one another. To
examine and illustrate the first and second topics, the chapter considers
parts of two novels by Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth and The Age of
Innocence. The section on the third topic very briefly treats the opening
of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. To illustrate the final issue – concerning
the relation between public beauty and aesthetic response – the chapter
considers an editorial board’s response to a poem by George Chambers.
Initially, the board members greatly undervalued the poem. They recog-
nized the worth of the poem – and, perhaps, experienced its sublimity –
only after the author’s reputation was made known to them, which is to
say when their assessment of its public sublimity was altered.
This case of editorial assessment leads us to the question of aesthetic
evaluation. Even after we have managed to set aside judgments of public
beauty, we are not simply content with our individual aesthetic responses
to works. Rather, we debate those responses and often consider other
people’s views to be mistaken. In order to begin thinking about this topic,
Chapter 5 expands the consideration of the relations among judgments
of public beauty, individual aesthetic response, and judgments about
individual aesthetic response (thus what we claim – or even believe –
that we feel about a work). Specifically, this chapter examines the effect
of Shakespeare’s reputation on my own thoughts about Othello. As it
happens, I do not much care for many aspects of the play. However, I
have hardly allowed myself even to think about what faults the play might
have as I have been so guided by the public stature of the author generally
and this work particularly.
In the course of the discussion of Othello, Chapter 5 draws on the pre-
ceding analyses of beauty and sublimity in order to consider what might
be some possible faults or qualities of the play. Chapter 6 addresses the
topic of faults and qualities at a more abstract, theoretical level. Specifi-
cally, this chapter seeks to systematize the evaluative principles that one
might rationally invoke in an argument for or against a particular aesthetic
response. These principles derive from the descriptive and explanatory
principles governing that response, as isolated in earlier chapters. For

example, one information-processing principle is that aesthetic enjoy-
ment results from non-habitual pattern recognition. A negative response
to a work may be countered with an argument that there is a subtle pattern
in the work that has perhaps gone unnoticed by recipients who do not
care for the work. However, aesthetic response is, precisely, response. As
such, it may be partially explained, but not compelled by arguments such
as those regarding non-habitual pattern recognition. In consequence, an
argument of this kind is not a demonstration of beauty. However good
one’s arguments, if one’s interlocutor continues to experience no aes-
thetic delight in the work, then that work simply is not personally beauti-
ful for that interlocutor. The point of aesthetic argument is not to prove
that a target is or is not beautiful – an impossibility for personal beauty.
(One might prove that a particular work is publicly beautiful, simply by
showing that most people believe that most people judge it to be beauti-
ful. But that has no normative consequences for beauty in the personal
sense.) The purpose of an aesthetic argument is, rather, to appeal to
one’s interlocutor to reconsider the target. That reconsideration may or
may not result in an altered aesthetic response. (The main theoretical
points of the chapter are already in effect illustrated by the discussion
of Othello in Chapter 5. For this reason, the chapter itself includes only
brief examples of the main theoretical points.)
Thus Chapters 1 through 4 examine aesthetic response, while
Chapters 5 and 6 consider aesthetic justification; put differently, the
opening chapters address descriptive and explanatory issues while the
later chapters take up evaluation or norms. The final chapter turns to a
brief consideration of what constitutes art. As already indicated, some-
times the question, “What is art?” is (explicitly or implicitly) mixed up
with the question, “What is beauty?” A number of writers have, quite
rightly, rejected any simple identification of art and beauty. However, to
say that art is not necessarily beautiful or sublime is not to say that art is
unrelated to aesthetic feeling. The final chapter explores the question of
how we might argue that a given work is or is not art.
More exactly, the final chapter starts by noting that there are different
criteria by which one may categorize a work as art. I begin the chapter
by proposing one criterion that is largely consistent with the influential
“institutional” view of art and related accounts. By this criterion, which
covers cases such as Duchamp’s Fountain, a work is art to the extent that
it is produced or received as a work of art – more technically, when it
is placed in a comparison set with works of art. But this does not solve
the problem of delimiting art. We need to have some further meaning
associated with the word “art” as well. We need something that tells us
Introduction 17
what counts as art when there is no relevant comparison set, what works
may be taken to set out the category initially – more generally, how a
comparison set of art may be distinguished from other comparison sets.
Put differently, we need some criteria by which we can give rational rea-
sons for establishing the comparison set of art in a particular way. The
experience of beauty and sublimity enters crucially here. Specifically,
this final chapter argues that the analyses of aesthetic experience in the
preceding chapters give us the means of specifying non-circular criteria
for art. As with evaluations of beauty, however, these criteria do not tell
us definitively what is or is not art. Rather, they tell us what might be
rationally invoked in an argument that a work is aptly thought of as art,
as opposed to something else, such as propaganda or entertainment. (As
explained in the chapter, these three categories are not, strictly speaking,
mutually exclusive. However, they do manifest distinct and only partially
compatible cognitive and emotional tendencies.) Such an argument can-
not decisively establish a categorization. It can only suggest that one
might have good reason to reconsider a work’s categorization as art or
non-art. In other words, in the case of beauty and the case of art, ratio-
nal argument succeeds not when it establishes a putatively right answer
(which it never does), but when it provokes thoughtful reexamination in
a single case and when it develops finer discrimination and fuller appre-
ciation across a range of cases. The chapter considers several examples,
paying particular attention to Arthur Miller’s The Price. Miller’s play is
especially relevant due to its avoidance of specifiable emplotment options
that would be more characteristic of entertainment than of art.
A brief afterword recapitulates some central themes of the preceding
chapters. It goes on to argue that the account of beauty and art may
seem to be challenged by anti-aesthetic works. However, at least much
art of this sort is newly opened to systematic description and explanation
through such an account. Thus, rather than challenging the book’s main
claims, anti-aesthetic art may be understood as giving them some degree
of further support.
Beauty has been the object of philosophical study for millennia.
Nonetheless, we seem to have made considerable progress in coming
to understand the processes of aesthetic response only in recent years,
largely through the development of cognitive and affective science,
particularly neuroscience. Even if they capture important truths about
aesthetic response, as I hope they do, the following analyses are neces-
sarily to some degree preliminary. They are intended as contributions to
an ongoing research program. That research is likely be most effectively
and productively undertaken if it involves both empirical scientists and
interpretive critics, each aware of the other’s work, and taking it into
account, but proceeding with their own independently defined projects.

We may refer to this as the integrative approach. This is different from
the imitative model of science-humanities cooperation that seems to have
become dominant in recent years – a model in which literary critics take
up the methods of empirical scientists, trying to design fMRI studies and
the like. Certainly some research of this sort is valuable. However, on
the whole, it seems likely that each of us will do best when stressing the
areas in which we have training, while seeking to integrate relevant work
from other, complementary areas. The following book is an attempt at
one contribution to this sort of integrative research.
1 Literary aesthetics
Beauty, the brain, and Mrs. Dalloway
Some empirical research indicates that beauty is in part a matter of

prototype approximation. Other work points toward unanticipated pat-
tern recognition. The following discussion begins by briefly outlining an
account of beauty based on these factors. It goes on to consider complica-
tions. These complications include the simple but highly consequential
matter of differentiating judgments of beauty from aesthetic response.
They also include the relative neglect of literature in neurologically based
discussions of beauty, which tend to focus on music or visual art. There
is in addition the potentially more difficult issue of the relative neglect of
emotion, beyond the reward system.1 Related to this last point, there is
the very limited treatment of the sublime in empirical research and asso-
ciated theoretical reflection. After considering these issues broadly, the
essay turns to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, examining its treatment
of beauty and sublimity. The aim of this section is not merely to illumi-
nate Woolf’s novel by reference to neuroscientific research; it is equally,
perhaps more fully, to expand our neuroscientifically grounded account
of aesthetic response by drawing on Woolf’s novel. In Mrs. Dalloway,
there are gestures toward prototypes and patterns in beauty. But the key
features are clearly emotional. Specifically, the emotions at issue in feel-
ings of beauty and sublimity appear to be primarily attachment on the
one hand and a profound sense of isolation on the other.2 Woolf’s novel
also points us toward other features of aesthetic experience, crucially
1 After I wrote the initial article on which this chapter is based, Starr’s book, Feeling Beauty,
appeared. Starr stresses emotion, as her title suggests. However, as discussed briefly in
the introduction, she treats art emotion quite broadly, not confining herself to beauty,
which makes the book less directly relevant to present concerns.
2 A link of this general sort has been suggested in passing by some other writers. For exam-
ple, Zaidel wrote: “Beauty reaction to art could be viewed as an extension of responses
rooted in biological human needs, such as attachment and care giving.” However, she
did not develop the insight. Rolls, too, draws some connection; however, he seems to
confine the operation of attachment feelings to “how beautiful a mother thinks her child”
(143).
19
including the emotion sharing that is a key function of the production

and circulation of art.
Beauty and prototypes

One straightforward way of taking up neurological research on beauty
involves isolating two cognitive/inferential or information-processing
sources of our response to beauty. These are prototype approximation
and what may be called “non-anomalous surprise.” Prototype approxi-
mation has been more extensively researched. Many studies have shown
that test subjects judge averaged cases of categories preferable to the
actual instances that go to make up the average. This has been found
for a wide range of targets, including both natural categories and arti-
facts (see Hansen and Topolinski 710 and citations). For example, fab-
ricated images of an average face tend to be preferred over images of real
individuals that contribute to the average (see Langlois and Roggman).
Responses to birds, fish, and automobiles follow the same general princi-
ple (see Halberstadt and Rhodes). Prototypical pieces of furniture tend to
be preferred to less prototypical instances. The finding also holds for dif-
fuse properties; for example, prototypical colors are generally preferred
to non-prototypical versions (Martindale and Moore 670). McManus’s
research suggests that the supposed importance of the “Golden Ratio” for
rectangles may be a function of prototyping as well, with at least “some
people . . . searching for a ‘canonical’ rectangle” or “typical . . . rectangle”
in their responses (179). Finally, the point applies not only to everyday
targets of experience but to aesthetic objects as well. For example, an
averaged sonata performance tends to be preferred over (non-average)
instances (see Repp).3
But there is already a complication in this research. Ramachandran’s
observations on “laws of aesthetics” (see chapters 7 and 8 of Tell-Tale)
suggest that beauty may not be precisely a function of averaging, at least
not in all cases. Rather, it may be an exaggeration of averaging, with an
emphasis on distinctive features. His example of Tamil statuary (Brief
42) provides a case in point, as does classical Greek sculpture. We may
3 One influential account of beauty is that of Semir Zeki (Splendors), who contends that
artists seek to represent an ideal that they do not succeed in capturing. (On the relation of
beauty to an ideal, a common view, see, for example, Gadamer 15.) Zeki is undoubtedly
one of the great neuroscientists of our time. Moreover, his contributions to the study of
art have been immense. However, the notion of an ideal seems too vague (and otherwise
problematic, as Carey has argued at length [see 83–88]). Insofar as it is not vague,
however, it may suggest prototypes. Zeki indicates that the ideal, a “synthetic concept of
the brain,” is “the result of all the experiences that an individual encounters” (Splendors
47). This seems to point toward something like a prototype-derivation process.
Literary aesthetics 21
instance, for example, a Standing Parvati (from Tamil Nadu, India, dur-
ing the Chola Period of the ninth to twelfth century CE) and Polykleitos’s
Spear Bearer (from Greece, fifth century BCE).4 Anyone who has visited
a beach or a locker room should recognize that these are not strict aver-
ages, but enhance distinctive female and male properties, respectively
(cf. Chatterjee’s discussion of Ramachandran on “peak shift” [Aesthetic
45–47]). There is experimental research that suggests divergence from
averaging as well. Test subjects prefer women’s faces that exaggerate dis-
tinctively female differences in facial luminance, but the pattern is the
reverse for men’s faces (see Russell; see also Rhodes).
As it turns out, such enhancement is actually consistent with some
research on prototypes. Specifically, prototypes are often conceived of
as averages (see, for example, McLeod, Plunkett, and Rolls 63). How-
ever, there seems to be a process that gives some instances of a category
greater weight in the “averaging” process. An extreme case of this may
be found in the usual prototype for the category “diet food.” Though
the average diet food has a certain number of calories, the prototypical
diet food is lettuce, with zero calories (Kahneman and Miller 143). But
this just changes the problem from one about the nature of beauty to
one about the nature of prototypes. There are ways in which we might
deal with this apparent conflict in the nature of prototypes. For example,
there may be different kinds of prototype, different processes producing
different semantic objects. Generally, however, it is preferable to assume
one process rather than two, for reasons of simplicity. In this case, that
process would seem to be averaging across instances. Why, then, does it
appear to produce non-average results in the case of diet food?
In fact, the problem is less knotty than it initially appears. Clearly, the
instances across which one’s mind averages are not all the instances in
the world, but the instances available to one’s mind, which is to say the
remembered instances. Moreover, given general neural architecture, we
would expect these remembered instances to have various strengths of
connection within the neural network. For example, we would gener-
ally expect recent instances to have greater consequence than instances
encountered twenty years ago (unless the older instance occurred during
a critical learning period).5 This is the equivalent of weighting. Weight-
ing of some instances more than others would also occur depending on
what circuits were activated within a network. For example, functional
4 See http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/39325 and

http://cir.campania.beniculturali.it/museoarcheologiconazionale/thematic-views/
image-gallery/RA71?page=126, respectively.
5 For research suggesting that prototypes may be reformed by recent instances (outside an
aesthetic context), see Dasgupta and Asgari.
and perceptual properties might affect network configuration and output

differently in different contexts, as certainly occurs in other sorts of cog-
nition (see, for example, Carlson and Kenny). The category “diet food”
advertises and thus recalls its function. Thus it would activate memories
about the purposes of diet foods, their low-calorie properties, and so
on – all of which would affect the prototype. In contrast, “face” may be
used for many functions. It is more likely to activate perceptual prop-
erties, which would appear to be more straightforwardly averaged. This
helps explain why, in most cases, there are limits to the contrast effects
of prototyping. At a certain point, enhancing facial luminance or related
differences will cease to heighten aesthetic feeling and begin to have the
opposite effect. In keeping with this, as Chatterjee explains, “women find
masculinized features attractive only to a point” (Aesthetic 14; here, as
elsewhere, Chatterjee’s account of the data is different).
As the examples “face” and “diet food” perhaps already suggest, one
important weighting principle is likely to be emotion. In other words, one
would expect emotions to bear directly on the prominence of memories
that enter into prototypes. If Jones is bitten by a rabbit, that is likely to
have statistically disproportionate consequences for his prototype of rab-
bits. More generally, we would expect emotions to figure consequentially
in categorization responses. Perhaps the main evolutionary function of
categorization is the efficient isolation of threats and opportunities. Like
other evolved processes, mechanisms associated with categorization will
be applied even to cases where there is no reproductive advantage. Thus
one would expect emotion-based weighting to be part of categorization
generally, not only in cases of threat or opportunity.
This returns us to aesthetics. If prototype formation is based on indi-
vidual memories, with their variable emotional forces, what consequences
does that have for a prototype approximation account of beauty? It would
seem to suggest that there will be a certain amount of divergence in
our aesthetic responses – though we also would not expect complete or
anomalous divergence, given shared evolutionary history, similar condi-
tions of experience, and so on.
In keeping with this, research by Hansen and Topolinski suggests that
prototype preference may be more malleable than previously thought.
Specifically, these researchers tested subjects’ preferences for average
and divergent dot patterns. By their account, test subjects preferred dis-
crepant instances when they induced an “exploratory mindset.” Without
the exploratory mindset, however, they observed the usual pattern of
prototype preference.
On the other hand, it is not entirely clear that the research actually
shows what Hansen and Topolinski think it shows. Specifically, they
induced the exploratory mindset by providing the category label “stars”

for the dot pattern. In contrast, they induced the non-exploratory mindset
through the label “peas.” However, it seems likely that people have what
we might call a configurational prototype for the category “stars,” which
is not precisely random, but includes constellation clusters. The only
configurational or other prototype people are likely to have for “peas” is
one for peas in a pod, not for scattered peas. Thus one would expect the
“peas” category to have no prior prototype effects. In other words, one
would expect it to be simply a function of the averaging of the cases given
in the test situation. In contrast, one would expect test subjects to begin
their response to “stars” with a prior prototype for the configuration of
the night sky, but not to have a parallel foundation for their response in
the case of peas. In this way, it may be that Hansen and Topolinski’s data
merely point to differences in prototypes by category – “[scattered] peas”
versus “[night sky with] stars” – not differences in mindset.
Despite these problems, Hansen and Topolinski do present convinc-
ing evidence that the category “stars” does provoke something like an
exploratory mindset. In this way it is at least possible that there really
are cases where we do not prefer prototype approximation. Or, more
precisely, it seems very likely that prior prototypes do affect response in
the case of “stars.” Nonetheless, there may be a further effect of mindset,
induced by the nature of the category “stars.”
To think about this mindset further, we need to consider a com-
mon evolutionary explanation for prototype preference, one invoked by
Hansen and Topolinski – familiarity. Familiar objects are preferred to
unfamiliar objects. For example, familiar faces are preferred to unfamil-
iar faces. Thus, the reasoning goes, prototypes are more familiar and
better liked. We feel more secure around prototypes than around the
unfamiliar, non-prototypical cases (see Hansen and Topolinski 710 and
references). But there are problems with this account. First, and most
obviously, we usually do not see prototypes. Rather, we see the instances.
So the instances are what are familiar, not the prototype constructed
from the instances. Second, there is research that suggests that familiar-
ity does not produce preference in certain cases where categorization is
prominent, as with white test subjects viewing blacks (see Oatley, Emo-
tions 73). Finally, this last case itself suggests that, even within a category,
it seems extremely unlikely that a feeling of security is always enhanced
by prototypicality. I suspect many white Americans have a prototype of
a “black thug” that is a large, muscular fellow of the Mike Tyson vari-
ety. If shown a “black thug” as a skinny guy with buck teeth, it seems
extremely unlikely that they would feel less secure because the instance is
less prototypical. Conversely, black Americans might have a more secure
reaction to a “white racist” who is a bedridden ninety-year-old woman

than to a more prototypical instance.
Nonetheless, there may be something to the idea of security versus
(exploratory) daring in these cases. It seems plausible that there are some
cases where we are likely to keep our judgments “safe” and other cases
where we are willing to risk idiosyncrasy. Perhaps Hansen and Topolin-
ski’s research suggests that there are cases where our judgments are gen-
eralized and cases where they are more likely to be individual. Indeed,
a difference of this sort should already have been clear. “Beautiful” is a
normative term. For example, someone might remark that a particular
person is beautiful or handsome but not his or her “type.” What this
distinction suggests is that we use “beauty” to refer to something that
overlaps but is not identical with individual aesthetic preference. If aes-
thetic judgments are malleable by reference to mindset, at least part of
the malleability may stem from this difference. Perhaps an “exploratory
mindset” encourages one to be less cautious in making aesthetic judg-
ments.
Whether or not this difference partially accounts for Hansen and
Topolinski’s findings, their research does remind us of this fact. More-
over, we would expect to find a difference of this sort, given the pre-
ceding model of prototyping in terms of neural networks and memories.
Specifically, we would expect people to have different configurations of
memories, with different emotional responses, and so on. In some cases,
those prototypes would tend to converge considerably – as when there
are many exposures across similar conditions with relatively limited emo-
tional variations (e.g., in forming the prototype for “bird”6 ). In other
cases, however, we would expect there to be certain sorts of divergence.
For example, many of us see members of our own family more than other
people and we certainly have different emotional responses to different
faces. Thus faces should present a complex case. On the one hand, we
are exposed to many faces; on the other hand, there will be differences in
distribution of exposures and in the emotional value of these exposures.
Thus one would expect some convergence and some divergence here.
The convergence would presumably be strongest in the elimination of
extreme deviations from prototypicality. But individual aesthetic prefer-
ence would seem likely to diverge in the most highly preferred cases. This
is indeed what we seem to find, intuitively.
6 A good example of a highly prototypical bird is a robin; a good example of a bird that
does not closely approximate the prototype is a goose (see Holland and colleagues 182).
For example, I recently saw a film with the Indian actress Tanuja.7 I
have always found her to be very pretty. Nonetheless, I would hesitate to
press my view on people by asserting as a fact that she is “beautiful.” I
would certainly not claim without qualification (such as “to my mind”)
that she is more beautiful than, say, some actress whom I find much less
aesthetically pleasing (such as the 1994 Miss World Aishwarya Rai8 ). For
example, Tanuja has a rather commanding proboscis; I would be more
inclined to judge a button nose “beautiful,” despite my own personal
distaste for faces with a paucity of cartilage. This presumably indicates
that I am using “beauty” to refer to a more generally accepted value,
such as the empirically attested preference for “small noses” in women
(Chatterjee, Aesthetic 13). (Parallel points hold for my aesthetic response
to and judgments of male beauty.) It is like the difference between respect
and respectable. I may respect Bill Clinton more than I do George W.
Bush, but I may simultaneously judge the latter more respectable.
It is relatively easy to account for this discrepancy. Indeed, it would
be surprising if it did not occur. Specifically, we form prototypes and we
have preferences. But we also learn how other people use certain words,
such as “beautiful.” We thus come to form prototypes not only for, say,
“woman’s face” and “man’s face” but also for “beautiful woman’s face”
and “beautiful man’s face.” The first set of prototypes bears on our
aesthetic response. The second set of prototypes guides our standardized
use of the word “beauty.” It is obviously important to keep the two
distinct. We may refer to this as the difference between personal beauty
(roughly, what one responds to as beautiful) and public beauty (roughly,
what people call “beautiful”).
Beauty, emotion, and non-anomalous surprise

When one thinks of visual objects, prototype approximation is intuitively
relevant to beauty. Despite the example of sonatas, however, its relevance
to the beauty of music is less obvious. Perhaps we have an average melody
or average symphony in mind and find a piece of music aesthetically
pleasing to the extent that it approaches that average. But this does not
seem very intuitively likely. Moreover, research on the brain’s response
7 A relevant image of Tanuja may be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6

TiNABGkMvM.
8 See, for example, the images at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
to music at least initially suggests something different. This is, roughly,

the recognition of patterns.9
To some extent, the research on pattern isolation is consistent with
research on prototype approximation. Thus Vuust and Kringelbach indi-
cate that one’s pleasure in music derives, at least in part, from one’s ability
to anticipate outcomes of musical sequences (266). One might construe
this anticipation as a form of prototype approximation. Insofar as some
aspect of a piece of music is predictable, that aspect must conform to lis-
tener expectations. Those listener expectations are, in some cases, guided
by “ordinary” forms. For example, in Indian classical music, we expect
certain sorts of rhythmic cycle. We don’t expect, say, a seven-beat cycle,
followed by a nine, then an eleven, then back to a seven. Rather, we
expect a consistent cycle. One could view a confirmation of this expec-
tation – particularly regarding a very common cycle (say, eight beats) –
as showing that the work’s rhythmic cycle approximates a prototype.
But elsewhere Vuust and Kringelbach indicate the importance of “vio-
lation of expectancies” (263). The latter point is consistent with research
on habituation – our tendency to lose interest and attentional orientation
when a particular experience is repeated to the point of becoming habitual
(see, for example, LeDoux, Synaptic 138). Indeed, recent research sug-
gests that apparent habituation effects are often a matter of anticipation.10
This is what we would expect from everyday experience. We find repe-
tition and predictability dull. An objection to, say, a story is that “you
knew what was going to happen right from the beginning.” Here, then,
it seems that aesthetic pleasure is more likely to derive from partial unex-
pectedness that, within some window, allows for retrospective pattern
recognition. Other writers have noted this in general terms. For exam-
ple, coming from a very different theoretical orientation, Silvia stresses
the experience of works “as both new and understandable” (266). We
may refer to this as “non-anomalous surprise.” It is surprise because we
do not specifically and self-consciously anticipate the outcome, at least
9 The aesthetic importance of patterns is perhaps suggested by the Chinese use of the
word wen, which “refers etymologically to a pattern, as in a woven fabric” and “can
refer to any patterned art form” (Knight 5).
10 The point is developed by Stanislas Dehaene in several of his Collège de France lec-
tures for January and February 2012, “Le cerveau statisticien: La révolution Bayésienne
en sciences cognitives.” See particularly his lecture for February 21, “Le cerveau
vu comme un système prédictif” (available via the Collège de France website, www
.college-de-france.fr). For a discussion of empirical work indicating that some appar-
ent habituation effects are in fact the result of prediction, see Wacongne, Changeux,
and Dehaene. In keeping with this general point, Ishai notes: “Recent studies of art
perception and memory suggest that when confronted with abstract or indeterminate
art compositions, the human brain automatically solves the perceptual dilemma by
generating predictions about their content” (337).
not with confidence. However, it is not anomalous because we are able

to recognize the pattern once it occurs.11
For example, in a classical Hindustānı̄ improvisation, the instrumen-
talist might play the main melodic sequence without any alterations over
and over, giving high predictability but low interest. However, he or she is
much more likely to begin with a development of the scale, varying dura-
tion of notes, pauses, and so on, slowly introducing the main melodic
sequence, varying that sequence once stated, adding motifs, and so forth.
In these cases, the variations are not predictable beforehand; however,
they are comprehensible once encountered. The same point holds for
literature in what is sometimes called “retrospective necessity.” In one
common view of story structure, Aristotelian causal necessity or proba-
bility is an aesthetic value. But the value is highest when the ending is
not predictable. Rather, the ending should not be expected, or at least
not certain, although its plausibility should be recognizable by the reader
soon after the events are over.
So, there seems to be a contradiction here. Is aesthetic pleasure a
function of predictability or non-anomalous surprise? This dilemma may
perhaps be resolved by positing different sorts of aesthetic processing
for focal and non-focal aspects of the aesthetic target. Focal aspects
would then be pleasurable to the degree that they foster non-anomalous
surprise whereas non-focal aspects would be valued primarily for pre-
dictability (for further discussion, see Hogan, “Stylistics”). For example,
in listening to classical Indian music, we might focus our attention on
the melodic improvisations of the instrumentalist or singer while pro-
cessing the rhythmic cycles non-focally. It may then be the case that
aesthetic pleasure results from the predictability of the non-focally pro-
cessed rhythmic cycles in combination with the non-anomalous surprise
of the focally processed melody. These roles would then switch in those
11 Drawing on neuroscientific research and on phenomenological literary criticism, Arm-

strong has recently noted the importance of “pattern recognition” and “surprise” in
aesthetic experience (23). However, his analysis of aesthetic response is structured by
a “conflict between the aesthetics of harmony and the aesthetics of dissonance” (23).
Dissonance, in this account, seems most often to be simply pattern recognition with
a high degree of surprise. (For an outline of some problems with Armstrong’s analy-
sis, see Hogan, “Review.”) More significantly, Fitch, von Graevenitz, and Nicolas have
argued that there is a “basic cognitive trajectory” for “the perceiver of successful art.”
This has three stages: (1) “familiarity,” (2) “surprise,” and (3) “integration” (61). The
“non-anomalous” or pattern recognition part of the preceding formulation is the third
stage of this trajectory, while surprise or non-habituation is obviously the second. In
their elaboration of these ideas, it is clear that their precise conception of the nature
of aesthetic experience is far from identical with that developed in the present chapter.
However, the two accounts have significant similarities, which suggests that there may
be at least some shared basis in aesthetic response.
sections where the instrumentalist repeats an unvarying melodic motif

while the drummer improvises. Then our focus and processing shift.12
If something along these lines is in fact the case in aesthetic process-
ing, the division may be in part a matter of one component of the work
providing an expectancy framework for another component of the work.
That framework might produce cyclic arousal patterns in the manner of
experiments with fixed interval rewards (see Panksepp and Biven 137–
138). In this context, we might expect that it is valuable to have one
predictable part of a work even if the main aesthetic pleasure comes from
the partial unpredictability of another part. In Indian classical music,
for example, the rhythmic cycle helps guide expectations as to when
the resolving note will occur. The framework is important for signal-
ing moments when the listener should expect to discern retrospective
patterns. Speaking more generally, Thaut explains: “Pulses divide the
flow of time into regular reference points” (7); they thereby “estab-
lish anticipation and predictability” (8). In keeping with this, Stevens
and Byron note that, according to some accounts, “neural oscillators
entrain to (roughly parallel) external events such as meters or rhythms.
Because this entrainment process underlies temporal perception, peri-
odic events (i.e., repeating rhythms, meter) facilitate the efficient allo-
cation of limited attentional resources” (20). The idea is related to the
“expectancy windows” noted by Dowling, Lung, and Herrbold, who
explain: “Events outside these expectancy windows were not perceived
as accurately as events within the windows” (642). It may be particularly
easy to make meter the organizational background as it is readily embod-
ied, a matter of rhythmic movement (on the link between “[t]emporal
expectations and auditory-motor interactions,” see Trainor and Zatorre
178–179).13
An account consistent with – indeed, broadly supportive of – such an
analysis has been developed with particular care by London. London
writes that “temporal invariants” deriving from “the perception of sound
patterns such as music . . . guide the perceiver to direct his or her atten-
tion to a particular (future) location in time” (10). Thus “[e]ntrainment
12 The functional relevance of a broad division along these lines may be partially supported
by work reported by Carolin Brück and colleagues (270–271) that distinguishes explicit
from implicit modes of speech prosody processing, both of which bear on emotional
features.
13 I suspect that such embodiment plays an important role in the “ubiquitous listening”
discussed by Kassabian. As she points out, “the majority of music we hear, we hear as
auditory background” (xx). She connects this with touch (xv–xvi), but it seems more a
matter of sensorimotor embodiment.
leads us to focus our attention to the most salient temporal locations

for events” (12). He explains in detail how “the listener’s expectancy” is
“modulated in complex ways” by “the metric hierarchy” (21). As to the
idea of “windows,” London explains that “attentional peaks have some
amount of temporal spread and . . . dynamic attending involves adap-
tive error correction” (88). Finally, London maintains that attention-
orienting entrainment is a “sensorimotor” process (12) that “engenders
and encourages . . . bodily movements” (5).
Some problems with the aesthetics of

prototypes and patterns
In sum, recent research on cognition and aesthetic response seems to
suggest some significant advances in the field. But that research remains
preliminary and very incomplete. Specifically, there are three broad con-
cerns that are largely left aside in the research we have been considering,
and the preceding hypotheses about beauty and aesthetic pleasure based
on that research.
The first concern is a body of aesthetic objects: literature. We have
touched on literature a couple of times. These points have primarily con-
cerned non-anomalous surprise. However, the research discussed above
on non-anomalous surprise treats music. There is a considerable risk
that our analysis of aesthetics will be biased if its primary focus is on a
single art. There are clearly continuities between music and literature.
Nonetheless, the two arts are hardly the same.
More significantly, it is clear that the main field of concern in pro-
totype approximation research is visual beauty (faces, furniture, colors,
and so on). Indeed, it is difficult to say just what it would mean for
prototype approximation to apply to literature. Prima facie it seems that
literary works are too complex to be a function of any single prototype.
For example, it seems unlikely that we would find the most prototypical
sonnet to be the most beautiful. There are more or less prototypical story
sequences. These may be correlated with preferences. But that may be
a matter of other factors, such as interest in preferred final outcomes,
as Ed Tan would put it. Thus the separation and reunion of lovers is a
highly prototypical story structure (see chapter 3 of Hogan The Mind).
Moreover, people do seem to like love stories. But do we like such stories
because they are highly prototypical? It seems more likely that we are
interested in romantic love and we are engaged by interest in the lovers
being united, so our emotional preferences result in this being a pro-
totypical story sequence, rather than the reverse. Moreover, it is not at
all clear that, within this prototypical story, we prefer more prototypical
versions of the romantic plot to less prototypical versions.14
This leads to the second large gap in the preceding analysis: emotion.
Clearly, emotion is crucial to aesthetic response. But the preceding dis-
cussion has little to say about it. Some of the research pointing toward pat-
tern recognition does include explicit reference to emotion. Thus Vuust
and Kringelbach, focusing on music, link aesthetic pleasure with reward
system involvement (266; see Koelsch 292–293 and citations for other
research on “music-evoked pleasure” and the “reward circuit” [Koelsch
292]; see also Kawabata and Zeki 1704 and Skov, “Pleasures” 280 on
reward system involvement in aesthetic preference). The reward system
is the system governing pleasure-seeking behavior. It is involved in drug
addiction as well as romantic love (see Fisher 90). It is undoubtedly part
of the experience of aesthetic delight. Indeed, reward system activation
is linked with expectancy and violations of expectancy (see Chatterjee,
Aesthetic 78).
Interest is also engaged by such violation or non-habitual occurrences.
Thus we would expect interest to be provoked and sustained in non-
anomalous surprise, as well as prototype approximation insofar as that
is not habitual.15 On the other hand, it seems clear that there are many
emotions involved in aesthetic response beyond reward and interest. The
point is particularly obvious in literature. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine
either reward or interest being sustained by a literary work of any length
without some further emotional arousal.
Some research connects aesthetic pleasure with the caudate nucleus.
In earlier work, I conjectured that beauty may therefore have some
involvement with feelings of attachment (see Hogan, “Stylistics,” citing
Nadal and colleagues 388). This is due to the link between the caudate
and “feelings of love” (Arsalidou and colleagues 47), including “mater-
nal” love (50; see also Villablanca 95). The initial research on aesthetic
response and caudate activation related to visual beauty (see Vartanian
and Goel).16 In connection with this, the preceding account of proto-
types suggests some possibilities for integrating attachment – and other
emotions – into prototype approximation. We have noted that prototypes,
14 There are, of course, complications that I am not considering here. For example, a
prototype may guide pattern recognition for a literary or other target. We will touch on
some of these complications in subsequent chapters.
15 Silvia objects to prototype-based treatments of aesthetic response because they do not
account for interest (258). However, it seems clear that prototypes provoke aesthetic
response primarily in cases where their approximation is rare – as with faces. That rarity
is precisely the unexpectedness that provokes interest.
16 More recent work has linked caudate nucleus activity with pleasure in music (see
Montag, Reuter, Axmacher 511, and Salimpoor and colleagues).
and thus aesthetic feeling, are bound up with memories. These crucially
include specifically emotional memories (that is, memories that partially
revive the associated emotions when activated). It would seem that the
complex of feelings associated with beauty results to at least some extent
from the complex of emotional memories activated by the target. Given
research on caudate involvement and given the close association between
love and aesthetic response, we may expect attachment memories to be
particularly important for the feeling of beauty. For example, my sense
of Tanuja’s face as aesthetically pleasing is, by this account, inseparable
from a history of responses to faces that crucially include the faces of
people to whom I have felt attachment. After drawing these conclusions,
I was pleased to learn about research that shows increasing levels of brain
oxytocin enhances perceptions of facial attractiveness (Heinrichs and col-
leagues 524). This is important because oxytocin is a key neurochemical
in the attachment system (Panksepp and Biven 37, 39).
This reference to personal history suggests something further. It may
be wrong to imagine our prototype formation as occurring once and
for all, with a prototypical face fixed in memory. Indeed, our memory
does not generally operate in this way. Rather, we tend to reconstruct
our memories in the context of current experiences and interests (see
Schacter 8, 104–113). Given this, we would expect our prototypes for
women’s or men’s faces to be more ad hoc constructions partially pro-
voked by whatever faces we are currently seeing or have recently seen.
The idea here, then, is that the experience of a particular face may acti-
vate a network that produces an attachment-rich prototype in part due
to attachment memories. Insofar as the current face approximates that
attachment-rich prototype, we will experience aesthetic pleasure. But the
prototype will itself change in other circumstances with other elicitors.
In other words, one’s aesthetic experience of a target occurs in relation
to a prototype that this target partially creates. Some faces (e.g., of one’s
child) are likely to create particularly attachment-rich – thus perhaps
particularly aesthetically intense – prototypes.
This returns us to the difference between aesthetic response and public
beauty. The process just outlined is probably very different from the way
one judges public beauty. In the latter case, one relies on a partially differ-
ent set of memories – memories of various people’s judgments regarding
beauty, probably without a strong attachment component. Moreover, in
judging beauty, one is likely to try to modulate one’s own preferences,
perhaps compensating for one’s own attachment idiosyncrasies.
Attachment, then, seems a promising option for understanding aes-
thetic response (personal beauty), though not judgments of (public)
beauty. It may initially seem that attachment has no bearing on the
aesthetic pleasure of music. However, surprising convergent evidence

for the importance of attachment comes from recent “studies reporting
activity changes within the (anterior) hippocampal formation in response
to music” (Koelsch 293). Given the well-known memory function of
the hippocampus (see, for example, Baddeley 89; on the anterior hip-
pocampal formation specifically, see Chua and colleagues), the obvious
interpretation of these studies connects the activation with hippocampal
involvement in “novelty, and expectedness” (Koelsch 293), and thus non-
habitual pattern recognition. However, Koelsch argues that this cannot
account for all the data and that the emotional function of the hippocam-
pus must be taken into account. In connection with this, Koelsch con-
nects “hippocampal activation” with “attachment-related (tender posi-
tive) emotions” (295).
The point may become more intuitively plausible when one recalls the
close relation between music – especially singing – and early bonding
interactions between a child and his or her caregivers. Trehub, among
others, discusses the place of music in mother/infant relations (Parncutt
extends the relation even to intrauterine life).17 For example, Trehub
cites research that infants’ preferences concerning musical rhythms are
guided by past experiences of being rocked to those rhythms (231). (The
general point is broadly consistent with Dissanayake’s speculations on
the relation between art and mother/child interactions as well, though of
course the precise nature of the link here is different from specific con-
nections postulated by Dissanayake, such as a possible relation between
“Motherese” and poetic line length [Dissanayake 38].)
Even stronger support for attachment involvement may be derived
from the work of Panksepp and Bernatzky. They report that “[m]usic
can effectively reduce the separation calls that young domestic chicks
exhibit when they are briefly isolated from social companionship” (146).
This clearly suggests attachment system involvement. Along with other
research, it specifically points toward oxytocin production (146). In keep-
ing with this, Ulrica Nilsson found that, for human subjects, listening to
at least some sorts of music can increase oxytocin levels. Panksepp and
Bernatzky also link endogenous opioids to both attachment and music
response. Thus they write that brainstem “opiate receptors . . . may medi-
ate attachments we develop to certain sounds (e.g. the voices of those
we love) and hence, by a parallel line of reasoning, to certain types of
music” (137). Adverting to something more along the lines of sublimity,
17 The point is general, but of course a listener may have specific autobiographical asso-
ciations for a specific work (see Janata, Tomic, and Rakowski; on the neural substrate
of autobiographical memory in relation to music, see Janata). Those associations may
involve attachment feelings due to the use of music in activities of friends or lovers.
they conjecture that “musically evoked chills” may “represent a natural

resonance of our brain separation-distress systems which helps mediate
the emotional impact of social loss” (143) (By “separation-distress
systems” Panksepp and Bernatzky refer to what we are considering
under the name “attachment systems”; the theoretical differences
signaled by the two names do not seem consequential in the present
context.) In connection with this, they report research suggesting that
chill-inducing music has acoustic properties in common with human
separation calls (143–144).
Positing attachment system involvement in aesthetic feeling has other
explanatory advantages as well. It suggests one reason why our response
to art is often seen as individualizing. For example, Roger Scruton main-
tains that aesthetic interest is specific to the aesthetic target – for example,
a particular string quartet (16–17). As Kieran phrases the idea, “there is
something about the experience of a particular work, if it is intrinsically
valuable, that cannot be replaced by any other” (“Value” 293; see also
Macdonald 125 and Hampshire 165). Attachment could at least con-
tribute to an account of this. One of the peculiarities of attachment is
that it is insistently individual. To feel an attachment bond is to feel a
bond with a particular individual (cf. Gopnik 242). In contrast, many
other emotion systems bear initially on broad types of object or property
(e.g., snakes, to use a standard example regarding fear). Scruton comes
close to recognizing the connection here when he uses the relation of a
mother and child as an analogy for the relation between a reader or viewer
and an aesthetic object, such as a painting (23); Murray Schwartz goes
further still, linking literary works with psychoanalytic transitional objects,
in effect substitutes for a caregiver. More broadly, Macdonald observes:
“People often develop for their favorite works an almost personal rela-
tionship” (128).
It may also be significant that visual art focuses so frequently on either
persons (as in portraits) or scenes (as in landscapes), a point also empha-
sized by Scruton. This may bear on attachment as well. Clearly, our
attachment bonds are directed primarily at people. However, they are
also bound up with places (see Panksepp [15, 407n.93] on the relation
between person and place attachment). Thus the involvement of attach-
ment might also lead one to expect persons and scenes to be unusually
frequent objects of aesthetic experience. Here, too, Scruton suggests the
point without actually stating it. Specifically, he writes: “The experience
of natural beauty . . . contains a reassurance that the world is . . . a home”
(14) – home being the paradigm of place attachment.
On the other hand, it seems that attachment cannot be the only emo-
tion that is important for such response. Once one begins to name stan-
dard motivational systems, such as attachment, it becomes clear that
there are emotions that enter into other forms of aesthetic pleasure. The
aesthetic pleasure we experience in romantic comedy or love sonnets may
be a function of reward, interest, and attachment only. But the aesthetic
pleasure we experience in the case of tragedy involves further emotions
that are missing from this picture.
This leads to the final deficiency in the preceding account. It leaves
aside the “sublime.” I was hesitant to introduce the sublime in previ-
ous work, as it initially seems to have a different status than beauty.
Specifically, its explicit importance has been limited in the West and
it appears largely absent elsewhere. Thus it does not seem to have the
same cross-cultural and transhistorical scope as beauty. On the other
hand, there is reason to believe that the experience is not absent, even
if other traditions do not appear to have an equivalent concept of simi-
lar prominence. Moreover, there are comparable concepts, even if they
are not identical. For example, the Sanskrit tradition notes the aesthetic
importance of wonder, heroic energy, and fear, recognizing aesthetic
versions of these emotions (see, for example, Bharatamuni 71). Finally,
some recent empirical research may suggest that a feeling of sublimity
is an important feature of much aesthetic response.18 In short, despite
apparent limits on explicit invocations of “the sublime,” it seems likely
that there are distinct varieties of aesthetic response or, more precisely,
different complexes of emotion that bear on aesthetic feeling. Some are
aptly connected with beauty, others with what is sometimes called “the
sublime.” Mrs. Dalloway addresses both.
Mrs. Dalloway (I): beauty and sublimity

Today, Virginia Woolf is perhaps most commonly viewed as a feminist
who made her art serve her liberatory politics. At least in Mrs. Dalloway,
however, she seems to be, first and foremost, an artist.19 She is certainly
sensitive to the disabilities suffered by women and the poor. But it seems
that one paradigm case of such disability is the way it inhibits the produc-
tion and sharing of art.20 It is no accident that, in A Room of One’s Own,
18 See Eskine, Kacinik, and Prinz, who go so far as to suggest that the sublime is the funda-
mental and evolutionarily crucial form of aesthetic feeling (though their understanding
of the sublime is quite different from that developed in the following section).
19 Woolf has also received some attention from cognitive and neurocognitive critics. Read-
ers interested in a very different use of cognitive neuroscience in the study of Woolf may
wish to consult Zunshine’s work.
20 Woolf’s integration of feminism and aesthetics has, of course, been recognized by crit-
ics. A good, relatively early example may be found in Sharma. More recent, post-
structuralist approaches may be found in Humm and Berman. Marder treats the two in
relation to putative gender differences. Goldman develops a scholarly and informative
interweaving of feminist concerns with specific principles and practices of art.
she illustrated her parable of women’s disenfranchisement with the exam-

ple of someone who could have been a great playwright – “Shakespeare’s
sister.” In any case, Mrs. Dalloway is fundamentally a book about beauty
and sublimity. Moreover, it is, to my mind, one of the most beautiful
(and, in parts, sublime) books I have ever read. That makes it almost an
ideal case to consider when trying to rectify the deficits in the preceding
analysis of beauty.
Woolf devotes more attention to beauty than she does to sublimity.
Moreover, she includes the various elements mentioned above. Indeed,
her novel could almost count as a catalog of elements of beauty or aes-
thetic pleasure. For example, late in the novel, Peter Walsh thinks about
“beauty pure and simple,” apparently connecting it with “the symmetry
of a corridor” (159), which could be a matter of pattern or prototype,
or both. Even if the characterization is implicit, the case is clearer when
Septimus considers “the excitement of the elm trees rising and falling,
rising and falling with all their leaves alight and the color thinning and
thickening” in “a wave” that was inseparable from “sparrows fluttering,
rising, and falling in jagged fountains” – all “part of the pattern” that was
so aesthetically exquisite, it “would have sent him mad” (22). Clearly,
Septimus did not anticipate this. But just as clearly he perceives it as
a coordinated pattern. Indeed, it is linked with music: “Sounds made
harmonies” (22) – harmonies presumably recalling the coordinated but
distinct movements of the branches and the birds.
The excitement, the near ecstasy of Septimus’s response here suggests
reward system involvement. Of course, Woolf would not have thought of
it that way; rather, she recognized the results of what we can see as reward
system involvement. She nonetheless reveals a sense of how the reward
system operates and of its relation to addiction when she links Septimus’s
aesthetic pleasure in Shakespeare to “the intoxication of language” (86).
Unsurprisingly, she also points toward elements of interest and
attentional orientation. For example, when thinking about Sally Seton
and her “beautiful voice,” Clarissa considers everything else about her
environment at the time as “only a background for Sally” (34). Indeed,
this phrasing not only stresses attentional orientation toward Sally and
her beautiful voice. It also hints at an implicit musical analogy that dis-
tinguishes aesthetically between the foreground – the “beautiful voice” –
and the background. Part of that background, what is mentioned imme-
diately before, is directly musical – Joseph Breitkopf, who “played the
piano and sang Brahms without any voice” (34). There is even a sense of
contrast between predictability and unpredictability. The “background”
events of daily life at Bourton are routine, habitual, exemplified by
Breitkopf, who “came every summer” and did precisely the same thing.
In contrast, Sally “suddenly” comes out with outrageous suggestions
(34) – suggestions that are, of course, immediately recognizable as part

of Sally’s character.
This characteristic outrageousness of Sally produces non-anomalous
surprise. However, such unexpected patterning is in itself insufficient
to make the experience aesthetic. There is something particular about
Sally, and Clarissa’s relation to Sally, that makes these moments beau-
tiful for Clarissa. It is, of course, the attachment Clarissa feels for Sally.
Attachment is the crucial feature of aesthetic response for Woolf. The
effects of attachment may be enhanced by prototype approximation or
non-anomalous surprise. But attachment is fundamentally what makes a
person, place, or anything else beautiful for someone.
Before examining attachment further, we should complete our catalog
of aesthetic factors represented in Mrs. Dalloway. One of the most themat-
ically striking features of Woolf’s depiction of aesthetic delight concerns
habituation. Readers are likely to remark on the degree to which people
in the novel find aesthetic pleasure in the ordinary routines of daily life.
This is particularly evident with Clarissa, who is enchanted by “the swing,
tramp, and trudge . . . the shuffling and swinging . . . brass bands; barrel
organs . . . the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane over-
head” (4). In short, Clarissa finds music (thus beauty) in the unexpected
but rhythmic and even melodic events and actions of ordinary life. This
is in one way perfectly comprehensible, since there are forms of pattern
there – as Septimus recognized in the rise and fall of branches and birds.
But we are ordinarily habituated to these rhythms, the music of the ordi-
nary as we might call it. Does this mean that Woolf is rejecting the idea
of habituation? Not at all. The next paragraph explains what makes this
music of the ordinary new and entrancing: “The War was over” (4). The
war had prevented these simple and formerly habitual patterns. Now, as
they reappear, they become music, a source of aesthetic delight.21
This treatment of habituation and dis-habituation also suggests the dif-
ference between individual aesthetic response and putatively “objective”
beauty, what I have been calling “public” beauty. Whether one considers
“the bellow and the uproar” (4) of ordinary life to be aesthetic, it is clear
that someone who has gone through the war and someone who has not
will have a different response to the regularities of ordinary life. Needless
to say, experience of war is not the only differentiating factor in aesthetic
response. As we might expect, the sharpest contrasts between individual
21 The date of the events in the novel is somewhat in tension with Clarissa’s response
here. The key point, however, is that this is her response – that, for her, ordinary life is
extraordinary in contrast with the war. (For discussions of Woolf and war, see the essays
collected in Hussey.)
response and generalizable objectivity occur in attachment relations.

Thus Peter Walsh reflects on Clarissa, “Not that she was striking; not
beautiful at all . . . she never said anything specially clever; there she was,
however; there she was” (74). The final part of the sentence expresses
Peter’s absolute aesthetic delight in Clarissa – both how she appears and
how she speaks. At the same time it confesses that, objectively, she can-
not be considered beautiful. Peter’s aesthetic response is a function of his
attachment bond with Clarissa.
Finally, Woolf implicitly takes up prototypes in relation to beauty as
well, if in a different way than we have been considering. This is most
obvious in the close association of beauty with flowers. Flowers, of course,
may themselves be more or less prototypical – thus, presumably, more or
less beautiful. But flowers as such stand as a prototype, not only for public
or objective beauty but for personal or responsive beauty, at least in many
cases. I imagine we almost all agree that “irises and roses and nodding
tufts of lilac” (13) are beautiful, not only objectively or publically but per-
sonally as well. In keeping with this, Woolf is careful to present Clarissa’s
trip to the flower shop in the most aesthetically polished way possible. The
sound patterns are, precisely, unexpected but recognizable.22 The, so to
speak, harmony of actions and events – as when Clarissa’s “turning . . .
head” is paired with the “nodding . . . lilac” (12, 13) – also cannot be
anticipated, or missed in retrospect. Clarissa, capturing this motion in
a thought, reflects that it is “as if this beauty . . . were a wave which she
let flow over her” (13) – waves being another prototype for beauty, a
prototype that manifests itself in patterned variation as well.23
Of course, it is no accident that Woolf chose flowers as the key pro-
totype of beauty at this early point in her novel. Again, they have that
place publicly, in society at large. Moreover, it seems that this is not an
arbitrary social choice, but reflects actual aesthetic response, related to
evolution.24 Nonetheless, neither society nor evolution guarantees that
a class of objects will produce the same aesthetic feelings across indi-
viduals. For example, Clarissa seems much more aesthetically respon-
sive to flowers than do other characters in the novel. By the preceding
account, we would expect this to have something to do with the memo-
ries that contribute to Clarissa’s own prototypes – especially emotional
memories bearing on attachment. That is just what we find. The “most
22 For a careful discussion of the rich sound patterns in Woolf’s prose, see chapter 1 of
McCluskey.
23 As Stewart points out, “waves rolling up the beach are not precisely identical,” but they
can be approximated by “[s]imple mathematical equations” (10). This is in keeping
with the analysis of pattern isolation as rule derivation that we consider in Chapter 4.
24 See, for example, Lafleur, who cites evidence of flower preference across species.
exquisite moment of [Clarissa’s] whole life” occurred in her attachment

relation with Sally. They were “passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally
stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips” (35). Clarissa’s aesthetic
relation to flowers is inseparable from this highly emotionally powerful,
salient attachment memory. Indeed, this case suggests just how central
attachment is to Woolf’s account of aesthetic pleasure – for it affects even
the most prototypical instance of beauty.
The point is hardly confined to Clarissa. Rather, Woolf’s novel indicates
that attachment memories are key to aesthetic delight. Another striking
case may be found in Peter Walsh’s aesthetic pleasure in the public life of
London. We noted earlier that Peter connects “beauty” with “symmetry.”
But in fact he contrasts “beauty pure and simple,” thus formal beauty,
with “windows lit up, a piano, a gramophone,” and so on (159). The
scene is reminiscent of Clarissa’s earlier encounter with “life; London;
this moment of June” (4). But just what is it that this scene adds to
“beauty pure and simple,” the, so to speak, cognitive beauty of patterns
or prototypes; just what is it “also” (159)? Woolf makes the point clear on
the next page. Peter uses an analogy to explain the situation: “it seemed
as if the whole of London were embarking in little boats moored to the
bank” (160). So, Peter’s aesthetic delight seems to have something to do
with the ways in which the current situation is like an excursion “in little
boats.” The analogy is not arbitrary. Peter has one recollection of “perfect
happiness” in his life. A mere “twenty minutes” when he and Clarissa –
the character with whom he has the deepest attachment bond – were part
of a group “going boating on the lake” (61). Woolf suggests that Peter’s
aesthetic delight, which goes beyond mere cognition, is inseparable from
that memory and the feeling of attachment it carries with it.
Peter’s account of those “twenty minutes of perfect happiness” (61)
further extends our account of aesthetic pleasure. Peter remarks that,
in that brief period, “he and Clarissa . . . went in and out of each other’s
minds without any effort” (61). In short, their sense of individual separa-
tion, their feeling of isolated consciousness, was temporarily overcome, as
if they could think each other’s thoughts and feel each other’s emotions.
Attachment and aesthetic delight are, in Woolf’s account, bound up with
this sense of oneness.25 Indeed, this is what makes parallels striking and
powerful in the patterns of life. It is as if Clarissa and the flowers are
the same as both nod in the flower shop; it is as if the entire coordinated
crowd in London is one being with a single mind when Clarissa feels
25 Other authors have found the idea of oneness to be important in aesthetics. See, for
example, Zeki on “unity-in-love” (Splendors 150–157).
aesthetic joy. Again, beauty flows over her, immerses her, like a wave
(13). Here, the image of waves seems particularly apt – individual entities
that are, ultimately, indistinguishable from something larger. Thinking
of her love for women, Clarissa wonders about its relation to “their
beauty” and notes that, overcome by that emotion, she “felt the world
come closer” (31), hinting at unity or immersion. Peter Walsh too found
the “life” of the crowds, reminiscent of his perfect boating excursion,
to be “[a]bsorbing, mysterious” (159). In the context of this sense of
unity, the metaphors of absorption and mystery become fuller, more
resonant.
The relation of aesthetic delight to a feeling of oneness indicates why
the sense of beauty is, in Woolf’s account, so strongly opposed to ego-
tism and hate. Clarissa’s rapture is broken when she feels excluded by
Lady Bruton: “the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch with-
out her made the moment in which she had stood shiver” (29). Even
more strikingly, her earlier “hatred” of Miss Kilman made “all pleasure
in beauty . . . rock, quiver, and bend” (12). Indeed, hate has this effect
precisely because it interferes with attachment, for Clarissa mentions not
only “all pleasure in beauty” but also “in friendship, in being well, in
being loved and making her home delightful” (12). Friendship and being
loved are personal attachment relations; making one’s home delightful
is connected with place attachment. Only “being well” is not directly a
function of attachment – although in Clarissa’s case it is inseparable from
her husband’s affectionate solicitousness about her health.
Of course, the sense of unity is not real. Woolf shows repeatedly that
memories vary across characters, that putatively shared experiences are
taken up and understood differently, that even the most intimate relations
do not bridge the absolute separateness of selves one from the other.
Clarissa, the aesthetic spell of beauty and oneness broken by a wound
to her egotism, feels herself “alone, a single figure against the appalling
night” (30). Later, she generalizes the point as she reflects on “people
feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded
them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone” (180). The
“centre” here is, it seems, the self of anyone else, the consciousness
toward which one has made “an attempt to communicate” (180), an
attempt to overcome what Septimus thinks of as “eternal loneliness”
(25). This is not the loneliness of occasional separation from loved ones.
It is, rather, the more profound loneliness of individual consciousness, a
loneliness that simply cannot be overcome as it is part of the nature of
human consciousness – what may be called “existential loneliness” (see
Hogan, “Literature”).
This leads us to the sublime.26 Whereas beauty is connected with a

sense of overcoming solitude through attachment, sublimity is (in Woolf’s
portrayal) connected with existential loneliness. It is a commonplace that
sublimity involves fear whereas beauty involves love (see, for example,
Edmund Burke). Woolf’s portrayal supports both parts of the common-
place, but it specifies and enriches them. In the case of sublimity, the
fear is a terror of absolute isolation – but, at the same time, a recog-
nition and even acceptance of that isolation. Thus Septimus finds “an
isolation full of sublimity” at precisely the moment “that he was quite
alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone”
(90). In connection with this, and perhaps more significantly, it has been
a common view since Kant that the sublime involves an intimation of
something that is beyond direct experience – for example, the infinite. As
Whyte puts it, the sense of the sublime derives from a “gap between tan-
gible, empirical objects, on one hand, and the world of the supersensible,
on the other,” a gap that “is absolute and unbridgeable” (5). Woolf in
effect specifies this sense as an intimation of the inaccessible experiential
self of other people.
Such a specification makes particular sense if aesthetic feeling is indeed
bound up with attachment.27 Our sense of isolation becomes particularly
intensified in attachment relations, presumably because attachment rela-
tions lead us to desire and expect a sense of unity, and to care about
existential loneliness. Indeed, Koelsch’s stress on the “positive” elements
of attachment (295) may serve to remind us that attachment involves both
positive and negative elements, both security and insecurity, both com-
fort and a desire for unity that can never be fulfilled. Here we might recall
the research reported by Panksepp and Bernatzky that when music shares
properties with human separation calls, it fosters an aesthetic response
26 As with beauty (see 48), I am not seeking to uncover some putatively true meaning of
sublime. I am trying to isolate what is suggested by some uses of the word “sublime”
and to develop a coherent aesthetic concept from those suggestions. The notion of the
sublime is, if anything, more diverse and ambiguous than that of the beautiful. In keeping
with this, Hoffmann and Whyte (“Editors’”) stress the “breadth and indeterminacy of
the term.” (Indeed, Elkins goes so far as to argue against using the term at all, in part for
reasons of ambiguity and imprecision.) Thus my account of sublimity may be less closely
related to common usages of the term than is my account of beauty. For an overview of
some ways in which the sublime has been conceived, and for a very different approach
from that adopted here, the reader may wish to consult Shaw (see also Rancière 704
on the use of “sublime” to refer to a [supposed] aesthetic “radicality”). A valuable,
historical approach to sublimity and literature may be found in Richardson.
27 Some very limited neurological support for this may be derived from Ishizu and Zeki’s
research. It is often difficult to say just what this research tells us, as it relies on different
test subjects’ uses of the highly ambiguous term “sublime.” Nonetheless, it is suggestive
that the research found responses of sublimity correlated with activity in the posterior
hippocampus, “where activity . . . correlates with romantic experiences” (7).
of chills (143–144) – a response that may be linked with the feeling of

sublimity. In this sense, the difference between the feelings of beauty and
sublimity may be related to different aspects of attachment. Thus Rezia
thinks that “[t]o love makes one solitary” (22), only slightly misphrasing
the point – to love may make one forget one’s solitude or may make one
painfully conscious of it. In keeping with this, the sublime too is bound
up with attachment.28 One of the most sublime actions recounted in
the novel is that of Lady Bexborough – “the woman [Clarissa] admired
most” (9) – “open[ing] a bazaar . . . with the telegram in her hand, John,
her favourite, killed” (4–5). The moment is sublime because the reader
senses the mother’s utter isolation, as well as her refusal to succumb to
that isolation – specifically, her refusal to descend into egotism, which
destroys both beauty and sublimity.
Most of the sublimity of the book, however, concerns Septimus, often
in his relation to his dead friend (thus attachment figure), Evans. Indeed,
the force of his delusions derives to a great extent from his complex
relation to the imaginary specter of Evans, who is alternately inscrutable
and the direct or indirect purveyor of secrets from beyond the grave.
For example, at one point, Septimus hears “[a] sparrow perched on the
railings” singing “in Greek words how there is no crime,” singing “from
trees in the meadow of life beyond a river where the dead walk,” and
explaining “in Greek words . . . how there is no death” (24). Both the
railings and the Greek are a link with Evans – for “Evans was behind the
railings” (24) and among the dead in Thessaly (68). The delusion is a
fantasy of a sort of universal understanding – an understanding of humans
and birds, ultimately reflecting an understanding between the living and
the dead – based on an attachment bond with Evans. Yet this beautiful
fancy is clearly unreal, and unreal to Septimus. He does not know Greek.
He reads Aeschylus but requires a translation (86).29 Moreover, he fears
the apparition of Evans; “he dared not look” where “the dead . . . were
assembling behind the railings” (24). There are, of course, many possible
sources for this terror, most obviously in memories of the war itself. But,
in context, there is a suggestion that it is the absolute isolation that would
face him in the form of Evans, contrasting starkly with the brief, false
vision of unity. Moreover, it is not merely the dead from whom Septimus
is separated. He recognizes his isolation from the living too. Far from
28 Some theorists have suggested something broadly along these lines. For example, in
a psychoanalytic context, Baudin maintains that the sublime involves a feeling that
“isolat[es] us from others” who are “always both present and absent, and whom we are
forever seeking” (177).
29 On the choice of Aeschylus and Woolf’s own project of translating Agamemnon, see
Dalgarno (67–84).
a comforting sense of unity with life, Septimus’s direct experience with

war has led him to understand that “human beings . . . hunt in packs.
Their packs scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness.
They desert the fallen. [Septimus himself is one of those fallen; so was
Evans.] They are plastered over with grimaces” (87). The grimaces are
not benevolent smiles that communicate and extend connections. They
are deceptions, possible precisely because of the existential isolation of
one consciousness from another.
Like beauty, sublimity too is undermined by hate. But there is a differ-
ence from beauty too. Political ideologies misrepresent war as “sublime”
(84).30 Septimus himself was deceived and fought for an England that
“consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare’s plays and Miss Isabel Pole
in a green dress walking in a square” (84). So, he went to war not for
pride and hate, but for aesthetics and attachment. The end of that com-
mitment was a loss of both: he abandoned Miss Isabel Pole (“outraged
her” [89]), marrying Rezia “without loving her” (89), and he could no
longer experience the intoxication of Shakespeare’s plays (86). Rather
than extending his aesthetic experience, war destroyed what had been
there before.
Mrs. Dalloway (II): art, beauty, and emotion sharing

It is of course important that Woolf mentions Shakespeare’s plays here
along with Miss Isabel Pole. Among other reasons, it is important because
it reminds us that Shakespeare’s plays were part of the bond linking Sep-
timus with Miss Pole. The case is not unique. Throughout the novel, one
of the main ways in which characters seem to partially repair the breach
that separates consciousness from consciousness, perhaps the main way
that they attenuate this existential loneliness, is through the sharing of
emotions in art. The fundamental human condition of monadic isola-
tion rendered acute by attachment longings gives rise not only to feelings
of beauty and sublimity but to the need for emotion sharing and thus
30 In characterizing this as a misrepresentation, I am clearly disagreeing with the view,

articulated by Whyte and others, that “the only possible politics of the sublime is terror”
(14). Of course, writers who take this view may simply be using the term “sublime”
differently. Indeed, such a difference is suggested by Whyte’s example of “images” of
the bombed Twin Towers being “incomprehensible in their terror” and thereby “truly
sublime” (15; cf. Onians on the sublime as related to our “emotional response to a
life-threatening situation” that, he maintains, makes us “feel more alert” and therefore
“good” [97]). I at least do not find incomprehensible terror sublime in my aesthetic
sense (nor do I find life-threatening situations conducive to feeling good).
perhaps for art.31 Emotion sharing through art includes not only the
sharing of authors with readers but also the sharing of readers with one
another. Of course, art does not make two people “share the same con-
sciousness,” as Carey rightly points out (91). But it can create and detail
eliciting conditions for emotional response (as in Woolf’s depiction of
the beauties of the flower shop, a depiction in which readers’ responses
might converge with hers and with one another’s). This sort of develop-
ment is often as close as we come to sharing precise emotional responses
(as opposed to broad categories of feeling).
A simple case of emotion sharing and its aesthetic effects – although,
in this case, one that bears on real life – occurs when Peter Walsh shares
his love of Daisy with Clarissa. Daisy “became more and more lovely as
Clarissa looked” at her owing to the “exquisite intimacy” of Peter and
Clarissa (44, 45). In other words, Peter’s aesthetic appreciation of Daisy
increases as he shares his feelings in an attachment bond. In contrast,
Peter finds his fantasies about another young woman to be insignificant,
“smashed to atoms” because “one could never share” them (53).
Such real-life cases are often limited in their possibilities. At least in
Woolf’s novel, the fullest form of sharing seems to occur most often in art,
through the making of some artifact or event, as when Septimus turns his
delusions into “beautiful” writings with Rezia (144). In connection with
this, a key point of the novel is that the sharing of emotions through artis-
tic creation should not be understood too narrowly. Aestheticians such as
Scruton stress that aesthetic evaluation pervades our ordinary activities
(see his chapter 4). They are also crucial in what are called “crafts.” In
respect of aesthetic response and sharing, then, Rezia’s hat making is art
too. She crafts the hats with “artist’s fingers” (85) and approaches her
work like a painter before a canvas, wondering “whether by moving the
rose she had improved the hat” (142). The last happy moment Septimus
and Rezia have together is when they combine her technical skill with his
aesthetic sensibility (“though he had no fingers . . . he had a wonderful
eye” 140). When they complete the hat, he finds that “[n]ever had he
done anything which made him feel so proud. It was so real, it was so
substantial” (141).
The same point extends beyond crafts to more diffuse activities or
what we might today call “performances,” in the term’s extended sense.
Most importantly, Clarissa’s party is also, in this sense, a shared work
of art – although, in this case, the sharing extends beyond the confines
of an attachment bond. Clarissa sees her parties as a way of bringing
31 On the importance of emotion sharing in a non-aesthetic context, see Rimé.

together “[s]o-and-so in South Kensington; some one up in Bayswater;

and somebody else, say, in Mayfair” (119). It is a practical instance of
just what authors do in imagination – they bring together characters
and simulate their interaction.32 Indeed, that is what Woolf does in the
scene of the party. Of course, Clarissa does not simulate the interactions;
rather, she enables their (fictionally) autonomous development. But the
parallel should be clear. Moreover, the emotion sharing aspect of art is,
if anything, even clearer in the case of a party.
On the other hand, to say that orchestrating a party expresses aesthetic
interests is not to say that the object is fully adequate to the impulse,
that the result can genuinely be beautiful or sublime. There is a ten-
dency in Woolf criticism to see Woolf’s feminist point here as being that
women really were artists all along, even if they were not writing novels.
In a sense, that is true. Again, Clarissa is expressing an aesthetic orienta-
tion here. But if soirées really were fully aesthetic products, comparable
to novels, Woolf herself might just as readily have expressed herself in
parties as in prose. The point, I take it, is that the impulse and the cre-
ativity were there, but the outlets were restricted. Clarissa herself feels
disappointed, thinking about her party that “anybody could do it” (166).
Indeed, in reflecting on her choice of giving a party, she thinks, “Nothing
else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play
the piano” (119). In short, she turns to parties because she cannot do
philosophy, literature, or music – and she cannot do them because of the
limited opportunities available to women.
Needless to say, the complex feminist point is important to our under-
standing of the novel. For our purposes, however, it is important primarily
because it suggests a widespread human desire to create and share aes-
thetic experience. It indicates the profound human importance of beauty,
sublimity, and the sharing of aesthetic emotion through art.
In sum, it is important to begin by distinguishing aesthetic response from

judgments of public beauty. Aesthetic response is the degree to which one
experiences a target as beautiful. In contrast, judgments of public beauty
concern the degree to which a target satisfies prestige standards that
implicitly define what is socially accepted as beautiful. Neuroscientific
and other empirical research indicates that aesthetic response is in part
a function of information processing, specifically non-anomalous sur-
prise – that is, pattern isolation to which one is not habituated – and
prototype approximation. Prototypes are here understood as, roughly,
32 On the nature of simulation and the role of character in literary simulation in particular,
see chapters 1 and 2 of Hogan How.
weighted averages. The weighting is a function of context and mem-

ory; it is often sensitive to category-based contrasts (as in man versus
woman) and the emotional force of instances contributing to the average.
Research also indicates that several emotions are crucial for aesthetic
response, including interest, endogenous reward, and attachment.
Mrs. Dalloway suggests that attachment is the most important emotion
component. Indeed, in Woolf’s representation, attachment is crucial to
aesthetic response, at least any such response that goes beyond purely
formal features. In Woolf’s novel, this attachment relation is inseparable
from intimations of unity in the experience of beauty, particularly unity
across individual minds. That sense of unity itself responds to, and is
based on, a fundamental human condition of loneliness – an existential
loneliness that is not contingent on circumstances but results from the
nature of consciousness. In the experience of beauty, a sense of existential
loneliness may be temporarily overcome. In sublimity, the terror of exis-
tential loneliness is recognized but faced and, in some sense, accepted.
Thus both forms of aesthetic feeling are inseparable from existential lone-
liness, intensified by attachment bonds and their associated longings –
indeed, based in part on the securities and insecurities of attachment.
Conversely, aesthetic feelings are undermined by egotism or hatred (cul-
minating in war) – in short, the opposite of attachment. Finally, existential
loneliness is partially attenuated by emotion sharing. Emotion sharing,
in turn, may achieve particular depth in the production and reception
of art – including not only music, painting, and literature but a range of
crafts and social practices as well.
2 The idiosyncrasy of beauty
Aesthetic universals and the diversity of taste
We ended the first chapter with the topic of art and emotion sharing.
There is something somewhat paradoxical about such sharing. On the
one hand, it seems to require universal principles of aesthetics, uniformity
in conditions for the experience of beauty or sublimity. If there were no
such principles, then it would not be possible for two people to share
anything. Put differently, there must be commonality across our private
consciousnesses if we are ever going to share any experience. For instance,
there must be something common across the propensities of Septimus
and Rezia if they are going to work on the hat together and have a
parallel delight in the outcome. That commonality is captured in aesthetic
universals, what we treated in Chapter 1 – not universals of concrete and
superficial features (e.g., being a particular color) but of non-habitual
patterning, prototype approximation, and so on.
At the same time, the whole point of emotion sharing would be lost if
we all knew that our aesthetic responses would be identical with everyone
else’s. My joy in sharing excitement over Purcell or Tolstoy with my wife
comes in part from an anticipation that she will experience aesthetic
delight. But it also comes in part from the expectation that this would
not be true for everyone. The sense of intimacy cultivated by aesthetic
emotion sharing in part presupposes the non-universality of aesthetic
response.
This, then, is the paradox. Emotion sharing seems to require both
universality and idiosyncrasy. It seems impossible without the former but
pointless without the latter.
Indeed, it is not necessary to make reference to emotion sharing in
this context because the problem arises from the general consideration
of beauty, where it has both theoretical and practical, even political,
implications. Specifically, it seems that we have two choices in speaking
about beauty. We can either find universal principles that define and
explain what beauty is, or we must set it aside as a coherent object of
study. However, as soon as one mentions “universals” of beauty, one is
faced with an obvious problem – the variability of taste. Professors and
46
The idiosyncrasy of beauty 47
students of literature today are likely to phrase the problem in terms of

culture, saying that cultures develop radically different conceptions of
beauty. This presumption of internal cultural uniformity and external
cultural difference is widespread today, but it is highly problematic on
many grounds, prominently the need for (cross-cultural) universals in
order to make sense of the idea of beauty – or related concepts, such as
art – in the first place. As Denis Dutton points out, “You cannot even
call it a different concept of art unless it shares something in common
with our concept. Otherwise, why did you use the word ‘art’ in the first
place?” (Art Instinct).1 However, one does not need to accept culturalist
presuppositions to acknowledge the main point. Simply put, tastes differ.
Even those of us who share the same general tastes do not always favor
precisely the same works of art – and many of us do not share the same
general tastes.
For example, confining ourselves to facial beauty – one of the areas
where universality seems best established – when I was first drafting this
chapter, Maxim magazine had recently proclaimed Miley Cyrus the most
beautiful woman.2 For me, she is perfectly fine but nothing exceptional.
We may contrast this with my response to the Indian actress Tanuja,
whom I found very lovely in a film I saw around the same time. But
Tanuja has no particular reputation as a great beauty. The same point
holds for men. One magazine proclaimed Josh Hartnett the world’s most
beautiful man.3 When I think of a good-looking man, someone like Raj
Kapoor occurs to me, at least at a certain period.4 However, Kapoor is
not renowned for his beauty.
In short, despite research indicating that test subjects judge attractive-
ness similarly across races (see Zebrowitz, Montepare, and Lee), it seems
incontrovertible that individually we differ in our tastes. For many of my
colleagues, this is definitive proof that there are no aesthetic universals. If
beauty were a “universal value,” then should we not all like Miley Cyrus
(or Tanuja) and Josh Hartnett (or Raj Kapoor)? To make matters worse,
when one discusses aesthetic universals (e.g., in talks), one may be faced
with the criticism that any universals are necessarily an imposition of
oppressive standards – European, male, heterosexual, and so on.
The political objection is important (as discussed in the introduc-
tion). It is undoubtedly the case that people unself-consciously generalize
their own aesthetic and other preferences. It is important to recognize
and respond to this. In a political context, such generalization may have
1 For a discussion of some of the problems with anti-universalism, see Hogan The Mind;
for a treatment of political problems with the culturalist view, see Eriksen and Stjernfelt.
2 See http://news.yahoo.com/miley-cyrus-hottest-woman-world-photo-153229449.html.
3 See http://acidcow.com/pics/7706-top-100-most-beautiful-men-100-pics.html.
4 A relevant image of Raj Kapoor may be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj Kapoor.
ideological consequences. For example, judgments of beauty may serve

to denigrate the artistic achievements of other cultures. In a political
context, it is important to respond to that denigration practically, in
terms of, for example, curricula and teaching practices. Moreover, in
a scientific context, it is crucial to recognize the full range of aesthetic
experience. In other words, a key scientific issue is the importance of non-
dominant views as data. It is simply bad science to take, say, European
male preferences – or rather the preference of European male professors
of aesthetics – into account while ignoring everyone else. These points
underscore the problem and significance of idiosyncrasy.
The following pages examine the relation between universality and
idiosyncrasy. The main argument is that the aesthetic universals isolated
in Chapter 1 actually predict considerable idiosyncrasy in individual aes-
thetic response. In other words, universals may or may not be incompat-
ible with differences in people’s experiences of beauty. It depends on the
universals. The universals isolated in the Chapter 1 are not only compat-
ible with such differences but actually entail them. Before continuing on
to this, however, we need to reprise the topic of just how we use the word
“beauty.” Differences in usage, already touched on in Chapter 1, are
particularly consequential in the context of universality and individual
idiosyncrasy.
Three meanings of “beauty”

As a preliminary step in clarifying what is at stake in discussing prin-
ciples of beauty, we may distinguish three different ways in which the
term “beauty” is used. In isolating these uses, I should stress that my
project is not to find any putatively “true meaning” of “beauty.” Here,
I am simply trying to separate three common but consequentially dis-
tinct uses of the term. Distinguishing these should help us get a sense
of the sorts of object or experience that people have in mind when they
refer to beauty. Once we have that sense, we may begin to examine the
phenomena themselves. In other words, we need not feel constrained by
the precise bounds of common usage. Indeed, those bounds will change
from individual to individual anyway, a change that is in part the topic
of the present chapter. Put differently, this is not an attempt to discover
what aesthetic terms “really” signify. It is, rather, an attempt to define a
technical terminology – based on but systematizing ordinary concepts –
and to align that technical terminology with causally coherent, recurring,
psychological phenomena.5
5 Kendall Walton made a similar point in his treatment of aesthetic value. Specifically,
he wrote: “In offering this account I do not presume to be articulating what people
The first and simplest use of “beauty” is what might be called “essen-
tial.” This is the use of the term “beauty” whereby it refers to some
property intrinsic to the object.6 A Platonist might say, for example, that
there is a form or idea of beauty and all beautiful objects participate in
that idea, even if the idea or, for that matter, the objects are unobserved.
By this account, there is a fact as to whether Josh Hartnett is or is not
beautiful, just as there is a fact as to whether the stuff in my cup is or
is not water (i.e., H2 O). Not being a Platonist, I must admit that this
conception of beauty – like other conceptions of objective essences – has
no appeal for me. In fact, it seems ultimately a rather bizarre idea, since it
is not evident that we can relate this “objective” beauty to our subjective
sense of beauty in any clear or systematic way. If the essential beauty is
not linked with our subjective sense of beauty, it is not clear that we are
speaking of the same thing in the two cases. However, if we are speaking
of the same thing, then it is difficult to see how we could solve the prob-
lem of the diversity of taste. That diversity would seem to suggest that
there is no essence, or that, when tastes conflict, one person is right and
another is wrong. In principle, the latter is possible. However, that leaves
us with the problem of how to learn just what the objective essence is.
That would seem to lead us into mysticism, which is, to say the least,
scientifically problematic.
Another use of the word “beauty” is social and normative, what we
called “public beauty” in Chapter 1. This refers to what is accepted as
beautiful in a given group. Knowing the cultural norms of beauty is part
of social competence for participation in any group. (I use “cultural” very
broadly to refer to the practices of any group – whether a large society
or a small clique.) Thus, if I am among American English professors, I
can assume that To the Lighthouse has high normative status. Personally,
have always or usually meant by ‘aesthetic value.’ . . . It is far from clear that there
is any one thing that people have usually meant by it, even implicitly” (Marvelous 4).
For example, Walton and I give very different accounts of aesthetic response. This may
suggest a substantive difference. But it may equally indicate that we are really talking
about different things – personal beauty in my case, appreciation of artistry in Walton’s
(on the latter, see Marvelous 13).
6 Levinson seems to presuppose this meaning when he asks if experiencing a face, river,
painting, vase, and chair as beautiful “in each case testif[ies] to substantially the same
property of the object in question” (“Beauty” 190). He concludes that it does not
and therefore maintains that beauty is not one thing but many quite different things.
Levinson is right that it may be valuable in different contexts to distinguish types of
beauty and the features of relevant works of art connected with those types. To take
a simple example, our distinction between music and visual art is connected with the
type of sensory property involved. But by the present account, it is the experiences of the
various targets – thus the interrelations of targets with cognitive and affective processes –
that should share properties, particularly prototype approximation, non-habitual pattern
instantiation, reward and attachment system involvement. These kinds of experience
recur across, for example, hearing and vision.
I vastly prefer Mrs. Dalloway (in fact, I prefer The Waves and Jacob’s
Room). Indeed, I do not actually care much for To the Lighthouse (I find
Mr. Ramsay to be more of a cartoon than a character), whereas I find
Mrs. Dalloway to be one of the greatest novels ever. Nonetheless, it is
part of my social competence to know that, socially, To the Lighthouse
has probably the greatest aesthetic status. To take a simpler example,
extreme slenderness is part of the social norm for female beauty, whereas
muscularity is a social norm for male beauty (see the discussion of body
ideals in chapter 3 of Giles). Since the word “beautiful” is commonly used
to refer to the social norm, it makes sense to say, “She has a beautiful
body, but I don’t care for skinny women,” or “He has a beautiful body,
but I don’t care for muscle-bound men.” In contrast, it would be odd to
say (of a plump woman), “She has a beautiful body, but I’d prefer her if
she were slender,” or (of a slender man), “He has a beautiful body, but
I’d prefer if he were muscular.”
Colleagues who make political objections to aesthetic universals (e.g.,
“those on the political left for whom the aesthetic is simply ‘bourgeois
ideology’” [Eagleton 8]) probably have this socially normative view of
beauty in mind. This is the area where political objections to “univer-
salism” have their greatest force. For example, reflecting one segment of
European norms, Thomas Babington Macaulay made a famous state-
ment that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the
whole native literature of India and Arabia.” This is the sort of statement
that involves a specifically “hegemonic universalization” (as Lalita Pandit
might put it [see Pandit 207]), an extension of one set of social norms to
other societies. The same thing happens not only with nations but with
classes and other groups. This is frequently harmful and is in any case
an apt topic for political analysis and response.
On the other hand, none of this means that social norms are wholly
outside the realm of universality. The issue is the level at which univer-
sality enters. Most obviously, social norms may differ in their particulars
while remaining open to explanation in terms of universal principles. For
example, there is a commonplace that the dominant views in a society
are the views of the dominant class (e.g., this is implied by most uses of
the term “hegemony” [on the generality of hegemony, see, for example,
Williams 145]). Thus bourgeois aesthetic norms are often seen as becom-
ing dominant with the rise of capitalism, English aesthetic norms become
dominant in English colonies, and so on. In some cases, the production
of aesthetic norms may be understood as more complex and indirect but
still a matter of historical variations on dominant social relations. For
example, Watt argues, “The novel’s serious concern with the daily lives
of ordinary people” depends on “general conditions.” The first of these
is that “the society must value every individual highly enough to consider
him the proper subject of its serious literature.” This condition arises
with “individualism,” which is itself contingent on “the rise of modern
industrial capitalism and the spread of Protestantism” (60). Other writers
stress a different sort of complexity with resistant norms playing a role,
often in relation to politics. For example, having emphasized dominant
discourse in Orientalism, Edward Said developed the topic of “cultural
resistance” (xii) in Culture and Imperialism (see particularly chapter 3).
Susan Faludi has argued that social norms of female beauty, such as
extreme thinness, have a role in sustaining patriarchy – and those norms
change “during periods when the culture is more receptive to women’s
quest for independence” (204). In these cases, we see general principles
linking social norms of aesthetics to socially dominant conditions and,
for some, resistance to such conditions. Although the arguments may be
historically and/or culturally specific, all suggest a form of universalism.
In the remainder of this chapter, we give only passing attention to social
norms of public beauty. Our focus is on the third, psychological sense of
“beauty,” the “personal beauty” or “aesthetic response” of Chapter 1 –
what one finds beautiful. Problems of idiosyncrasy arise most obviously
for this psychological sense. It seems initially that, if our psychological
responses to beauty are different, there cannot possibly be (psycholog-
ical) aesthetic universals. However, our brief sketch of social norms in
beauty has already indicated that variability need not be incompatible
with universal principles, since the principles and the variability will
occur at different levels – just as the law of universal gravitation and
specific trajectories of gravitational motion occur at different levels in
physics. We would not say that there is no universal gravitation because,
in ordinary atmosphere, it takes longer for a feather to fall than it does
for a bowling ball. Here, as elsewhere, divergence in manifestation in no
way contradicts universality in principles.
Indeed, when dealing with psychological response, we are almost nec-
essarily dealing with a wide range of factors that diverge from individual to
individual, factors bearing on perception, memory, inference, emotion,
and other systems and processes. (The individuality of human brains,
shaped by experience, has been stressed by, for example, Edelman, who
explains that “no two brains are identical, even those of identical twins”
[21; see also Panksepp and Biven 392].) For instance, it seems to be the
case that emotional response involves at least three factors: innate propen-
sities, formative critical period experiences, and specific emotional mem-
ories (see chapter 2 of Hogan What Literature). The first will vary some-
what across individuals. The second will vary more widely (e.g., there will
be differences between secure and insecure attachment). Finally, specific
emotional memories, although perhaps the least consequential, may vary

extensively. Our experience of an artwork (e.g., a novel) clearly involves
complex interactions of all components of emotional response, not to
mention other variable cognitive processes. Indeed, the same point holds
even for our response to facial beauty.
The nature of our psychological structures, processes, and contents,
then, predicts that aesthetic universals will lead to diversity in individual
aesthetic experience. Put differently, given the complexity of the human
mind, uniformity of response would seem to entail difference in princi-
ples, not uniformity of principles. To take a simple example from outside
aesthetics, imagine that there is some life-threatening crisis. There are
two mothers, Jane and Sally, each with her own child, baby Jane and
baby Sally. Faced with the crisis, Jane tries to save baby Jane. If Sally
tries to save baby Sally, then she is doing something different from Jane
but following the same general principle (roughly, “Save your own child
first”). In contrast, if she tries to save baby Jane, then she is engaging
in the same manifest behavior as Jane (saving baby Jane), but she is not
following the same principle.
In this case, and many others like it, identity of principle entails differ-
ence in output. The same point holds for response to beauty. Indeed, we
see this if we simply change the example from saving the child to judging
her beautiful. If Jane finds baby Jane uniquely beautiful and Sally finds
baby Sally uniquely beautiful, then their responses are probably conform-
ing to the same principle (i.e., finding one’s own baby uniquely beautiful),
even though the outputs are different. In contrast, if both find baby Jane
uniquely beautiful and baby Sally only so-so, there is the same output.
However, that identical output probably results from different principles
(e.g., Sally may be modulating her own spontaneous attachment prefer-
ence for baby Sally). Here, as elsewhere, far from being inconsistent with
variability in taste, a cognitively based set of universal aesthetic principles
will, most often, predict such variability. In the following sections, we will
consider the nature of that variability.
Aesthetic response and idiosyncrasy (I): pattern

recognition and endogenous reward
As argued in Chapter 1, there seem to be two key cognitive processes in
aesthetic response and two key emotional systems. As to the first cogni-
tive process, some research points to non-habituated pattern recognition
as central to some aesthetic response. This is found most obviously in
music, but presumably the principle is operative in a range of other aes-
thetic experiences as well, from decorative art to mathematics. Again,
“non-habituated” means that we have not come to fully anticipate the

pattern but must discern it in the course of our experience. Or, rather,
it may be that we do anticipate the pattern for background phenomena
(e.g., a drum or bass sequence); however, we come to discern the pattern
in foreground elements or phenomena that are the object of attentional
focus (e.g., melodic variations) only as that pattern unfolds.
This cognitive aspect of aesthetic response appears to be connected
with activation of the endogenous reward system (see Vuust and Kringel-
bach 266). The reward system governs seeking behavior and is related to
our experience of pleasure. Like other emotional responses, the intensity
of reward system activation is presumably connected with the gradient
of change in the “eliciting conditions” for the emotion. In general, the
intensity of a final emotion is affected by the change from a prior emotion.
If, on being called to the department head’s office, I anticipate being told
that I won an award, I will respond differently to the announcement of the
award than if I anticipated chastisement (on disappointment and relief
in relation to effort, cf. Ortony, Clore, and Collins 72; the point seems
generalizable to more passive conditions of anticipation). If, in aesthetic
response, reward system activation is produced by pattern recognition,
then one would expect the intensity of the response to be in part a func-
tion of the rapidity and extent of the change from disorientation to pattern
recognition (as well as the effort involved, as Ortony, Clore, and Collins
suggest). “Rapidity” refers to timing. Intuitively, it seems that there is
a certain temporal window in which pattern recognition has the right
effect. A comparable case might be understanding a joke; it is only funny
if one understands it immediately after the punch line, but usually not if
one understands the pattern only after reflection on the joke. “Extent”
refers to the degree of change from incomprehension to comprehension.
Recurring to the example of a joke, it seems that our enjoyment of a
witticism is diminished to the degree that we anticipate the punch line or
anticipate features of that punch line.
We have here a very complex universal principle, or candidate for a uni-
versal principle, of aesthetic response. By this principle, aesthetic plea-
sure involves the following components (slightly elaborated beyond the
foregoing): (1) a focal object and (often) a background object; (2) consis-
tent pattern recognition for the background object; (3) non-habituation
to the pattern in the focal object; (4) a shift from some degree of dis-
orientation to fuller recognition of a pattern in the focal object within
a certain temporal window; (5) reward system activation.7 There are
7 I should note here that such disorientation can occur even on reexperiencing a work, thus
even when we in some sense “know” the pattern. The point is a general one and helps
undoubtedly other factors as well, for example, (6) limitation of the aver-
sive quality of disorientation. Severe disorientation may lead to such an
intensely unpleasant feeling that it inhibits subsequent pleasure at pattern
recognition.8 The list here is not meant to be complete but to indicate
some of the complexity at issue. The key point for our present analysis is
the following. This complex of principles is a plausible, empirically sup-
ported candidate for an aesthetic universal. One may reasonably argue
that an experience satisfying these principles gives rise to aesthetic enjoy-
ment across cultures and historical periods. But it is clear that there will
be a great deal of output variation in the application of these principles
in particular circumstances. In other words, there will be considerable
individual variation in aesthetic response.
We may consider the component principles in turn. First, there is
the difference between a focal object and a background object. This
would seem to be relatively uniform across individuals. However, it is
not. Consider Hindustānı̄ classical music. A typical performance will
include a drone playing the main notes of the piece, a drum, and a
solo instrument or a vocalist. Even listeners unfamiliar with Hindustānı̄
music are likely to focus their attention on the solo instrument, allowing
the drone and drum to provide a patterned frame that aids in discerning
motivic variations from the main instrument. For most of a performance,
this makes sense. However, at a certain point, the instrumentalist may
cede the floor to the drummer. At this point, the instrumentalist is likely
to repeat the same motif over and over, allowing the drum to engage
in variations. Listeners familiar with Hindustānı̄ music will shift their
attention to the drum, relegating the instrumentalist to the background,
where his or her repetitions will help frame the variations in the drum.
However, other listeners may fail to do this. That difference in attentional
orientation will produce different aesthetic responses.
Even when listeners have the same foreground and background object,
they may not have the same degree or kind of pattern recognition. For
example, when I teach Hindustānı̄ music, I generally find that most stu-
dents are sensitive to the pulse of the drumming without instruction.
explain why we can revisit, say, novels and experience anxiety even when we know the
happy ending. Put simply, our short-term anticipations are not wholly governed by our
long-term knowledge. To take a simple case, I may back away if a caged animal moves
toward me, even though I am fully aware that it cannot escape. For a detailed discussion
of emotion, reexperience, and anticipation in the reception of art, see chapters 4 and 5
of Hogan Understanding Indian Movies.
8 Individuals appear to have different degrees and kinds of tolerance for aversive states
(such as disorientation). The point is parallel to what Norman Holland, writing in a
psychoanalytic context, identified when speaking of individually different sensitivities to
fantasy and varying needs for “defense” (see 187–188 and 332).
However, few if any are sensitive to its cyclic quality, the repetition of
the drumming pattern after a fixed number of beats. Put differently, a
few students could not even tap their feet to the beat of the music. Most
could do this; however, they could not say when a rhythmic cycle began
or how long it extended (seven beats? eight beats? twelve beats?). This
is important because part of the aesthetic pleasure one experiences in
listening to Hindustānı̄ classical music involves ways in which the rhyth-
mic cycle creates, frustrates, and fulfills expectations for the resolution of
melodic improvisations on the main instrument. One misses this entirely
if one responds only to the pulse and not to the cycle.
Technically, this is a matter of “encoding.” Encoding is the process
whereby our mind selects elements of experience and structures them
into relations with one another. Encoding recurs at various levels of
processing. For example, visual neurons are sensitive to only certain
aspects of the environment. They fire only in the presence of certain
phenomena, such as a line with a particular orientation in a particular
area of the visual field (see Wurtz and Kandel, “Central” 534). Thus they
select only that information. Through “lateral inhibition” (reducing the
likelihood that neighboring neurons will fire [see Tessier-Lavigne 521]),
they enhance the salience of that line, thus making an object’s edge
clearer to perception. This is a form of structuring. At subsequent levels
of processing, some configurations of lines are selected and organized
or put in further structural relations with one another to produce object
perception (see Wurtz and Kandel, “Perception,” 564–565). In the case
of Hindustānı̄ drumming, my students were not encoding the rhythmic
cycles; their selecting and structuring of the background stopped with
the rhythmic pulse and did not extend to the cycle.
Of course, encoding affects one’s response to focal phenomena as
well. First and most obviously, the degree of encoding will affect one’s
pattern recognition. A simple case is variation on a theme. In Hindustānı̄
classical music, as in most if not all other traditions of music, a great
deal of the aesthetic pleasure results from variations on motifs. When the
scales overlap with those used in Western music and the instrument is
familiar (e.g., a flute), my students seem to find it easier to hear at least
some of the motifs in the instrumental performance. However, if the
scale is very different and/or the instrument is unfamiliar, this becomes
more difficult. For example, perhaps disoriented by the strangeness of
the scale (roughly, F, G , A, B, C, D , E), they may be unable to
discern the main motifs of rāga Lalit. In consequence, the only pattern
they hear is very general – a single instrument playing with a drum and a
drone – and is therefore likely to give rise to habituation (and boredom)
swiftly. A related problem may occur when the scale is more accessible but
the instrument is unfamiliar (e.g., a vı̄n.ā) or the soloist uses unfamiliar

techniques (such extended vibrato in vocal performance). In connection
with this, my impression is that students sometimes do not fully process –
or perhaps even encode – the difference between part of a motif played by
plucking different strings and the same notes played by gliding from one
note to the next on a single string of a vı̄n.ā. What strikes them as mere
repetition (thus a potential source of habituation, thus boredom), strikes
me as a variation. Alternatively, they may sometimes fail to recognize the
repeated motif at all. In part, such differences in the encoding of music
are a matter of expertise. They are related to the finding that, with respect
to visual art, “people without art training prefer simple and symmetrical
visual elements, whereas people with art training prefer complex and
asymmetrical visual elements” (Kirk 329). This and related findings are
presumably explained in part by increased encoding and pattern isolation
by experts and in part by experts’ increased habituation to more expected
patterns. (I do not at all claim to be an expert in classical Indian music;
however, I do have much greater expertise than my students, most of
whom have never heard such music previously.)
It is important to note that encoding is not simply an abstract, con-
ceptual matter. For example, it is often bound up with motor processes.
Thus encoding rhythm is not merely a matter of isolating a mathemat-
ical organizing principle. It is bound up with actual or simulated motor
activity, such as toe tapping for pulse. The point is perhaps even more
obvious – and more consequential – in the case of dance. As Keestra
explains (citing Calvo-Merino and colleagues), “Significant correlations
were found between MNS [Mirror Neuron System] activation patterns
and the motor familiarity of observers with very specific types of dance”
(235). In other words, expertise gives one a bodily response to dance, a
response that is absent in the experience of novices. Thus there are dif-
ferences in “embodied encoding” due to experience or expertise as well.
Finally, it seems clear that we have not only different degrees of pattern
recognition and disorientation but also different degrees of sensitivity to
enjoyment from pattern recognition (i.e., different degrees of reward
system reactivity) and different degrees of aversion to disorientation.
For example, in their study of responses to dance, Calvo-Merino and
colleagues found “increased ventromedial frontal activation” for experts,
suggesting enhanced “responses to pleasurable and rewarding stimuli”
(1248). Moreover, there are variations in the precise timing of our pattern
recognition (i.e., just when we isolate a pattern), even in cases where that
recognition is shared. Even very small differences in timing could make
a significant difference in the degree of pleasure or aversion. I may get
the joke only a fraction of a second after you do, but that fraction of
a second may be enough to make the joke not terribly funny for me
and hilariously successful for you. Moreover, there is undoubtedly some
difference in the degree to which aversive emotional responses linger.
Perhaps my irritation at disorientation lasts longer than yours, inhibiting
my subsequent pleasure at pattern recognition, thus dampening or even
overcoming my enjoyment.
In short, it seems clear that the apparently universal aesthetic principle
of non-habituated pattern recognition entailing reward system involve-
ment is not merely compatible with variety in aesthetic response. It actu-
ally predicts such variety. The same point holds for the second main
cognitive process and the second emotion system involved in aesthetic
response.
Aesthetic response and idiosyncrasy (II): prototype

approximation and attachment
As discussed in Chapter 1, whereas some research points toward non-
habitual pattern recognition as definitive of aesthetic pleasure, another set
of studies points toward prototype approximation. Again, a “prototype”
is roughly an average case. However, the “averaging” process is complex.
Specifically, our minds do not count all instances of a given kind equally.
Rather, we seem to give greater weight to some instances over others. A
number of factors may contribute to this weighting.
In Understanding Nationalism, I isolated five factors that seem to gov-
ern the degree to which one identity category is more important than
another. These were functionality, saliency, contrast, emotional force,
and durability (the list is not intended to be complete). The same fac-
tors seem likely to guide which instance is more important for prototype
definition, given that both processes are a matter of categorization. For
example, the function of a diet food is to reduce caloric intake. Thus the
most highly functional diet food would be the one with the least calories.
Emotional force seems particularly important. If one has wretched mem-
ories of choosing to snack on lettuce leaves rather than one’s favorite dish
of crispy, deep-fried pork fat, that will likely have more force in defining
the prototype than memories of choosing chicken over beef for one’s main
course. Thus both functionality and emotional force would be likely to
affect one’s prototype for “diet food.” Prototypes also differ from actual
averages in that they may vary with context. As Kahneman and Miller
point out, in the context “Manhattan apartment,” the prototypical dog
will be rather different from that in the context “a farm in Maine” (140).
In keeping with this, in the context “dessert,” the prototypical diet food
is not lettuce but perhaps non-fat frozen yogurt.
There also seems to be a difference between continuous and discrete

domains for prototypes. In discrete domains, the prototype may be read-
justed from a weighted average to a particular subcategory. That may be
the case with lettuce, clearly a discrete subcategory of diet foods. (Put
differently, an average of salad, low-fat frozen yogurt, and broiled chicken
is unlikely to be a hybrid food; it is far more likely to be a subcategory of
food.) In contrast, categories that govern relatively continuous domains
may be closer to actual averages. For instance, at least on certain dimen-
sions, a prototypical cup would probably be about average height and
width, rather than a particular subcategory of cup.
Returning to aesthetics, we find considerable research linking
prototypes – or, in some cases, averages – with beauty. As noted in
Chapter 1, the evidence is robust and varied. Moreover, some work
indicates that enhancement of categorically distinctive features (e.g., in
male versus female faces) increases aesthetic appeal. Thus we have good
reason to posit prototype approximation as a universal principle guiding
aesthetic response. The point is consistent with developmental research,
which shows that “[v]ery young infants are . . . sensitive to aesthetic
features” of “prototypicality” (Sheridan and Gardner 281).
What does this tell us about variability in taste? First, such variability
is not likely to be random or unconstrained, because our prototypes are
unlikely to diverge too massively. They will be constrained by averag-
ing and by certain broad tendencies, such as enhancement of contrast.
Nonetheless, as with non-habitual pattern isolation, the principle pre-
dicts differences in particular aesthetic responses. Here, too, the nature
of the universal is such that it in effect requires at least some diversity in
its particularization.
It may at first seem that the result of tacit averaging processes should
be the same across individuals. But, as noted in Chapter 1, that is not the
case. To consider this point further, we should begin by recalling that our
averaging processes are not self-conscious, statistically strict procedures.
They are, rather, implicit, heuristic processes. First, they are not based
on a random sample but on individual memories. Even if all individual
memories counted equally (which they do not), there would be significant
differences across individuals’ sets of memories. Consider the case of
facial prototypes. (The same points hold for all relevant prototypes – for
example, prototypes relating to stories.) We see different people (read
or hear different stories, and so on). In addition, and perhaps more
important, we see people with different frequencies. It is possible that
we average our observations across individuals. However, it seems more
likely that we average our observations across instances – or, at least, that
frequency and duration of experience affect the average. Suppose I see
Jones ten times every day, Monday through Friday, sometimes meeting
for long conversations on weekends. In contrast, I briefly passed Smith
once in the hallway. It is possible that Jones’s face and Smith’s face will
each count equally in my implicit facial averaging and in the formation of
a facial prototype, because each is one individual face. However, it seems
far more likely that my implicit averaging will be an ongoing process,
affected to some extent by each reappearance of Jones, but only by the
single appearance of Smith, thus counting Jones much more than Smith.
In short, the sets across which we are averaging are very different.
Second, it is at least possible that there are critical period experiences
in prototype formation. Critical periods are developmental stages when
cognitive or affective systems are subject to particularly formative expe-
riences. For example, experiences during the critical period for language
acquisition largely determine the languages in which we will have native
speaker fluency. We may learn other languages at later ages but with
much more effort and usually far less success.9 It is at least possible that
something like this occurs in childhood with beauty – not that our beauty-
defining prototypes are fixed forever in the first few years of life, but that
early experiences may form initial prototypes that have a great degree of
influence on later prototype formations. In other words, early prototype
formations may bias later averaging processes. This is particularly conse-
quential as it seems likely that infantile experiences are, if anything, more
idiosyncratic than adult experiences are, given that infantile experiences
tend to be more limited.
Third, writers in situated cognition have shown that, in actual prac-
tice, our interactions with the world do not simply involve fixed cogni-
tive structures applied uniformly to experiences with the external world.
Rather, our cognition is constantly changing and reshaping itself in ongo-
ing interaction with the world (see Robbins and Aydede, “A Short”).
Cognitive processing could hardly be different in aesthetic response.
Thus our formation of prototypes does not occur once and for all. Each
new experience alters our prototypes. Indeed, following Barsalou (“Sit-
uating” 244), we might infer that, to a great extent, our prototypes are
formed ad hoc, in specific contexts, more strongly influenced by recent
instances than would be the case if this were a matter of simple averaging.
In terms of facial prototypes, this means that the context of faces we have
recently seen – including the face we are currently viewing – is likely to
alter our prototype and thus our sense of just what approximates that
9 For an overview of the idea of a critical period in language acquisition, and some disagree-
ments among linguists in this regard, see Hyltenstam. On critical periods and emotion,
see Hogan, What Literature 49–51, and citations therein.
prototype. Here, as elsewhere, the point holds for a range of cases, not
just facial beauty. Moreover, perhaps in contrast with Barsalou, I suspect
that the effects of context may be not only short-term but medium-term
as well. For example, a student’s or teacher’s response to a particular
literary work is in part dependent on what other works are being read
in the class. Contextual effects might be a matter of what works receive
particular activation in someone’s mind while he or she is reading the
new work. The extended context of the class as a whole would tend to
make other works from the class more salient, thus more significant for
response to that new work. For example, in a recent class on stylistics, I
focused on Mrs. Dalloway in the first half of the semester and Dhobi Ghat
in the second half. It seemed clear that my students’ responses to Dhobi
Ghat were strongly affected by Mrs. Dalloway.
The mention of salience returns us to output differences that are con-
nected with the weighting of variables – again, beyond salience, these
include durability, function, contrast, and emotional force. Durability
is the most equivocal. The idea here is that our experiences of objects
involve properties and conditions. Our minds abstract from the change-
able conditions, isolating what is durable. To take a simple example,
different directions and sources of light will affect our experience of a
face – for example, what parts are illuminated and what are shadowed.
In forming an image of the face, our minds to some degree subtract the
lighting effects. (If they did not, we would find it difficult to recognize
someone in different lighting conditions.) This process should repeat
itself across faces, leading to prototypes that bear on enduring features of
faces, rather than ephemera. As far as I can tell, people generally abstract
from circumstances in much the same way, so this is largely irrelevant to
the issue of diversity in output. Indeed, the most interesting issues here
concern why we find certain sorts of lighting or other ephemera more
aesthetically pleasing than others. This could be because the situations
are more prototypical or, what is perhaps more likely, that they make the
target appear more prototypical.
Function is of somewhat limited value in treating diversity as well.
Responses to functionality appear, in general, fairly uniform. Perhaps
the main differences involve professional or related specialization. Liter-
ary critics will view some features of a work as functional in that they will
contribute to teaching or research; authors will encode some aspects as
functional in inspiring their own creativity or inhibiting it. These func-
tional emphases are likely to lead to certain features of works and certain
types of work entering significantly into the prototype formation of pro-
fessionals in a way that they do not enter into the prototype formation
of non-professionals. This is important because it suggests one reason
why it is likely that there will be a difference between professional and

non-professional tastes. (As already indicated, other reasons include dif-
ferent sorts of habituation and different skills at encoding and pattern
recognition in a particular area. Some of the complexity of the issue is
brought out by Nodine, Locher, and Krupinski.)
The point bears most obviously on complex works of art. However,
it extends well beyond that. An amusing example concerns a laboratory
technician’s observation, after a colonoscopy, that a relative of mine had
a “cute colon.” She showed me the photograph, to which I actually had a
mild disgust reaction and certainly did not experience aesthetic delight.
Presumably what was going on was that the lab technician had seen so
many colon pictures that she had formed a prototype. In addition, the lab
technician’s assessment of the aesthetics of internal organs was in part a
matter of functional contrast. She not only had experience of colons gen-
erally. She had experience of functionally healthy and unhealthy colons.
The features of a functionally healthy colon were weighted using their
contrast with unhealthy colon features. The reader will no doubt be
pleased (if also moderately repulsed) to learn that the relative in question
had a very healthy colon indeed. This contributed to the laboratory tech-
nician’s aesthetic evaluation. When profession-related differences occur,
they may be highly significant, as in this case. However, they remain a
somewhat limited case.
As this example suggests, contrast is inseparable from categorization.
The point holds outside medicine, as indicated by Russell’s research on
male and female faces. Indeed, categorization and contrast are among
the most important variables in aesthetic response. If one’s aesthetic
response to a target is in part a matter of prototype approximation, then
clearly categorization is crucial even independent of contrast, because
categorization determines just what prototype is activated. If you and I
categorize a target differently, we are likely to have different aesthetic
responses.10 The point is suggested by a popular Hans Christian Ander-
sen story, “The Ugly Duckling” (“Den grimme Ælling”). In that story, a
poor, orphaned waterfowl is thought to be quite unaesthetic, until he is
recognized as a swan rather than a duck. One way of understanding the
story is in terms of categorization and prototype approximation. “Duck”
and “swan” activate different prototypes. Whereas the “ugly duckling”
did not closely approximate a prototypical duck, he did closely approxi-
mate a prototypical swan.
10 Silvia objects to prototype-based theories of aesthetics that, for a given target, “a range
of categories” may apply (258). Silvia is right. But that is not an objection, because that
is part of why people respond differently to the same target.
The point is not confined to commonly shared categories, such as

duck and swan. Indeed, it applies perhaps most significantly to more
or less fine-grained subcategories, including professional subcategories.
Research on emotion categorization has shown that the more or less
fine-grained quality of our emotion categorizations affects the experi-
ence and course of those emotions (see Lindquist and Barrett). We may
expect the same sort of consequences for categorization and subcate-
gorization elsewhere. For example, when Northern Europeans first saw
sub-Saharan Africans, they had no option but to categorize their faces
in the same way that they categorized their own faces. Because there
were highly salient ways in which Africans deviated from the statistical
average for Europeans, they were very likely to find Africans ugly, at least
in those respects. The same point holds for sub-Saharan Africans seeing
Europeans. This would change either when the unusual group (whether
Africans or Europeans) began to affect prototype formation on the part
of the home society or when members of the home society formed sub-
categories with associated prototypes, such that they began implicitly
or explicitly to judge a “beautiful European face,” a “beautiful African
face,” and so on. In keeping with this, research indicates that “ratings
of facial attractiveness” are consistent “across ethnicities and cultures”
(Chatterjee, Aesthetic 7) when the groups involved are not isolated from
one another. In contrast, the limited contemporary research on the topic
indicates that, when the groups are isolated and there are differences
in appearance, then aesthetic response differs (see Chatterjee, Aesthetic
7–8 and citations). This contemporary research is supported by histor-
ical materials related to colonialism and other early contact (e.g., the
association of black skin with ugliness in Shakespeare’s Othello, as in the
characterization of Othello as a “sooty . . . thing” who gives rise “to fear,
not to delight” [I.ii.69–70]).
The importance of categorization and contrast extends beyond faces,
encompassing, for example, artistic movements and literary genres. Cat-
egorizing a particular work as “a painting” or even “a painting of the
Madonna and child” may produce a different effect than categorizing
it as “early Mannerist,” since the relevant prototypes would differ, as
would the ways we encode the features of the work itself. (The general
idea has not, of course, gone unnoticed. For example, the importance
of categorization is stressed by Carroll [On Criticism], although in a dif-
ferent theoretical context.) Consider an example from narrative. The
Indian film Fanaa concerns a Kashmiri revolutionary and a young, blind
Kashmiri woman. They meet, apparently fall in love, and culminate their
relationship. The revolutionary then leaves the woman and rejoins the
revolution (after securing medical care to restore her sight). The ending
of the film reunites them briefly, before the woman has to kill the revolu-
tionary to prevent a possible terrorist attack. Although the film has many
serious flaws, I probably find it much more aesthetically successful than
would many other viewers, largely because I categorize it as a seduction
plot. (The seduction plot is a cross-cultural genre wherein a man seduces
and abandons a woman, who often pursues him, with one or both often
dying. On this genre, see Hogan, Affective [210–220].) Without this cate-
gorization and associated prototype, viewers are more likely to see the film
simply as a loosely romantic melodrama. I should perhaps note that, in
this case, my response is complex. It combines prototype approximation
with non-habituated pattern recognition, because the story fits the proto-
type structure in highly unexpected ways. More precisely, the prototype
enables a certain sort of pattern recognition. This sort of combination –
where the prototype in effect provides a background, expectancy struc-
ture – is probably common in our response to works of art. It may be
particularly common in componentially complex arts, such as literature,
that involve many sorts of prototypes and patterns.
A final variable that affects averaging is affective force. We would expect
prototype formation to be disproportionately guided by strongly emo-
tional instances, as opposed to neutral instances. It is well established
that emotionally consequential instances tend to overwhelm statistical
information in judgment tasks (see Nisbett and Ross 15). The forma-
tion of prototypes would seem to involve processes of the same general
sort. In the case of aesthetic response, we may expect another emotional
factor as well. The research we have been considering often treats pro-
totype approximation alone. But presumably prototype approximation
fosters a feeling of beauty only when it is connected with the right sorts
of emotion. For example, prototypes related to disgust-provoking objects
should not produce aesthetic delight. This may seem contradicted by
the laboratory technician’s comment about the colon picture. However,
once again, she presumably subcategorized colons into “healthy” and
“diseased.” It seems highly unlikely that she would have found beauty
(or “cuteness”) in a picture of a colon showing a high degree of disease
prototypicality. This is connected with the disgust-eliciting properties of
colon disease.
In the case of the “cute” (and healthy) colon photograph, the emotions
at issue are presumably joy and relief. The context of such an evaluation
is rather like that of a story where a possible tragedy is reversed in a
comic conclusion. The difference is that the fate of the protagonist in
the technician’s story is real and not merely simulated. This example
suggests that aesthetic pleasure may arise with prototype approxima-
tion involving positive emotions generally, perhaps due simply to reward
involvement. However, as discussed in Chapter 1, there is evidence that

attachment or bonding is a particularly important emotion in aesthetic
response. Indeed, the presence of relatives and their concern about the
results of colonoscopies may have led to (empathic) attachment sys-
tem involvement in the technician’s response. In connection with these
points, we might expect prototypes with a strong attachment component
to be particularly germane to aesthetic response. More exactly, we would
expect to find that the most aesthetically consequential prototypes stress
attachment-based memories in averaging. These memories may concern
literary works or characters that have activated attachment feelings or
real people and places for which we feel attachment. In the case of facial
beauty, for example, it would seem that our prototypes bearing on aes-
thetic feeling should stress the faces of attachment figures. Here we have
another source of individual output variability, because our attachment
figures differ greatly.
Literary support for the importance of attachment in this context is not
confined to Mrs. Dalloway. Sappho wrote that people say many different
things are beautiful, but her claim is for “whatever one loves” (Barnard
41). Shakespeare suggests the point in sonnet 130 – “My mistress’ eyes
are nothing like the sun . . . And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As
any she belied with false compare” (in Bevington 1643). Jane Austen has
an estranged Captain Wentworth express distaste for Anne Elliot’s looks.
Later, he suggests that he always finds her lovely. Anne recalls his former
view and concludes that his feeling of her beauty was “the result, not the
cause of a revival of his warm attachment” (234). Taking up a broader,
cultural source, Khan recounts that the legendary Arabic lover, Majnu,
was asked about how he could be entranced by Layla’s beauty since, in
fact, she was “rather plain.” He responded, “My Layla must be seen with
my eyes” (xxi). To cite a more recent example, the influential feminist
poet, playwright, and critic Hélène Cixous asserts that “everything that is
loved . . . is equal to the ‘beautiful’” (606). In each case, the point seems
to be that a sense of beauty is bound up with attachment.11 The present
analysis adds to this observation the idea that a history of attachment
bonds might actually affect the prototypes through which one responds
to targets as beautiful or not beautiful.
When I first began formulating these ideas, I was struck by the degree
to which they explained my judgments about faces. Beyond faces, my
11 Unsurprisingly, our attachment system arousal comes to be linked with the works that
give rise to the arousal. As Mary Mothersill puts the point, with her characteristic wit
and insight, “Not everything is possible; for example, getting married and living happily
ever after with a novel is not; but ‘falling in love’ strikes me as literal and non-hyperbolic
in its application to aesthetic response within a certain range” (274).
sense of literary beauty seems to be affected by books that I “love”; my

sense of cinematic beauty, by films that I “love,” and so on. Sticking
to the case of faces for the moment, it seems clear that my aesthetic
response to Tanuja is in part the result of my attachment relations to
my wife over the course of the past three decades. Lalita is clearly more
similar to Tanuja than she is to Miley Cyrus.12 Indeed, the effect of
my attachment relation here is made even clearer if I contrast Tanuja
with a woman that I considered strikingly beautiful when I was fifteen,
Joey Heatherton.13 In looking at these faces, I am struck by the degree
to which the young Heatherton resembles Cyrus, suggesting that my
aesthetic response at fifteen was much closer to that of Maxim magazine
than after thirty years of attachment bonding.
The case of my wife indicates that prototypes for aesthetic response
may be altered in adulthood. However, the case with my male prototype –
well represented by Raj Kapoor – may be different. Here, the clearest
connection is with my father, my primary attachment object in childhood.
Although he would hardly be mistaken for Raj Kapoor’s twin, when I was
a child, my father did resemble the young Kapoor, certainly much more
than he resembled Josh Hartnett. (I should note that I picked Tanuja and
Raj Kapoor as good examples of my aesthetic response before I thought
of explaining my aesthetic preferences in terms of particular attachment
bonds, thus before I noticed their resemblance to my wife and father.)
This may point to the importance of critical period experiences. Indeed,
as my primary attachment figure, my father may have contributed to my
larger prototype of a beautiful face. It is striking to me that at least in
some photographs the putatively most beautiful man and woman, Josh
Hartnett and Miley Cyrus, actually look somewhat alike. My own choices
for aesthetic preference – Tanuja and Raj Kapoor – are somewhat similar
as well. This suggests that at least some people may have a broader,
non-gendered facial prototype that is to some extent particularized
and differentiated into gender-specific prototypes in contrastive sub-
categorization. If so, then it may be that my critical period experiences
facilitated the adult change in my aesthetic prototype. Put simply, my
wife’s face exerted a greater effect on my facial averaging in part because
its effects were not entirely dissimilar to those of my father’s face – a
striking case of complex, variant responses developing through universal
principles.
12 See http://www.koausa.org/Books/Sukeshi/index.html (accessed 28 May 2014).

13 See http://www.cinemablend.com/pop/Actress-Socialite-Joey-Heatherton-Accused-
Beating-Neighbor-With-Shoe-63608.html (accessed 13 August 2015).
Transfiguring humiliation: a personal sense

of the sublime
For the present project, a crucial issue is just how critical period expe-
riences bear on works of art, as opposed to faces. It is logically possible
that such experiences affect some domains of aesthetic response and not
others. However, critical period experiences are clearly central to attach-
ment. In consequence, if attachment is indeed crucial for a feeling of
beauty, it seems likely that critical period experiences are important for
our aesthetic response to works of art, at least in this respect. Perhaps
surprisingly, I had not considered this issue until after completing what I
initially took to be a final version of this chapter, at which point I began to
wonder about the issue of critical period experiences and art. On reflec-
tion, it struck me that there are some significant instances in my case,
quite comparable to those bearing on my facial preferences. For example,
some of my most intense aesthetic experiences bear on mystical litera-
ture, such as the poems of Rumi. Moreover, I seem to have a particular
preference for mystical poetry relating to female divinity, prominently
including many Bengali goddess poems (see McDermott), which stand
(perhaps with Rumi) as a paradigm of aesthetic excellence for me. The
point is particularly striking in my own creative work (see The Death of
the Goddess). This is to some degree surprising because I am not at all
religious. However, my earliest aesthetic experiences were bound up with
Catholicism, and particularly with my family’s Marianism, prominently
including its specific devotion to Our Lady of Czestochowa
˛ or the “Black
Madonna.” It seems very likely that these critical period experiences are
affecting my current aesthetic preferences in literature and art.
Once I began to consider the issue more systematically, I realized that
there some remarkably detailed patterns in my aesthetic preferences –
perhaps more for sublimity than for beauty – and that these relate fairly
straightforwardly to critical period experiences. At the time of writing,
my most intense aesthetic experience in recent months had an initially
unlikely source – the Hindi film Cocktail. We will turn to this film in
greater detail shortly. But for the moment, the crucial point is that the
main character, Veronica, is a somewhat sexually promiscuous Indian
woman who is clearly not seen by men as suitable material for a wife.
Although desired, she is also disrespected. Her boyfriend leaves her for
her best friend, and she is seriously injured in an automobile accident.
During her recovery, the film’s director, Homi Adajania, presents us
with a musical montage sequence. The accompanying song assimilates
Veronica to “Jugni,” a rebellious woman who is spiritually exalted by the
singer, drawing on S.ūfı̄ motifs that elevate love as the supreme path to
God. This is the sequence that I find sublime.
When further considering my aesthetic preferences, I recalled being

asked for an outstanding example of aesthetic excellence at a literary
workshop a few years ago. I mentioned the moment in Raj Kapoor’s film
Barsaat, where the protagonist touches the foot of a prostitute, showing
her the respect due to, for example, a parent or teacher. The prostitute
had been driven by concern for her infant, yet was despised by society
that in principle prizes such devotion. I also recalled my main example of
aesthetic excellence in a recent article – a scene from Premcand’s novel
of colonial India, Godān, in which a young peasant woman (Jhuniyā),
pregnant out of wedlock and abandoned by her lover, literally throws
herself at the feet of the man who should be her father-in-law (Horı̄).
Even though he has just sworn to throw her out of his home, he ends up
calling her “daughter” and welcoming her (152). There are, of course,
many other cases as well. One of my most powerful aesthetic responses,
one that has continued to affect me for years, comes toward the end of
the Mahābhārata. In his final trials before death, Yudhis.t.hira is followed
loyally by a lowly dog. Isolated after the deaths of his wife and brothers,
Yudhis.t.hira suddenly sees the god Indra, who invites him into heaven,
where he will be reunited with his family. But there is a condition; he
must abandon the dog there in the desert (Vyasa 3). Yudhis.t.hira refuses,
saying, “It has been said that the abandonment of one that is devoted is
infinitely sinful. . . . Hence, O great Indra, I shall not abandon this dog
today from desire of my happiness” (5). The dog is then transformed
into Yudhis.t.hira’s father, the god Dharma (or ethical duty). As occurred
earlier in the epic, Dharma was testing his son – who, of course, made
the right decision in rejecting social prescriptions surrounding unclean-
ness and reciprocating the dog’s loyalty. Not all the examples are from
India. Another recent experience of great tragic beauty and sublimity
concerned a character named “Claudy” in the Dardenne brothers’ film
Lorna’s Silence. Lorna, an Albanian, is trying to become a Belgian citizen.
Through some gangsters, she arranges a fake marriage with the Belgian
citizen Claudy, a drug addict they plan to murder after the marriage. As
it turns out, Claudy is the only man in Lorna’s life who not only does
not try to harm her but avoids harming her when everything would lead
him to do so. This causes Lorna to make an unsuccessful attempt to save
him.
It is probably obvious that there is a pattern to these cases (and many
others I could name). I find works or scenes particularly sublime when
they have all or most of the following elements:
1. They feature a character who is socially despised as inferior, particu-
larly morally inferior, and is therefore acutely isolated. This is due to
putatively disgust-provoking characteristics, most often sexual or in
some cases self-indulgent another way (e.g., through drug addiction).
2. These characteristics may be related to attachment vulnerability. In

any case, the low status is not due to violence.
3. This character’s moral excellence is in reality greater than that of those
around him or her, most often due to greater compassion.
4. This superiority is connected with attachment relations. Thus it is
commonly manifest in an attachment bond (such as Claudy’s attach-
ment to Lorna). In addition, it may show the character’s particular
sensitivity to other people’s social and attachment needs (most obvi-
ously in the mother’s care for her child in Barsaat, but also in the
dog’s apparent fondness for Yudhis.t.hira). Moreover, the superiority
of the character may be recognized by another character, inspiring
attachment feelings in him or her also (as when Horı̄ accepts Jhuniyā
as his “daughter” [152]).
5. Finally, in some cases, the elevation has a mystical character, linking
the despised character with spirituality. Note that, because this is a
prototype (thus, roughly, a distinctive average across particular cases),
it is not constituted by necessary and sufficient conditions, but by a
cluster of features whose recurrence contributes to the prototypicality
of any particular case.
There are undoubtedly many sources for this pattern, including genetic
predispositions and early experiences related to ethics and attachment
proper. But it also seems clear that this response is a result of my early
aesthetic experiences. The mysticism of the Cocktail and the Mahābhārata
cases, as well as that of Rumi’s poetry and the Bengali goddess lyrics
mentioned earlier, suggest a religious source. Again, my critical period
experiences in this area derive from my Catholic upbringing. In child-
hood, there were several New Testament stories that I found (and indeed
continue to find) not only morally inspiring but profoundly aestheti-
cally affecting. One of these concerns the “woman known in the town
to be a sinner” (Luke 7:37 in New American Bible), who washes Jesus’s
feet with her tears. The Pharisee at whose home Jesus is dining clearly
disdains the woman and criticizes Jesus for associating with her. How-
ever, Jesus contrasts the woman with those present, saying, “I came to
your home and you provided me with no water for my feet. She has
washed my feet with her tears” (Luke 7:44). Thus he elevates her above
others, morally and spiritually. He explains that this is “because of her
great love,” as against those “whose love is small” (Luke 7:47). Thus
her moral and spiritual excellence are manifest in compassion-enhanced
attachment feelings (i.e., love). (Note that her apparent openness to
attachment bonding is a virtue that might have left her prone to the very
vices for which the Pharisee condemns her.) Another exemplary instance
concerns the woman “caught in the act of adultery” (John 8:4). When
asked about stoning the woman to death, Jesus replied, “Let the man
among you who has no sin be the first to cast a stone at her” (John 8:7).
The mob dissipates, but the woman stays, as if recognizing that Jesus
himself has the right to cast a stone. But Jesus explains that he does not
condemn her.
These and other cases from the gospels and elsewhere provide strong
emotional memories for me, and presumably key critical period expe-
riences. They converge toward a prototype with the features isolated in
the preceding. That prototype has had enduring importance for me. But,
in keeping with situated cognition theory, it is also altered contextually.
Indeed, each new work that activates that prototype – with its associated
memories and emotions – also reconfigures it, in part through specifying
it differently. Each such work generates its own set of expectations, thus
entailing habitual or non-habitual forms of pattern recognition as well.
Again, a good example of this may be found in my somewhat unexpected
reaction to Cocktail, a film that probably strikes most viewers as pro-
totypical of nothing so much as trite commercial melodrama, resolved
in a clichéd and implausible happily-ever-after ending, and rendered
even more repulsive by conventional and even sexist morality – a work
that would be more objectionable than sublime, if it were not simply
ridiculous.
Jugni Ji follows the path of Ishq

Veronica is a young Indian woman living in England. She has led a some-
what sexually promiscuous life and worries that men consider her “good
for just one thing.” She is contrasted with the somewhat stereotypically
good Indian girl, Meera. Meera has landed in London without a job
or any sort of support, having been abandoned by her husband. When
Veronica finds Meera crying in the ladies’ room at a restaurant, she ends
up inviting her to stay in her home. Veronica’s boyfriend, Gautam, even-
tually falls in love with the traditional Meera. Despite Veronica’s pleas
that she can become a “good Indian wife,” Gautam’s heart is now set on
the traditional girl and it is clear that he never considered Veronica as in
any remote way a possibility for marriage.
It is worth noting that the traditional–modern division between the
women is superficial. For example, there is a specific moment when
Gautam and Meera seem to fall in love. It occurs when there is a beach
party and Meera is dancing. She incorporates some elements from Indian
classical dance into her dance with Gautam, specifically some orna-
mental features of hand gesture. Gautam is entranced, despite the fact
that Meera’s cross-cultural synthesis is clumsy at best and likely to be
impressive only to onlookers unfamiliar with Indian dance traditions.

During this time, Veronica has gone back to where they are staying. She
explains that Gautam’s mother – to whom she refers simply as “Ma” –
was visiting and she did not want her to be left alone. Thus Meera
presents some external features or ornaments of tradition, easily recog-
nizable as such. However, Veronica is actually fulfilling some central aims
of tradition (here, care for parents), and she is doing so out of genuine
feeling, not out of a compliance with social pressure – the sort of genuine
feeling she exhibited in taking in Meera toward the beginning of the film.
Indeed, in both cases, she exhibits a sort of parental care for the social
and attachment needs of others.
After Veronica learns about the relation between Gautam and Meera,
she initially responds as if she is supportive of the lovers. She takes them
to a club and encourages them to dance together. They engage in their
(pseudo-)fusion of nightclub and Indian classical dance while Veronica
watches. Adajaniya cuts to a more distant shot that isolates Veronica in
the frame, suggesting her social isolation. In the following sequence, we
see Veronica moving listlessly through the throng of dancers. Adajaniya
intercuts matching shots where Veronica is moving through the same
space in the same way, but the crowd of dancers is absent. He is, of course,
conveying her sense of isolation. (The technique seems obvious to the
point of cliché when explicitly stated, but is effective as pure perceptual
presentation, at least for me.) Subsequently, Veronica encounters a series
of people she had met previously on entering the club. The first meetings
showed these people expressing great enthusiasm at seeing her. Now they
look with disdain. This is ambiguous between subjective visual narration
(showing what Veronica feels), objective presentation (as Veronica has
gotten very drunk and may inspire disdain from those who greeted her
enthusiastically before), or internal access to the real attitudes of these
people (who outwardly appear to think well of Veronica but may harbor
much less respectful attitudes).
Thus we have key elements from my prototype. There is a suggestion
of disdain and (sexual) disgust for a flawed but still morally superior
character, who has great attachment vulnerability. Moreover, this partic-
ular scene is connected with her sensitivity to the attachment needs of
her two friends. The scene also portrays the isolation of consciousness, a
recurring feature of the sublime (as discussed in Chapter 1), though not
something idiosyncratic to my response.
Although she is morally superior to other characters, Veronica is
neither idealized nor psychologically simplified. For example, she
exhibits spitefulness – if, admittedly, quite justified spitefulness – in
having Meera leave. (Meera had continued to live in Veronica’s home.)
She then accuses Gautam of using her, while also pleading that he stay
with her. The sequence seems to me eminently plausible in terms of
(patterns in) actual human behavior but also unexpected, given her initial
(apparent) acceptance of Gautam and Meera’s relationship. Crucially,
this absence of idealization or simplification does not inhibit my feelings
for Veronica. If anything, her full humanization enhances my empathy –
and even my sense of her moral superiority – by stressing her human
fallibility.
In keeping with these points, I find myself deeply ambivalent about
the relations among the three characters. It is typical in romantic plots
that we want the two lovers to be united – that would presumably be
Gautam and Meera in this case. But I care far more about Veronica’s
well-being than that of Gautam or Meera. My fondness for Veronica
might make her union with Gautam into my “preferred final situation”
(in Ed Tan’s phrase [98]). But here there is another (non-habitual) com-
plication. Her moral superiority to the fickle Gautam (not to mention
the insipid Meera) – as well as her attachment vulnerability – leads me
to reject anything that makes her happiness contingent on his constancy
(or, still less, his patronizing pity). The resulting ambivalence is part of
the non-habitual quality of the work.
Unsurprisingly, Veronica ends up alone. In response to her miserable
state, she plunges into debauchery. She ends up being severely mistreated
by several men, and perhaps sexually assaulted. For me, this sequence
of events is saved from habituation by its gender politics. On the one
hand, the sequence can be interpreted as showing the dangers of promis-
cuity. But my interpretation of the sequence is necessarily affected by
my emotional response. I continue to care far more for Veronica than
for anyone else in the film. Moreover, she is subsequently saved from
this self-destruction, with no apparent long-term damage. The descent
into drunken oblivion, followed by salvation, is (in my experience) more
commonly associated with a man, saved by the ministering graces of an
angelic young woman. Patriarchy allows men such a descent into hell.
Cocktail allows it for the woman. I do not mean to claim that this makes
the film feminist. But it does deviate enough from genre conventions (e.g.,
the exemplar of Devdas in Hindi film) that it becomes non-habitual.
We expect some transforming event that shifts Veronica out of her
downward spiral. One night, seeing Gautam sitting across the street on
a bench, Veronica steps out into oncoming traffic and is nearly killed.
The “Jugni” song montage that I find so sublime comes when she is
recovering from the accident and Gautam has temporarily come to live
with her to help in the recovery. For our purposes, perhaps the most
important aspect of Veronica’s accident is that her near death facilitates
the entry of spiritual concerns and thus the mystical elevation that is so
important in my personal experience of sublimity.
At this point, a censorious, traditional audience is likely to condemn
Veronica with particular severity. She had early led a sexually free life. But
now she has sunk to still worse drunkenness and sexual degradation. As
it happens, however, there is an Indian tradition that links drunkenness
with the transcendence of material convention in pursuit of intoxication
in God, and that links secular love with divine love. That is S.ūfism
(though there are elements of this sort in the Hindu tantric tradition
as well). In one form of S.ūfism, ultimate truth and union with God in
love are associated with socially marginal and ecstatic behavior. This is
clearest in S.ūfı̄ poetry, where “drunkenness” (see Lichtenstadter 83), the
“pivotal points of Love, Wine, and Beauty” (Levy 96), adumbrate what is
sometimes called the “experience of spiritual intoxication” (Waines 142).
In connection with this, S.ūfı̄ poetry takes up “erotic imagery” (Chaitanya
109) and “love that flies in the face of either social or sexual or religious
convention” (Davis 19). The points apply clearly to Veronica, even more
strikingly when one recalls that in S.ūfism, “love is intensified by music
and dancing” (Levy 96).
The Jugni song develops this strain of S.ūfism in relation to Punjabi
folk traditions treating a character named “Jugni.”14 The song begins
by celebrating love and linking it with the divine – “The first letter of
God’s name (alif) is the herb of love / You have planted in my heart.”15
“Love” here is “ishq,” “passionate” love, often associated with the love
that links humans with God in S.ūfı̄ tradition (see Lumbard 345). The
highly ornamental solo vocalization is at least related to Middle Eastern
scales that viewers may associate with S.ūfı̄ singing as well. In any case,
I certainly have that association (which is what counts for my personal
response). In connection with this, it has the qualities of unexpected
patterning for me. Someone who was entirely unfamiliar with Middle
Eastern scales may not isolate a pattern at all. Someone more familiar
14 As treated by some commentators, Punjabi folk traditions are consistent with my

response to this part of the film. For example, Jugni is sometimes understood as a
rebellious woman who defies social convention and whose name may suggest a yogini,
that is, a female yogi or spiritual practitioner (see Vashist and subsequent comments).
My point here is not to take a stand on the scholarly accuracy of these authors’ claims,
but simply to note that the interpretive presuppositions of my response to this character
have at least some social or cultural basis.
15 The English translations rely in part on the subtitles, in part on the translation
at BollyMeaning.com (http://www.bollymeaning.com/2012/06/dum-gutkoon-jugni-ji-
cocktail-lyrics.html [accessed 28 May 2014]), combined with some changes based on
my knowledge of related languages (Hindi and Urdu; the song is in Punjabi) and help
from Lalita Pandit Hogan. The song sequence from the film is available at https://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=x NoA Fp2Rc (accessed 29 May 2014).
with the tradition might find fault with some aspect of the performance,
the melody, or the ornamentation. But, for me, the vocalization fosters
non-habitual pattern isolation.
The patterning applies to the verse as well as the music. For example,
the opening stanza involves three parallel couplets, with the third couplet
varying both the ending of the first line and the melody of the second line.
In addition, the second line of each couplet has a two-syllable rhyme;
the first line of the first and second couplets ends with “i,” but the
third couplet varies this – and so on. These constitute discernable and
unexpected sound patterns. The three-couplet verse is followed by a
more apparently repetitive chorus, which changes both the music and
the lyrical format. The chorus is sung in the call-response format that
characterizes some S.ūfı̄ singing. In this case, each exchange begins with
“Ae ve” and ends with “Jugni ji.” In its religious use, such repetition is
designed to foster a sort of trancelike state conducive to devotion but also
associated with intoxication.
The meaning of the verses too is patterned, forming variations that
contribute to the trancelike quality. Again, the first couplet refers to the
addressee, Jugni, sowing the herb of ishq in the singer’s heart. The second
couplet refers to the growing of the herb, giving us two versions of the
same information – “This soil is not bound to a season. / It blossoms in
any season.” The third leads us back to “[t]he one who planted the herb
in my heart.” Semantically, there is a sort of circularity to the sequence,
perhaps distantly suggesting the twirling dance of some S.ūfı̄s seeking a
devotional trance. Dance may also be hinted at in the rhythm and alliter-
ations of the fifth line, “Oh jug jug jeeve, jeeve Jugni jisne.” This hint is
strengthened in the cyclical format of the call-and-response of the refrain.
The opening verse already links the degraded Veronica with exaltation
and with God, connecting such divine exaltation specifically with love.
The refrain makes the connection even clearer. First, the “Ji” appended to
her name is an honorific, expressing respect. Second, the singer refers to
her as his spiritual guide or pir. The verses of the refrain link her with the
people of God, the Prophet, God Himself, and with “all the green earth.”
The image of the green earth recalls the plant that grows from the seed of
love and links Jugni with all growth, thus all love. The idea is reinforced
when the next verse explains that “Jugni walks the path of love.” As if
describing Veronica’s sexual adventures, the speaker goes on to explain
that, though she is “not deceived,” she “doesn’t understand / to bring
her heart or not” – precisely Veronica’s dilemma in her various affairs.
Then the key line follows: “Yet her love is pure.” To a morally orthodox
observer, it would seem that Veronica’s love is degraded and soiled. But
she plants the herb of love in the soil, the green, growing earth.
There are also patterns in the cinematography that enhance the aes-
thetic effect. For example, there are some lovely coordinations of color
within scenes. In one brief sequence, Veronica is speaking with Gautam’s
uncle. Both are wearing white pants. Veronica has a white shawl and a red
scarf dangling beneath the shawl. The uncle has a black shawl and a red
sweater beneath the shawl. The colors partially repeat (with variations –
as in red scarf versus red sweater) and partially contrast (white shawl
versus black shawl). The clothing pattern is related to the surrounding
black and white of the darkness, punctuated by spots of light, including
one from a centered red candle. Sometimes there are patterns across
scenes, as when the camera adjusts with a slight pan left on Gautam
trying to sleep, then in a sort of counterpoint cuts to Veronica trying
to sleep, now panning right. The director also varies the rhythm of the
editing, sometimes coordinating it with the cycles of the musical rhythm
but sometimes avoiding this. There are larger patterns in the sequence
as well, stretching across longer time periods – as when we see Meera by
a window at different points (once, she is looking out the window as the
camera dollies back; a second time, the camera itself is first “looking”
through the window before pulling back). Of course, in all these cases,
other viewers might either not notice the patterns or might find them
habitual (e.g., perhaps some viewer might find some techniques to be
too reminiscent of music videos and habitual in that context). However,
I find them both encodable and unexpected.
Just after the song ends, Veronica explains to Gautam that she cannot
have him stay away from Meera. She again shows her compassion and
her moral superiority. Someone might object that she threw Meera out
of her house and accepted Gautam’s help in her recovery. However, to
my mind, that contributes to her superiority. It is important that she is
not simply a passive victim. She gave Meera shelter, food, and friendship
when Meera was lost and alone. It would have been a bit too spineless
to simply allow the happy couple to stay in her home. As to Gautam, it
would be self-destructive to reject his help when she was so terribly in
need. If she simply gave in and showed no concern for herself, she would
have become more pathetic than sublime.
Thus in this scene we find multiple levels of unexpected patterning –
in the meaning of the verses, in the sound of the verses, in the music,
and in the visuals (cinematography and editing). This provides a basis
for aesthetic experience. There is considerable background regularity
in these areas as well – most obviously in the rhythmic patterns of the
music and the verse structure of the lyrics. Crucially for my response, the
sequence closely approximates my prototype for sublimity, with its social
degradation of a morally superior character and its repeated emphasis
on attachment relations, as well as its portrayal of the utter isolation of

consciousness. Moreover, the sublime effect is intensified by the sharp
gradient from social disdain to spiritual exaltation. Again, different peo-
ple will encode the musical and other features of the work differently,
isolating and responding to patterns in various ways. They will also have
different relevant prototypes. In consequence, other viewers might find
the sequence banal or even ridiculous. However, given the precise nature
of my musical, literary, and cinematic encoding and response, the nature
of my attachment memories and relevant narrative prototypes, it becomes
almost predictable – by universal principles – that I would have a strong
aesthetic response to this sequence, finding it sublime.
In sum, my aesthetic delight in this sequence may be very different from

that of most other viewers. Indeed, my response is in one or another
respect different from that of every other viewer, even those viewers
who find it aesthetically pleasurable. This may seem to contradict any
assertion of aesthetic universals. However, my response to this episode
is governed by the universal cognitive and emotive processes that pro-
duce aesthetic response – non-habituated pattern recognition, prototype
approximation, reward system activation, and attachment system involve-
ment, as well as a sense of the utter inaccessibility of other people’s
conscious experience, prominently including that of attachment objects.
Given the nature of human life and experiences, these processes neces-
sarily lead to differences in aesthetic response. Among other things, our
encoding of targets – thus our ability to isolate patterns – will vary, as will
our proneness to habituation, and our reward system sensitivity. Our cat-
egorizations will differ, often in terms of specificity, thus changing what
prototypes are activated for a particular target. Our actual prototypes will
be diverse owing to individual variety of experience, context, emotional
associations, and other factors. Finally, our attachment responses will
not be the same, because of different innate sensitivities, variable criti-
cal period experiences, and diverse emotional memories. In many cases,
these differences will produce patterns of aesthetic response that may
appear highly idiosyncratic at the individual level. However, they remain
the product of universal processes. In short, the currently most plausible
universals of beauty not only do not require uniformity of output; they
are not even compatible with such uniformity.
3 Unspoken beauty
Problems and possibilities of absence
Up to this point, we have been considering beauty that is, so to speak,

present in the work of art, elements that we can more or less identify as
part of the novel, film, or other object. Patterns, prototype approximation,
attachment motifs – these at least appear to be part of the work itself,
whether at the level of storyworld, story, plot, narration, or verbalization.
Of course, in all these cases, the idea of presence in the text is somewhat
illusory. For example, Woolf’s phrase “irises and roses and nodding tufts
of lilac” (Mrs. Dalloway 13) does not itself present us with anything. We
must always simulate. In this respect, we are invariably responding to
our own imagination of a work, not to the work itself; we are responding
to what Phenomenologists called the “intentional object,” not the thing
per se. This is true even in film. Our response to, for example, facial
expressions of actors and actresses is largely an automatic process. But
we must simulate the intentions and attitudes, meanings and beliefs of
characters – often even more in film than in literature. Nonetheless,
the text’s “instructions for mental composition” (as Scarry aptly put it
[244]) are often precise enough that the key features of the prototype
approximation or pattern are adequately signaled; the “projections of the
reader’s imagination” may thus be sufficiently “guided” (to use Wolfgang
Iser’s words [29]). In this sense, we are to a great extent complying with
those instructions when we simulate.
Or at least that is the case when our simulations are interpretively
justified. In other words, if we are complying with textual instructions for
simulation, we may reasonably be said to be responding to features of the
work. There will, of course, be individual differences in response. But
our understanding of the work may be, in part, evaluated by reference
to those instructions, which serve as norms. Put simply, we cannot say
that a reader is wrong if he or she does not find “the irises and roses
and nodding tufts of lilac” beautiful; however, we can say that he or
she is mistaken – or has failed to notice something about the text – if
he or she has not encoded the unusual sound and stress patterns that
mark the passage or the metaphorical assimilation of a lilac tuft to a
76
Unspoken beauty 77
human head. These are at least very close to being features of the text
itself.
However, not all simulation is normatively guided by textual instruc-
tions, at least not in the same manner or degree. There are beauties
that we cannot tie so directly to the text. Or, rather, we can tie them to
the text, but only to amorphous or elliptical aspects of the text, vague
bits, or even absences – “strategic opacities,” to borrow Stephen Green-
blatt’s phrase for one of Shakespeare’s most successful techniques. This
would be unsurprising if our responses were entirely personal and vari-
ous in these cases, the gaps filled in by our private and incommensurable
associations. The surprise comes from the fact that a work can achieve
success across many readers even with vagueness and ellipsis. Of course,
responses to blankness are partially unique and individual. Indeed, there
is always idiosyncrasy, even to the most fully determinate works; personal
peculiarity is not confined to severely elliptical works. The strange thing
is that absence often inspires the same sorts of emotional response across
many readers. As Carey writes, “Some of literature’s most famous effects”
derive from “indistinctness” (241). Similarly, Leech and Short refer to
“Hemingway’s theory of omission, whereby the significance of the text” –
they refer specifically to readers’ emotional response – “comes through
what is unstated . . . as much as through the meanings of the words on the
page” (147). Here is the paradox: In a work of extensive blankness, we
must fill in important features from our own memory and imagination,
often with relatively little normative constraint. This virtually guaran-
tees that the simulation, the intentional object, will be idiosyncratic in
many ways. But the work is likely to be successful only if our simulations
converge responsively.1
In Chapter 2, we considered the problem of how to reconcile dif-
ferences in taste with the possibility of aesthetic universals. We seem
to have resolved that dilemma. However, our emphasis on idiosyncrasy
leads to another issue. Literary works are all necessarily to some degree
indeterminate, some obtrusively so. How can it ever happen that indi-
vidual, idiosyncratic responses converge when there is so much room for
divergence? This chapter, then, takes up the opposite problem from that
1 Many authors have recognized that the importance of indeterminacy in works of art. For
example, Zeki treats both ambiguity (in a very broad sense; see Splendors 87–97) and
incompleteness. The latter is particularly germane here. As Zeki explains, incomplete
works “leave it to the imagination of the perceiver . . . to complete the experience”
(Splendors 101). The difficulty, however, is accounting for how this works, and when it
works. After all, if the pleasure of art comes simply from the recipient’s own imagination,
shouldn’t that eliminate the need for art at all? Why not just have everyone imagine their
own beauty and sublimity? Conversely, we would never object to incompleteness in a
work – as when we complain that a story suffers from leaving “loose ends.”
addressed in Chapter 2. It first discusses the issue in general, theoretical

terms, then turns to three illustrative cases – one from painting, one from
film, and a third from poetry – each foregrounding a different aspect of
the issue.
On the convergence of apparently unguided

aesthetic response
We might think of the problem in this way. There is a perception and/or
simulation of some target for response – the story, for example. There is
also the individual response to that target. The key variable in the success
of a work of art is the response. This is what concerns artists when they
take up the receptive position in evaluating their work, which is to say
in aesthetic intent.2 The most obvious way of guiding the response is
through guiding the cognitive experience, whether perceptual or simu-
lative. Thus the obvious way of inspiring a feeling of beauty in response
to a visual object is by presenting some image (e.g., a face) that approxi-
mates the relevant prototype. However, there are works where the author
appears to foster the desired response precisely by leaving the target of
cognitive experience indeterminate – or, at least, much more indetermi-
nate than usual.
Speaking of determinate and indeterminate makes it appear as if
there are two very different kinds of works, when in fact there is a
spectrum of indeterminacy. As Iser wrote, there are “different degrees
of . . . indeterminacy in a text” (5). For example, we have all had the expe-
rience of seeing the film of a favorite novel and finding the appearance of
an actor or actress all wrong. In some cases, this is because there is some
deviation from the text. For example, Satyajit Ray’s film of Rabindranath
Tagore’s The Home and the World does not make Bimala very dark, even
though that is a key feature of her appearance in the novel. But such
deviation from the text is not the only reason for our frequent disap-
pointment in casting choices. We may object to a certain actor or actress
because we have envisioned the character in a way that fits our own mem-
ories or prototypes. Indeed, the case of Ray’s Bimala is complex in that
respect. In my understanding of the novel, Bimala is unusually “dark”
2 I take it that artists evaluate their works as complete or incomplete based, not on their
own idiosyncratic associations, but rather on a simulated sense of what other readers,
viewers, or listeners will experience. That sense is what I refer to as “aesthetic intent”
(see chapter 5 of Hogan On Interpretation). It is opposed, for example, to “expressive
intent,” the richly idiosyncratic, associative response of the artist to his or her own work.
Alternatively, aesthetic intent is the intent of the “implied author” (see the discussion of
implied authorship in chapters 1–3 of Hogan Narrative Discourse).
Unspoken beauty 79
but beautiful (17). In other words, she is stigmatized by her dark skin,
in keeping with standard Indian color prejudice. But she is nonetheless
beautiful, which is to say, beautiful for me, personally beautiful. Thus
for me she is a case of a particular category – a beautiful person whose
beauty is not appreciated. I have imagined her in terms of specific cases
in my own experience. (I have not set out self-consciously to simulate her
in this way, of course. Rather, my imagination of her is spontaneously
guided by this categorization.) When I see Ray’s film, the actress not
only strikes me as out of keeping with the textual norm of dark skin. She
also does not conform to my simulation of beauty, or the relevant sort
of beauty, which is to say she does not have a face that is aesthetically
delightful for me but starkly out of keeping with prestige norms of public
beauty.
As this case of casting indicates, there is indeterminacy even in
detailed, realistic novels. In other cases, the indeterminacy may be more
striking – sometimes for localized passages in more broadly determinate
works and sometimes for whole works. Often such indeterminacies are
quite obtrusive and strike us as distinct in kind (not merely in degree)
from the rest of the work or from other such works. Such indeterminacy
may be understood as a matter of style. In the former case (passages
in a more broadly determinate work), we have internal stylistic viola-
tions. In the latter case (whole works that are strikingly indeterminate),
we have a consistent stylistic practice – for example, with respect to
aspects of the storyworld (if we are not told important properties of
the characters) or the story (if the outcomes of some events are not
specified).
Of course, one aspect of this apparent anomaly is not actually anoma-
lous. Given variations in personal response – differences in attachment
memories and propensities (e.g., different degrees of attachment secu-
rity), different prototypes, and so on – a fully identical cognitive simula-
tion may be ineffective. Given precisely the same cognitive target, people
will respond somewhat differently. Thus having some leeway in the sim-
ulation of the target may increase the similarity of aesthetic response.
If I simulate Bimala’s face in keeping with my prototype and you do
the same, our simulations will be somewhat different, but our aesthetic
experiences are likely to converge, perhaps even more than if we are both
presented with a more particularized description. In this way, it is clear
that having some vagueness in aesthetic presentation is not incompatible
with producing consistent aesthetic response. It is only necessary that the
various readers or viewers simulate the target in ways that are parallel,
given their idiosyncrasies (e.g., in ways that rely on their facial prototypes
or attachment feelings).
The problem, however, is that it is not clear how ellipses in a text

can produce such parallelism. To some extent, this is a matter of cate-
gorization – or, rather, apt specificity in categorization. Categorization
activates particular memories that bear on one’s simulation of the target
(here, Bimala) and on the prototype that serves to guide our sense of
prototype approximation. In other words, if I say, “Smith was beautiful,”
that is too general; thus it does not produce a feeling of aesthetic pleasure
in a reader’s simulation of Smith. (For example, I doubt that any reader
felt an aesthetic thrill on reading “Smith was beautiful.”) We require
more narrowly defined prompts for simulation. In part, this is a matter of
specifying a category that is adequately restrictive to foster non-habitual
prototype activation along with sufficient detail of simulation to allow
for target/prototype comparison. More exactly, we simulate (or imagine)
a non-existent or unexperienced situation at least in part by drawing
on particular memories of situations we have experienced.3 Similarly,
we form contextually relevant prototypes from particular memories. It
seems likely that very general categories – perhaps especially very general
and habitual categories – rely on semantic routines that do not activate
a rich set of particular memories that can productively generate simula-
tions or context-relevant prototypes. (Alternatively, such categories may
link to an array of such memories that is so vast, so unstructured, and
so weakly activated that it produces no psychologically consequential
simulations.)
In the case of Tagore’s novel, for example, Sandip characterizes
Bimala’s “complexion” as “dark, but . . . lustrous darkness,” and explains
that it is “a discovery of my own” that she “is beautiful” (53). This spec-
ification of the “ugly duckling” categorization, with its visual quality of
lustrous darkness, is enough to begin guiding my simulation and pro-
totype formation. On the other hand, I must say that it did not guide
my simulation a great deal. Thus, my response even to my own sim-
ulation of Bimala has not been a matter of great aesthetic pleasure –
although it is certainly stronger than would have been the case simply
with “beautiful” (as shown by my response to Ray’s casting). In short,
category restrictions contribute to aesthetic response in such cases; they
help to narrow the range of instances recruited from memory. Again,
those instances then bear on both the prototype (or implicit norm) and
the simulation itself. However, category restrictions are unlikely to be suf-
ficient. Moreover, in any given case, the restriction might be too extreme.
3 In neuroscience, work on this topic has focused on the use of episodic memory for
anticipating the future (see Gamboz, Brandimonte, and De Vito; Schacter and Addis;
Addis and colleagues; Schacter, Addis, and Buckner; and Szpunar and McDermott).
Unspoken beauty 81
A particular reader may have few relevant cases in memory, perhaps no

cases that carry a strong emotional response. That is, of course, the
problem that ellipsis and vagueness were supposed to resolve initially.
In contrast, we might consider the highly elliptical story, commonly
attributed to Hemingway:
For Sale
Baby Shoes. Never worn.
This is clearly an elliptical story that invites, indeed requires the reader
to fill in a great deal that is not textually specified. The first striking
feature here is that readers seem to fill in the story in much the same way.
Specifically, they appear to envision something along the following lines.
A young couple was going to have a baby. In anticipation, they bought
baby shoes. However, the child died, perhaps in the early months after
being born. They may also envision the couple’s motives for selling the
shoes – either poverty or such pain at the memory that they wish not to
have the shoes around. This is the sort of simulation that leads readers to
refer to the story as “poignant.” It may be too slight to strike readers as
sublime, but it seems to move roughly in that direction. We are faced with
the nearly complete absence of the grieving parents, with only the slightest
hint of their loss, which foregrounds our mental isolation from them and
yet inspires at the same time a feeling of sharing emotions and experiences
with them, and a desire to share such emotions and experiences. The
story relies on activating our own attachment associations with small
children and our own feelings of loss in grief. Moreover, it may activate
our past experiences of joyful but ultimately disappointed anticipation as
we first look forward to some great event but then find that it does not
occur. In other words, it involves the emotional intensification of a sharp
gradient of emotional change.
But this still does not clarify why people seem to simulate the story
the way they do. There are many stories consistent with this text. The
shoes might have been a baby shower gift that got misplaced or that were
superfluous, given many other gifts of baby shoes; they may not have
fit the child at the appropriate age; the parents may have decided that
bare feet were better; the shoes could have been purchased as a joke
(e.g., for someone who was taking “baby steps” toward achieving some
goal).
Some reasons for our more pathetic construal might be related to
statistical inferences. For example, it may be the case that most baby
items are purchased by parents rather than received as gifts and that
most clothing items purchased for children are actually used or at least
purchased with the intention of use. If so, we would be unlikely to think of
several of the preceding possibilities (e.g., that the parents were opposed
to the use of shoes for young children).
On the other hand, here as elsewhere, our statistical generalizations –
thus inferences, in cases such as this – presumably proceed through a
version of prototyping. That is a form of averaging, but it is, once again,
not “objective.” It is weighted and ranges over memories (not random
samples). The weighting is a function of several variables, prominently
including category contrast (as in the ugly duckling case of Tagore’s
Bimala), and, even more important, emotion. Any sort of implicit aver-
aging is likely to be sensitive to memories in proportion to their emotional
force. Thus memories of children dying and leaving baby items behind as
tragic reminders would be more prominent than memories of receiving
ill-fitting clothes as presents. (Note that the memories may be biographi-
cal or derived from literature or elsewhere, as long as they carry emotional
force.) Moreover, of those emotional memories, the more negative ones
would be likely to have the greatest force, due to “hedonic asymmetry”
(see Frijda 323), the greater ease with which we habituate to enjoyment
than to suffering. These points are consistent with our well-established
tendency to favor certain salient instances over objective statistics in our
practical decisions. As Nisbett and Ross note, someone who has had
a bad experience with a Volvo requiring frequent repairs is unlikely to
buy another Volvo even when faced with statistics showing that Volvo’s
reliability record is excellent (15).
A final factor is worth mentioning as well, one that is specifically literary
or artistic. Faced with a short story, our memories of story motifs and
genres are primed (or partially activated). In other words, our artistic
categories guide our situated generation of prototypes, our encoding
processes, our inferences – in short, our simulations. They also affect our
emotional orientation to a perceived or simulated target. In relation to
infants, the motifs and genres prominently include both happy stories of
wonderful births and sorrowful stories of loss and death. The latter often
have particular emotional force. Thus they are likely to be emotionally
prominent and to contribute strongly to our simulations.
All this suggests that what we might call “the aesthetics of absence”
operates by a combination of factors, cognitive and emotional. To pro-
duce a consistent response across readers, the author must provide
enough guidance to direct our category specifications, statistical expecta-
tions, motif and genre categorizations, and category contrasts. All these
operate in part through the activation of memories that affect both simu-
lation of the target and definition of any relevant prototypes – or isolation
of any patterns. Most importantly, he or she must orient our response in
such a way as to foster priming of the relevant set of emotional memories.
Unspoken beauty 83
In short, the occurrence of many similar aesthetic responses to ellipti-

cal works is, then, crucially a function of patterns across categorization
properties and emotional memories. (The individual specificity of that
response remains a function of the particularity of those properties and
memories.) Of course, the same point holds for “the aesthetics of pres-
ence,” our aesthetic response to the simulative instructions or norms of
an artwork. But the advantage of an elliptical work is that it does not
normatively constrain particularity. Put differently, the risk of an ellipti-
cal work is obvious. Without highly specified norms for the target of the
reader’s emotion, various readers may respond with highly diverse and
contradictory simulations and feelings (or with very little simulation or
emotion of any sort). But the possible benefit is that, if the right sort of
category properties and emotional memories are activated, they may be
more forceful than those produced by more fully defined texts precisely
because the particularity of individual response is not muted. For exam-
ple, a story about highly specified events relating to a child’s death will
certainly activate some (topically related) personal memories more than
others. The difficulty is that activated memories may not be the most
powerful ones for a given reader.
Of course, well-specified works have many means of producing emo-
tion, such as the emotional expression by characters, which the reader
simulates and mirrors (or, in the case of film, perceives and mirrors; on
facial mirroring and emotion, see Plantinga, “The Scene”). The point
here is not that one form of emotion production is intrinsically better
than another. The point is, rather, that elliptical forms have their own
processes and their own, related strengths. Though initially somewhat
obscure, these processes may be understood by reference to the same
general principles we have already considered, but principles operat-
ing somewhat differently due to a different context. At the same time,
that different operation seems to make a difference. It perhaps makes
“targeted absence,” as we might call it, particularly suitable for the
presentation of the sublime, with its relation to human inaccessibility.
Later in this chapter, we consider a cinematic case of that sort – Kiran
Rao’s Dhobi Ghat. However, it is important, first, to briefly address
elliptical beauty, since elliptical works may certainly be beautiful as
well.
Before turning to any of these works, however, I should note that
my aim in the following analyses is not to show some sort of detailed
correspondence among recipients’ responses. My assumption is that each
of these works has been successful enough that there must be at least a
degree of convergence in response across an adequate number of viewers
or readers. Rather, my first goal is to explore how I tacitly complete these
incomplete works in such a way that I experience aesthetic pleasure.4

In examining this process, I hope to isolate some of the more particular
ways these works guide such individual and idiosyncratic filling-in. At
the same time, I hope to expand the preceding list of general principles
involved in such “concretization” (as Ingarden would put it). In other
words, the following analyses are not intended as simple illustrations of
the preceding points, but as exploratory examinations that, if successful,
will uncover a richer variety of techniques of aesthetic absence or strategic
opacity.
The plumed hat

Consider two works by Henri Matisse, both from 1919 and both entitled
The Plumed Hat. One is a line drawing, and the other is an oil painting.5
In 1919, Matisse did a series of works with a model wearing a hat that
(like Woolf’s Rezia) Matisse had made himself (on Matisse’s apparent
pride in his millinery accomplishment, see Barr 206). These works vary
in the degree to which they are or are not elliptical. Barr points out
that, at one extreme, there is work involving “detailed descriptions” and
“intricate embroidery” that are “precisely elaborated.” At the far extreme
from this work is the “pen sketch” with which I am concerned here.6
I remember coming upon the line drawing when I was in high school
and being deeply fascinated by the work, which I found almost literally
breathtaking. Although I no longer find myself so completely entranced,
I continue to find the work very aesthetically pleasing. In contrast, I find
the painting pretty, but I am largely indifferent to it. Part of this has to do
with what is present in the works. For example, I find the loose strands
4 Here, as in other places, I focus on my own response as it is the most readily accessible to
me. I am not by any means taking my response to be more valuable than other people’s.
I am simply taking it to be illustrative of the individuality of such response.
5 Both may be viewed online, the drawing at http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?
object id=34037 and the painting at http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/
art-object-page.46643.html (both accessed 30 October 2014). Note that there are several
drawings and paintings identified by this title. I am discussing the drawing catalogued as
Museum of Modern Art number 110.1935 and the painting held in the National Gallery
of Art.
6 After drafting this chapter, I came upon Edmund Rolls’s “The Origins of Aesthetics,” in
which he states that “Some abstraction . . . in art” may enhance the viewer’s “experience.”
As is common, he rather vaguely attributes this to the viewer’s ability to add “their
own interpretation” (144), an idea broadly consistent with the present analysis. More
strikingly, he goes on to note that such “abstraction . . . can be seen in some semi-
figurative/semi-abstract art, as in some of the line drawings of humans by Matisse”
(145). In this respect, we agree that there is something aesthetically effective about
incompleteness of such a drawing, something that makes it more than a “short-hand”
way of capturing “facial prettiness,” as one critic put it (Petherbridge 129).
Unspoken beauty 85
of hair appealing in the drawing, very much in contrast with the related
loops of hair in the painting. I also find the dip in the neckline of the
drawing far superior to the straight neckline of the painting.
We might consider these points in relation to patterns and prototypes.
The loops in the painting seem relatively random. I at least do not see
much in the way of a pattern there. In contrast, in the drawing, the
stray strands of hair to the right of the face, curling down and slightly
inward, parallel in miniature the plume curving up and inward, forming
an unexpected pattern. The spare line of the hat’s brim curves down and
inward on the right, extending the pattern, and the variation. This is in
turn matched by the soft twist of the neckline, which in effect mirrors
the curve of the hat. Moreover, the neckline itself parallels the contour
of the woman’s face. All this is, again, largely a matter of what is there in
the two works, what is present. But it is not unrelated to the drawing’s
reduced and elliptical quality.
First, we now see something about absence in art that should perhaps
have been obvious from the start. Absence, so to speak, serves a similar
function to lateral inhibition. In vision, lateral inhibition makes edges
clearer by inhibiting the firing of nearby neurons that would provide
perceptual information, but would blur demarcating lines. There is, of
course, a straightforward, literal sense in which edge enhancement occurs
with line drawings. More important than the mere visual acuity, however,
are the cognitive and emotional consequences of this. The reduction in
information takes away what we might think of as distracting information,
information that we might process in such a way as to divert our attention
from prototype approximation or pattern isolation. In the more fully
defined painting, the multiplication of the loops, their thickness and
color, make them more difficult to link with the pinkish curls of the
plumes.
Second, it seems that the relative completeness of the painting limits
the degree to which I at least see the woman herself as approximating
my prototype of a woman’s face. The same model (Antoinette Arnaud)
served as the subject for Matisse’s 1919 “plumed hat” works (see Flam
50). Yet, for me, the woman in the drawing is incomparably more beau-
tiful than the woman in the painting. This is presumably in part the
result of the degree to which my tacit simulation of the former incorpo-
rates emotional memories that more fully conform to my prototype. For
example, the stray strands of hair recall the stray strands around my wife’s
face (and some photographs of Tanuja), suggesting the relevance of that
feature to my emotional memories, thus presumably to my prototype.
The emotional consequences are of course keenly important as well,
perhaps most important of all. First, I find something very tactile about
the drawing, something absent from the painting – a tactility that I know
appealed to me particularly as an adolescent. Indeed, that tactility man-
ifested itself in the way that I repeatedly sought to copy the drawing –
to the point where I could fairly readily retrace the lines from memory
(despite rather brutish incompetence at drawing generally). This link is
enabled by the relation of our vision and touch systems. As Kennedy,
Nicholls, and Desrochers argue, these systems share an ability “to detect
contours in normal sensory input from the world,” and, as a byprod-
uct of this, “also respond to thin lines as contours” (Lange-Küttner and
Thomas “Introduction” 7). This enhanced tactility is probably a feature
of targeted absence in many line drawings.
But “respond[ing] to thin lines as contours” does not fully explain
my experience, because most line drawings do not produce such a pro-
found sense of tactility in me. I suspect that, in this case, the tactility
has something to do with the way local features of the drawing direct my
gaze. Lakatos and Marks explain that touch “weights local features more
heavily than global ones” (895). The drawing pulls my attention toward
local features, perhaps thereby imitating the orientation of touch. More
significantly, those local features are continuous – most obviously moving
from the right shoulder down to the elbow, across the hands, and up the
left arm, but also in the neck of the dress and the line of the cheek and
chin. These lines direct my gaze along trajectories that are characteristic
of touch. In other words, one ordinarily does not follow around the curve
of an arm or a cheek with one’s eyes. Rather, one shifts one’s eyes around
to different parts of the face or body (see, for example, the eye tracking
diagram in chapter 6 of Solso). Of course, I undoubtedly do engage in
saccadic eye movement in looking at the drawing. But there seems to be
a consistent contour in my gaze here that does not occur with the paint-
ing. When looking at the latter work, I feel as if I am shifting my visual
fixation more or less randomly. With the line drawing, in contrast, my
visual inspection seems to be guided by a slow progress down the cheek,
the shoulder and the upper arm, around the neckline. That movement
is far more characteristic of touch. One does run one’s hand up an arm
or down a cheek in a caress of affection or desire. In keeping with these
points, this aspect of my response almost certainly involves endogenous
reward mechanisms (related in part to sensuality) and attachment mem-
ories. I simply do not look at the painting in the same caressing manner.
This is in part a function of absence. First, interfering information is not
there to disrupt the caressing observation. Second, the absence of detail
allows Matisse a degree of freedom to create fluid lines.
However, this is still not all that the emotion involves. There are three
other elements as well. First, the line drawing more fully enables my own
Unspoken beauty 87
perspective, not simply as a viewer but as a person possibly interacting

with the woman. This is in part a matter of presence but in part a matter
of absence as well. Specifically, the boldest lines are at least some of the
edges that I would most probably notice and attend to if I were faced with
this woman herself, rather than a drawing of her. The irrelevant periphery
fades away to nothing. The woman is presumably resting her elbow on
a table and sitting in a chair. But the table and chair are absent. Indeed,
there is only a hint of her lower body. Even the hat becomes impalpable
with the fluff of the plume at the top. The lines stress what I would, so to
speak, touch with my eyes. In contrast, the background and its relation
to the skin and lips of the woman are highlighted in the painting. Indeed,
perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing aspect of the painting is the way
in which the related orange, rose, and red colors reappear in different
variations (e.g., different degrees of saturation) in the background and
on the woman’s face and neck.
The continuity between the hands in the drawing – possible only
because of the absence of detail – is important to its effect as well. First,
the linking arms mimic an embrace. Second, the fusion of the hands sug-
gests the sense of partial fusion we have in touch. With this second point,
we begin to approach the otherness of selves, the separation of human
minds, and the possibility of sharing, particularly sharing emotions.
This leads to the next feature that differentiates the two works –
emotion expression. As Barr notes, “The plumed hat series expresses
a range of mood and characterization quite extraordinary for Matisse”
(206; see the reproductions on 206 and 427–429 of Barr, the first of which
is the drawing of concern here). Here, again, I find the minimal, elliptical
sketch to be the most powerful, and in striking contrast with the National
Gallery of Art painting. This too is in part a matter of what is there and in
part of what is not there. Specifically, the woman in the painting – with her
even eyebrows, her straightforward gaze, her relaxed cheek muscles, her
symmetrical lips, and her neutral body posture – could be characterized
as emotionless or as stoic in her boredom (a likely feeling for an artist’s
model). In contrast, the woman in the drawing has her eyebrows raised
with slight asymmetry, her gaze directed away from the artist, her lower
lip protruded just a bit, and her body apparently tilted toward her left (in
the direction of her gaze). The expression is equivocal in terms of emo-
tion, but it strongly suggests interest and attentional orientation. Interest
is compatible with a range of emotions, and that is where the work’s ellip-
tical quality enters (along with further suggestions of the inaccessibility
of consciousness). We are free to simulate the emotional background to
her interest more or less as we please. More precisely, there are only
very general norms here by which we might evaluate our spontaneous
simulations, guided in part by emotional memories. At the same time,

the drawing clearly suggests intention and feeling on the woman’s part,
spurring interest in those (inaccessible) thoughts and emotions.
As I reflect on the drawing, I can imagine people simulating this emo-
tion primarily in two ways (which are not mutually exclusive). One is as
surprise, which may or may not be positive. This stresses, for example,
the raised eyebrows. As Reisenzein and colleagues explain, surprise is
fully marked by a “facial display consisting of eyebrow raise, widening
of the eyes, and opening of the mouth/jaw drop” (296). Eyebrow raise
is clearest in the drawing, and it is the most common expressive feature
of surprise (as the research of Reisenzein and colleagues indicates). But
there is clearly no opening of the mouth or jaw drop and one eye appears
to be open more widely then the other. Hence surprise is plausible but
uncertain.
Although I had not considered it self-consciously before, I tacitly sim-
ulated the emotion in a second way: something more like affectionate
interest, perhaps even passionate or sexual interest. This stresses the
apparent expansion of the pupils. (We notice the expansion of the pupil
and implicitly take it as a sign of positive interest [see Tombs and Silver-
man].) The dark circles in the painting are certainly the iris. However,
the black dots in the line drawing might be dilated pupils. Put differently,
a viewer may respond to the dots in the line drawing as dilated pupils.
The reference to passion leads to the final element here. Passion com-
monly leads to action. Another thing I simulate in the drawing, but not in
the painting, is action. The painting presents the woman as fairly solidly
located and symmetrical in posture, thus with little indication of any pos-
sible movement. She may be leaning slightly forward, but the vacant facial
expression suggests that it is unlikely she will be getting up. In contrast,
the woman in the drawing seems pitched to her left, in the direction of
her gaze and interest. This is also suggested by the lower position of her
left shoulder and the asymmetrical lie of her neckline. That, of course,
is part of what is present in the painting. But it is also a matter of what
is absent. The chair and table would give a greater sense of stability to
the picture. The mere hints of straggling curls of hair give a sense of
movement that a fuller presentation of the hair (along the lines of the
painting) would presumably inhibit. Moreover, the fusion of the hands
contributes here, since their indistinctness could suggest motion as well,
the left hand pulling away as she turns toward the unrevealed object of
attention to her left. Indeed, the elliptical quality here crucially includes
just what is drawing her attention. We can tacitly simulate it virtually
without normative constraint. Indeed, it is even possible to simulate the
woman as averting her gaze from something that she does not wish to
Unspoken beauty 89
face so fully – even, tacitly, the viewer himself or herself. This can suggest
an implicit emotional connection between the woman and the viewer. In
contrast, the painting involves the woman looking directly at the viewer,
with indifference.
Note again that, to a great extent, these are not interpretive claims. One
interprets a text to isolate norms. Saying that there are visual patterns
across the work is an interpretive claim. However, saying we may simulate
the woman in the drawing as averting her gaze from an object of interest is
not an interpretive claim. Indeed, statements about possible simulations
of elliptical works and the effects of these simulations on response are
precisely claims about what goes beyond norms. It is, again, the relative
indeterminacy of the works that makes these responses possible.
Thus we see that there are further ways in which “targeted absence” –
the use of vagueness or ellipsis to foster aesthetic response – may achieve
its goals. Two are particularly important. Both involve the interrelation
of presence and absence. First, absence may remove distracting infor-
mation. (Rolls makes a similar point [145].) Second, absence gives the
artist greater freedom from representational constraints. For example,
Matisse uses lack of detail – in the context of other clues – to suggest
a blur of motion in the woman’s hands, without the need to plausibly
represent such a blur. In both cases, we saw how Matisse made use of
these benefits of targeted absence to enhance emotional response (at least
for me).
In conclusion, it is valuable to relate this analysis to the neural
substrates of our response to incompleteness. One important right
hemisphere process is pattern completion (see Gazzaniga 92–94). As
Gazzaniga explains, “[I]f you show partially drawn figures to the right
hemisphere, it can easily guess what they are, but the left hemisphere
can’t guess until the figure is nearly completely drawn” (92–93). Clearly
my understanding of and response to Matisse’s drawing are not simply
a matter of pattern recognition but also of pattern completion. Indeed,
the completion in part produces the pattern that I recognize, while also
incorporating emotionally rich, personal memories that Matisse could
not have envisioned.
Turning to the left hemisphere, we find something similar in the pro-
cess of causal explanation. This process may include confabulation that
we are unaware is confabulation – even when we are explaining our own
actions.7 Causal confabulation is often storylike. This too is connected
with my response to Matisse’s drawing. In addition to completing ellip-
tical patterns, I tacitly simulate little narratives about the subject of the
7 See chapter 3 of Gazzaniga, where he discusses what he terms “the interpreter.”

work. In narratological terms, I implicitly situate the woman as a char-

acter in a very limited story.
Right hemisphere pattern completion as well as left hemisphere confab-
ulation processes are likely to be involved in our response to many works
of art, but they are especially relevant to more elliptical works. In the
case of my response to Matisse’s drawing, these processes fostered non-
habitual pattern recognition and enhanced my sense of interest (owing to
the tacit narrative of the woman’s movement). The pattern completion
facilitated prototype approximation as well, because relevant prototypes
(e.g., regarding the woman’s face) presumably contributed to that com-
pletion. Combined with the activation of reward systems and emotional
memories bearing on attachment (e.g., in relation to enhanced tactility),
these processes fostered an intense feeling of beauty in my response the
Matisse’s drawing.
But, again, elliptical works, works stressing absence, may foster a sense
of sublimity as well. Indeed, they may be even better suited to that than
to the evocation of beauty, given the relation of sublimity to a particular
sort of absence – that of other minds. This leads us to Dhobi Ghat.
Dhobi Ghat
Kiran Rao’s 2010 film is, to me, a work of both beauty and great sublimity.
Indeed, it is one of the most suggestive and affecting treatments of human
isolation that I know of, and I imagine many viewers experience it this
way, even if they do not think of their response in precisely these terms.
This sublimity is bound up with the film’s incompleteness. Indeed, Rao
makes brilliant use of film’s limitations to simultaneously introduce and
foreclose the possibility of access to human consciousness. In a lecture
at Emory University, Salman Rushdie contended that literature is well
situated to represent character interiority, but film has difficulties with
this. As Rushdie explains, “The great difference between written-down
work and work that is dramatized – whether for the stage or screen (big
or small) – has to do with interiority. What the novel can do, which
film and television find it very difficult to do, is to be inside the mind
of a character.” Rao’s film in effect exploits this limitation to recall and
intensify our desire to share emotions and experiences, while at the same
time giving us a visceral sense that such sharing is ultimately impossible.
In short, the film suggests what is perhaps an unsurprising conclusion:
Absence can foster aesthetic feeling precisely by making us keenly aware
of and responsive to . . . absence.
The film has a further relation to our concerns for, in connection
with both the desire and the impossibility, it stresses art. We are able to
Unspoken beauty 91
achieve hints, brief and fragmentary glimpses, of other people’s interiority

through art. Indeed, the suggestion of the film is that a primary motive –
and even function – of art is to breach the incomprehensibility of other-
ness. That sense of otherness may be the fundamental sense of mystery.
It is a realization both inferential and emotional, bound up not only with
cognition but with our mirroring relations to others, not only our knowl-
edge but our feeling that everyone else has this same subjectivity as we
do. Yet we can never share that subjectivity with one another except indi-
rectly, through fragile and ephemeral hints that almost inevitably shiver
into misunderstanding, whether recognized or unrecognized.8
For readers who have not seen it, the film focuses on four characters
in Mumbai: Shai, a banker who has taken a year off from work in order
to practice photography in India; Arun, an Indian painter, divorced from
his wife, who has gone with their young son to Australia; Munna, a
washerman who aspires to act in films and is something of a friend
to Arun; and Yasmin Noor. Peripheral characters include Shai’s maid,
Agnes, as well as her friend, Pesi; Munna’s close friend, Salim; Yasmin’s
maid (Lata), and Lata’s daughter (Vanitha); Arun’s agent, Vatsala; and
a catatonic woman living next door, first to Yasmin, then to Arun. Shai
8 For an accessible, general introduction to the neuroscience of mirroring and its conse-
quences, see Iacoboni. I should note that some writers take the existence of mirroring
to suggest that we in some way directly share emotions with others. For example, Woj-
ciehowski and Gallese at least sometimes appear to take this view, when they criticize
solipsistic tendencies in cognitive science, posit a “pre-individual” social interrelation,
and see mirroring as allowing “a more direct and less cognitively-mediated access to the
world of others.” On the other hand, they do write only that this is more direct, not that it
is fully direct. Pacherie makes the less restricted claim that “the actions and intentions of
others can be, at least to some extent, available to experience in their own right” (106).
Armstrong sets aside even these qualifications, asserting that, “I literally can feel your
pain” (160).
Claims such as Armstrong’s suggest a misunderstanding of precisely what is com-
municated in mirroring. An emotion event is a complex particular. It involves a set
of emotional memories that are unique to the individual experiencing the emotion; it
involves precise sensitivities formed in critical period experiences; it involves the detailed
perception and understanding of the current situation; and, in neurological terms, it
involves specific neuron populations. The recipient who mirrors someone else’s facial
expression has only the vaguest, most imprecise adumbration of this complex particu-
larity. Jones’s grief over his dead sister is expressed in his facial expression, which does
convey sadness to Smith. But Jones’s grief is inseparable from a series of memories of
his sister, memories of plans they may have had together, thoughts of their parents, his
own particular attachment securities and insecurities, and countless other features that
are simply not the same for Smith.
Carey puts the general point very well. He writes, “To have the same feelings” as
someone else, “you would have to . . . be the other person.” To “assert you have the same
feeling as someone else indicates a strange absence of imagination, an inability to grasp
the differences between people, and a refusal to grant to others the same inexpressible
inwardness that you feel you have yourself” (91–92, italics in the original).
and Arun meet at a show of Arun’s work. They spend the night together,
but Arun rudely rejects Shai in the morning. Subsequently, Shai gets to
know Munna, who develops feelings for her but does not act on them.
Shai has some interest in Munna but remains drawn to Arun. Salim
sells marijuana and is connected with organized crime; he is eventually
killed. After his death, his boss moves his family and Munna out of the
slums and into an apartment. Meanwhile, Arun changes apartments and
discovers some videotapes in a locked drawer. The tapes are video letters
from Yasmin to her brother. Arun watches the video letters in sequence,
realizing at the end that, after the final letter, Yasmin committed suicide.
To consider this film’s sublimity, it is valuable for us to approach it
somewhat indirectly, by way of something it is not doing. Recently, I
taught this film in a class on Anglophone Indian literature. In the course,
we read a number of works that treated conflicts between religious com-
munities, particularly Hindu–Muslim conflicts. I chose the film for the
class in part to show more ordinary conditions in Indian life. Commu-
nal conflicts are highly tellable; they have intrinsic interest and political
importance. Moreover, considering a number of works treating commu-
nal conflicts gives one a better sense of the nature of the political issues
and social dynamics involved. However, it can also distort one’s under-
standing of Indian society, occluding the normalcy of human relations
and greatly overstressing the unusual situations of communal conflict.
In contrast, Dhobi Ghat presents us with characters from a range of
religious communities who interact with one another as individual peo-
ple, not as members of particular and opposed identity groups. Arun is
Hindu, while Shai is Parsi and Munna is Muslim. They have conflicts,
of course, but the conflicts are individual, not a function of their reli-
gions. Thus Munna can love Shai, who can feel affection for Munna
while feeling greater attraction to Arun, independent of their group affil-
iations. Yasmin is a Muslim, who wears the hijab and talks in her letters
about Muslim festivals. But her only friends are her Hindu maid and the
maid’s daughter. Moreover, in her video letters she records two outings
with them – one to the Hindu artwork in the Elephanta Caves, the other
to a festival in honor of the Hindu god Gan.eśa. Indeed, this friendship,
as well as those between Shai and Munna and Arun and Munna, makes
the film’s individual relations supersede class divisions as well as religious
ones.
This is not to say, however, that the film is simply denying prejudice or
social hierarchy. For example, it makes salient the vast discrepancies in
wealth among the characters. Nonetheless, the political – and aesthetic –
focus of Dhobi Ghat lies elsewhere. This returns us to the sublime. The
film is, as we will see, fundamentally concerned with the individual,
Unspoken beauty 93
outside group divisions, not as the ultimate unit of political and economic
analysis – as in possessive individualism – but as an ineffable, experiential
self. That unspeakable self is precisely what is lost in the group divisions
rejected by the film.
More exactly, communal conflicts are conflicts of categorial identifi-
cation. An identity category is something that putatively gives a person’s
essence, something that he or she “really is” and that, as such, has broad
consequences for his or her skills, interests, feelings, moral inclinations,
and so forth. Just as “cow” or “wolf” tells us pretty much all we need to
know about an individual animal, a human identity category putatively
defines what a person is centrally or crucially. Religious categories are
particularly prominent in India, but other identity categories – national,
ethnic, sexual – are important as well. An identity category is in many
respects the precise opposite of an experiential self. Yasmin as a self is
not Yasmin as “a Muslim.” The same holds for Munna and “Muslim,”
Arun and “Hindu,” Shai and “Parsi.” Identity categories are (relatively)
fixed, stable, simple, knowable. In contrast, selves are ongoing, momen-
tary, impossibly complex – indeed, in a sense, infinite – and, as we have
repeatedly seen, utterly unknowable. What I am now is different from
what I was even a few moments ago (as becomes salient when, for exam-
ple, I forget what I was about to say). What I am now is even different from
what I seem to be now, for the former includes, among other things, a vast
potential of memories some of which (most of which) I will never recall.
As the last point suggests, even I cannot really be said to know myself.
How much less can anyone else know that self? Finally, the ephemeral
and inaccessible quality reaches its limit in the utter fragility of the self,
which may be lost irretrievably through death or, short of death, damaged
or distorted by injury or disease.
Of course, the opacity of the self is greater from outside than inside, so
to speak. An extreme case may be found among some victims of stroke,
who are conscious but find themselves unable to communicate with the
external world, even to give the most limited expression to their inner
life. The catatonic woman in Rao’s film is a recurring reminder of this
insularity of the self, its Cartesian isolation from the world. One might
object here that we do not actually know that this woman has a conscious
life. We only know that she does not act as if she has a self. But that is
precisely the point. We know that some people have an inner life that is
entirely unexpressed. Moreover, it is clear that this woman is not dead.
Her opaque, uninterpretable body provides a sort of mute testimony to
the inaccessibility of self, to the fact that we can in principle come to
know things about her – for surely her caregiver could tell us her name,
religion, region of origin, and so on – but we (and the other characters in
the film) cannot come to know her, including how much of a subjective
self there is to know in this case.
The utter cognitive impenetrability of this woman is a feature of the
storyworld that serves to signal the film’s concern with interiority in
a particularly intense and salient way. Moreover, it does so precisely
through absence, through ellipsis. In a novel, we might have been given
the woman’s interior monologue, including her inability to communicate
those interior thoughts and feelings. Here we are given only the absence
of communication. One result of this, however, is that I personally do not
find this character in herself particularly sublime. There is such complete
separation that I respond to her with self-conscious reflection rather than
spontaneous emotion. On the other hand, this reflection undoubtedly
helps sensitize me to other aspects of the work, thus enhancing the overall
effect of sublimity.
My emotional response to the film as sublime is more closely con-
nected with stylistic elements, recurring features of the storyworld, story,
and discourse. These features prominently include ellipsis or localized
indeterminacy. (We might think of the catatonic woman character as
presenting us with a “global” indeterminacy in that there are not even
any hints as to her conscious state.) Perhaps most obviously, every story
of the film, whether incidental or central, is incomplete. Here are a few
incidentals: Munna pulls a drunk man off the railway tracks; we never
return to him. Yasmin observes her neighbors across the street as they
cook and eat. Later, Arun looks into what is evidently the same window,
but the neighbors are not the same. We do not know what happened to
the old neighbors. Moreover, there is no subsequent development of the
new neighbors either. We have only momentary glimpses of these other
selves. Shai interviews a perfume seller; he worries over the future, but we
learn nothing about that future. The situation is even more extreme with
the many people briefly glimpsed once, isolated from a crowd, such as a
man eating at a festival. Indeed, it seems clear that these many incidental
characters are a sort of diffuse counterpart to the catatonic neighbor. Rao
shows us that the selves of these people are as inaccessible to us, or almost
as inaccessible, as that of the woman. They generalize the problem by
repeating it, diffusing it throughout the film, in contrast with the way that
the neighbor concentrates and intensifies the problem.
Between the opacity of multiple incidental characters and the obtrusive
inaccessibility of the neighbor, we have the main foci of our attention,
the central story lines, which are no less elliptical. We know that Salim’s
mother and brother have been given an apartment, but we do not know
what will happen to them. We know that Munna has spoken with some-
one in film, but we do not know if he will be given a chance as an actor.
Unspoken beauty 95
We know that Shai and Munna have said they will be friends, but we
do not know if they will continue to interact. We know that Shai has
Arun’s new address, but we do not know if she will pursue him and, if
so, with what success. We know that Arun and Vatsala have some sort
of sexual relationship, but we do not know if that will continue. We
know that Arun will have a chance to see his son again, but we do not
know what will become of their relationship. These are all ellipses in
the events themselves. There are also ellipses in feelings. Yasmin was
clearly lonely and felt alienated from her husband. We see her mood and
appearance deteriorate in the course of the video letters. But that only
makes us – or at least me – more acutely aware that I am not fully sharing
in her experiences and feelings. There is too much left out between
the letters, too much that she could not tell her family, that she would
not wish to sadden them with or, even more, simply could not put into
words, the experience and feeling being so complex and amorphous.
Beyond Yasmin, we do not know about her brother’s feelings and actions
after the suicide, or those of “chot.ı̄,” “little girl,” what she calls her
younger sister, or her parents. These ellipses in the story are gaps in
both actions or events and inner states. The case of Yasmin is, of course,
the crucial one, the one where the absence makes us feel most acutely
the impermeability of self – as must occur in any case of suicide.
There is, perhaps, only one story line that is completed – that is Arun’s
work on his painting. In keeping with this, the film (like Mrs. Dalloway)
suggests that art may be the crucial means by which we might partially
bridge the gulf between self and self. We see this in the peripheral char-
acters – a beggar girl who dances, and Vanitha, who, despite her bulk,
dances too. More importantly, each of the main characters in the film
engages in art or aspires to do so, and in most cases this is directly
connected with the sharing of internality. Munna wishes to be an actor.
Though this is in part simply a matter of fame and fortune, it suggests
emotional expression as well. Shai’s case is clearer. She photographs ordi-
nary people that she would never know, asking their stories (as in the case
of the perfume dealer), learning about their otherwise unuttered mem-
ories and desires. Arun is a professional artist who takes the lacerating
pain he witnesses in Yasmin’s letters, tacitly relating it to his own lone-
liness and attachment loss – the departure of his wife echoing Yasmin’s
alienation from her husband, the separation from his son recalling her
separation from her brother. He makes that combined pain and loss into a
painting from which Yasmin’s face looks out amid a beautiful near chaos
(including images we recognize from her life). The most striking case,
however, is Yasmin herself. She is the only one who does not think of
herself as an artist, but she is also the one who is most fully an artist. Her
videos parallel the larger film in which they occur. She herself parallels
the filmmaker, the writer and director. Yasmin’s videos are the most suc-
cessful work of art in the film and they are the artistic center of the work
itself. They are the one piece of art that traces the artist’s feelings and, at
once, communicates the impossibility ever truly filling that tracery with
shared experience.
Of course, as the preceding comment indicates, even art is partial and
fragmentary; even art only touches us with intimations of otherness, while
leading us in the end to recognize the unreachability of that otherness.
If Munna becomes an actor, he will not be expressing his own feelings
but those of the characters he is assigned, characters that are mere imag-
inings without a self. Shai interviews the people she photographs. But
the fact that we are told their stories foregrounds the fact that the sto-
ries are absent from those photographs – even though, in a sense, it is
the story that gives the photographs significance. The same point holds
even more forcefully for Arun’s painting. To me it is an exquisite work.
But its power comes almost entirely from the context of the film, the
fact that I have developed something approaching an attachment relation
with Yasmin and that the canvas serves Arun as a place where he can try
to express his own pain over her suicide and over his own attachment
losses, which perhaps pale in comparison with Yasmin’s suffering even
for Arun himself. But, again, all this is missing from the painting.9 There
is a great absence, a gap, like the white space to one side of Yasmin’s face,
an experiential void that stands in for the unobserved self of Arun and the
unknowable, extinguished self of Yasmin. Put differently, it seems that
Arun completes the work, just as the filmmaker completes her film. But,
also like Rao’s film, this completed painting is, in a sense, incomplete;
it is elliptical, with a hand’s breadth or so of partial blankness between
Yasmin’s face and the edge of the canvas. Again, Yasmin’s own art is the
apex of this elliptical presentation with its, as we might call it, revela-
tory opacity. Perhaps most poignantly, these letters are never delivered.
Despite Arun’s efforts, he can find no trace of the family; he cannot track
down the brother to whom the letters should be given. Seeing this, we
realize that the brother must have learned of the suicide with utter and
devastating incomprehension, that he lacks even the suggestions given to
us, the brief moments of partial illumination, leaving him in an unrelieved
darkness.
There are events too that foreground the inaccessibility of conscious-
ness. Shai says that she has lost track of Arun. Lying in order to keep
9 The painting is visible starting at 1:28:56 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

NWEVKyEwi4A).
Unspoken beauty 97
them apart, Munna says that maybe he has gone to Australia, to his ex-
wife. Still reticent, and resentful, Munna does not tell Shai how he feels.
They part. Shai is driven away, and Munna turns to go as well. But then
Munna turns, considers, and begins to run after the car. I imagine that
everyone who sees the film for the first time believes Munna is going to
stop Shai and confess his love. He manages to catch the car. Shai opens
her window, and Munna pulls a small notebook from his pocket. He
opens the book, thumbs to the right page, and tears it out, handing it to
Shai. It is Arun’s new address. Shai’s dismay mirrors our own. As Munna
leaves, a tear rolls down Shai’s cheek; she wipes it away awkwardly. She
is aghast at so fully failing to understand someone to whom she felt so
close. It is the inverse of the morning-after scene with Arun, when she
expected affection and received cold egotism. In both cases, the real-
ization of the insularity of self from self is particularly affecting because
attachment bonds make the desire for sharing intense and urgent; the
absence of sharing therefore cuts more deeply.
It is worth considering some scenes from the film in greater detail.
Because constraints of space prevent a consideration of the entire film, I
will confine myself to the most sublime sequence, that involving Yasmin.
The film starts with the screen filled with light; then the images begin
to appear. It is a video, embedded in the film. We are in a taxi. A song
is playing. It is from Bimal Roy’s Madhumati in which a young woman
commits suicide after being abducted. One lover sings to the other, “Tū
nahı̄ṁ to yah bahār kyā bahār hai?” The “tū” indicates intimacy (more
even than the familiar “tum”); the rest of the sentence asks, what spring or
beauty is this if you are not here? The taxi driver asks where the passenger
is from. A woman’s voice – we subsequently learn it is Yasmin’s – answers.
They are from the same state and reminisce about what is happening there
at that season. On the dashboard of the taxi is a picture of a woman and a
passing car; beneath, we read the question, “Ghar kab āōgē?” (When will
you come home?) Yasmin turns the camera to the outside and begins to
address “Imran” in the video. It is clear that Imran is the story’s correlate
for the beloved “tū” in the Madhumati song, the attachment object who
is not here. We later learn that he is Yasmin’s brother.
This opening is clearly designed to prime attachment memories in the
viewer. The song between the lovers suggests, in keeping with the present
emphasis on attachment and beauty, that the pain of attachment loss is
incompatible with the experience of beauty. The sticker on the dashboard
speaks of being away from home, thus recalling place attachment as well
as familial attachment. The conversation with the taxi driver moves from
a general atmosphere of attachment loss to a feeling of specific attachment
loss on the part of the characters. Then, finally, with Yasmin’s address to
her brother, we learn that she is suffering from a particular separation.

In short, the opening is saturated with attachment and attachment loss.
Again, this sense of attachment intensifies the need for emotion sharing
and experience sharing, both of which bear on the experience of beauty
and sublimity.
Indeed, experience sharing is introduced directly, almost obtrusively
here. The entire first scene is a continuous point-of-view shot, seen
through the eyes of Yasmin. For those moments (nearly two minutes), we
see what Yasmin is seeing. Yet, at the same time, the precise nature of the
narration here does two things. First, through the shaking of the handheld
camera and the amateur quality of the shooting, it foregrounds the fact
that this is film, not experience. One might contrast the usual point-of-
view shot, where the filmmaker would take pains to make the presence of
the camera unobtrusive. Such a shot may present us with the illusion of
sharing the actual experience of the character, not simply one temporary,
visual aspect of that experience. In Dhobi Ghat, however, we are made
continuously aware of the camera, thus of the fact that we are not actu-
ally inside Yasmin’s experience, that we are not sharing her experience.
The object of our perception is narrowed to coincide as much as possible
with the object of her perception. However, the subjective experience is
incomparable – a point that is obvious as soon as we recognize that we
cannot have the same emotional response to or cognitive understanding
of the objects recorded or the person addressed (Yasmin’s brother). All
that is absent – and foregrounded as absent. At the same time, however,
the visual and verbal narration in this scene do suggest the possibility
of something approximating experience sharing. As already noted, that
approximation is achieved through art, with Yasmin’s camera paralleling
the encompassing camera through which the entire film is shot.
The opening white screen is important here.10 It results from Yasmin
not knowing quite how to operate the camera, but it also introduces an
important motif in the film – a motif of, precisely, absence. The first thing
to note here is that the image of white light is linked with Yasmin’s name.
Yāsmı̄n is the white-petaled jasmine. More significantly, her last name,
“Noor” (or “Nūr”), is light – an important concept in S.ūfı̄ mystical
thought (see, for example, Glassé 330, 450, and 633), based on the
Qur’ānic representation of Allāh as nūr (see Ali 24:35 and 688n1757).
The point becomes clear in a later scene where Yasmin visits a Hindu
cave temple at Elephanta. Yasmin contemplates the trimūrti, the image
of the Hindu trinity as different faces of a single entity. She is being
filmed on the same video camera and many viewers probably assume
that her husband is handling the camera. But it is Vanitha, who sweetly
10 See 3:08 and following (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWEVKyEwi4A).

Unspoken beauty 99
calls her “dı̄dı̄,” elder sister. As Vanitha calls her to come over, Yasmin
turns away toward the mouth of the cave, a gaping white expanse.11 She
gradually disappears into the light. It is one of the many prefigurations
of her suicide. In this respect, it is akin to the scene in which she writes
her name in the sand of the beach only to see it immediately washed
away – a symbol of the disappearance of a human life, an unknown self.
For our present purposes, the crucial point about the fading into light
at Elephanta is that it continues to associate Yasmin Noor with light,
tacitly linking that light with death. In this case, the death is connected
with Hindu mystical thought (the unity of the trinity), in addition to the
“noor” of (Muslim) S.ūfism. This carries with it the spiritual elevation that
is so consequential in my own sense of sublimity (a link that is hardly
idiosyncratic, as the history of commentaries on the sublime attests).
Indeed, it is the elevation of a woman disdained by her husband and
apparently with little social support. The mixing of different confessional
references in this scene is also important, since it discourages a reduction
of the spiritual elevation to an identity category of Muslim or Hindu.
This stylistic motif of white blankness turns up a third time, if in a
slightly different form, with Arun’s painting. As already noted, the left
side of the work has a bar of white canvas. If we follow Yasmin’s own
handwriting and Urdu convention, moving from right to left, we may
infer that the right is the past, the left being the future. Thus the lumi-
nous space is what is before her; it is what she enters, just as she dissolves
into the light at Elephanta. Like so much religious thought and feeling,
this film too tacitly invokes religion as an antidote to the existential lone-
liness of consciousness. This is in keeping with the common view that
the greatest heights of sublimity are achieved in mysticism. It is only a
hint, but this suggestion of transcendence provides the viewer with some
possible relief from the oppressive isolation of the rest of the film. It indi-
cates that sublimity may also be connected to a feeling that isolation may
be overcome – here through a transcendent union of the sort celebrated
in both Muslim S.ūfism and Hindu Vedāntism – and that this overcoming
is itself as mysterious as the otherness of consciousness. But, of course,
this too is an intimation only, a gesture toward a fullness of experience
and communion that is nowhere presented in the film itself. It too is a
function of absence, of the work’s revelatory opacity.
Hearts of silk: metaphor and the otherness of oneself

I conclude with a brief consideration of two issues raised by the preceding
analyses. Both concern a sort of absence. The first bears on language, thus
11 See 1:16:50 and following (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWEVKyEwi4A).

perhaps primarily the relation of the self to others; the second concerns
one’s relation to oneself and the ways in which that too is limited and
often riddled with inaccessibility. As to the former, there is an entire
realm of representation that is particularly important in verbal art and
that often serves to present us with hints of what is unspoken, while
simultaneously making us aware that they are only hints. I am referring
to metaphor – specifically, what we might characterize as highly novel
and highly “distant” metaphors, that is to say, metaphors in which the
domains of the source and target are not closely or clearly related, either
objectively or in common usage. Though such “intensified” or “radical”
metaphors may be used for any purpose, they seem particularly well
suited for conveying a sense of communication or shared experience
while simultaneously foregrounding the uncertainty, vagueness, or even
opacity of that apparent connection.
Radical metaphors foster a sense of ellipsis in two ways. First, they do
so by reference to the storyworld of the metaphor, our understanding
of, for example, the person whose “heart of silk” is “filled up . . . with
lilies and with bees” in Lorca’s poem. Second, they do so by reference to
the intention of the writer himself or herself. Readers of Lorca or other
poets whose work is marked by radical metaphoricity, are faced with the
inaccessibility of the poet’s consciousness as well as the opacity of the
metaphor’s target. Of course, the two are frequently intertwined in that
the target of the metaphor is often the speaker of the poem, who may in
turn be closely related to the poet. Nonetheless, the orientation of the
opacity is different in the two cases.
Before taking up a particular case, we need to address briefly the oper-
ation and function of metaphor. The broad account of metaphor that
I have advocated is the following (see “Metaphor”). Literal statements
involve the presumption that default features of a source transfer to a
target unless there is explicit reason to believe otherwise. Nonetheless,
in literal statements, usually only some features are contextually rele-
vant. Thus if someone says, “George is a lion” and means it literally,
then we assume George has four paws, sharp teeth, a tendency to eat
people (as well as other animals), and so forth – unless we are given
reason to believe otherwise, as when we are told, “but he is entirely
tame and eats only fruit.” Nonetheless, not all these features will be
relevant in a given context. Some features will be relevant if we are
speaking of what food to provide at the zoo; others will be relevant if
we are being hired to do a sketch of George, the fictional school mascot.
Thus, for any literal utterance, we select properties and relations – collec-
tively, “features” – of the source (“lion”) and transfer them to the target
(“George”).
Unspoken beauty 101
The situation with metaphorical assertions is precisely the same,

without the presumption that default features apply. Thus, when used
metaphorically, “George is a lion” does not lead us to assume George
has four paws, and so on. However, we still must judge what features are
relevant to the current situation. For example, if we are speaking about
appearance, then we might take the point to be that George’s fringe of
wild blond hair is mane-like. In contrast, “carnivore” might be the more
apt feature if we are speaking about whether to serve steak or tempeh at
George’s retirement dinner. Note that in both the literal and metaphorical
cases, we often cite single sentences as examples. However, the analysis
applies to larger discourses as well, where complexes of features are built
up across sources or through the development of a single source.12
Common or standard metaphors derive from ordinary patterns of the
sort treated in conceptual metaphor theory (such as the idea that life is
a journey). (On conceptual metaphor theory and literature, see Lakoff
and Turner.) In such cases, key features usually transfer straightforwardly
from source to target. In contrast, for more “radical” metaphors, it may
be much more difficult to isolate clearly and centrally transferable fea-
tures. This creates the sense that radical metaphors are indefinitely inter-
pretable. This may make such metaphors seem either deeply revelatory
or opaque and elliptical – thereby making them perhaps a particularly
apt vehicle for conveying a sense of the absent plenitude that defines an
inaccessible self.
The information processing of feature assignment is only part of the
function of metaphors. Indeed, it seems that metaphors are often used not
to convey information or to provoke new ways of inferring information,
but to inspire or intensify emotion. We do not choose “John is a rat” over
“John is deceptive and may harm you” because the former gives more
information. We choose it because it expresses and (we hope) inspires
stronger emotional response, specifically stronger aversion to John and
his likely acts.
This emotional function of metaphors is abundantly clear in art. More-
over, it is directly relevant to the issue of absence. Specifically, radical
metaphors are likely to be very apt for communicating the sublime, given
the right sort of emotions. The relative indeterminacy of such metaphors
may facilitate the specification of a reader’s simulation in preference-
consistent ways, especially insofar as that simulation is guided by relevant
emotions. In other words, a radical or innovative metaphor may provide
alternatives for simulation that enable a reader to envision a character or
12 This point is in keeping with the insight of Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner that there
may be multiple sources contributing properties and relations to a “blended space.”
situation in a manner that enhances his or her own aesthetic response;

the broad convergence across individual responses would result in part
from the constraint provided by associated emotions. For example, if a
speaker’s heart is said to be “filled up . . . with lilies and with bees,” we
have many possible features to transfer from source to target. The options
are, however, far from unlimited, due in part to broad emotional con-
straint (e.g., the metaphor seems incompatible with feelings of anger or
disgust). That constraint, in turn, is not absolute. It permits a great deal
of leeway in specification and nuance. Thus it allows for idiosyncrasy of
response, but idiosyncrasy of response within a broadly similar emotional
profile, at least for many readers (and especially following analysis and
interpretation of the work). As to the sublime specifically, in combin-
ing emotional intensity with conceptual opacity, radical metaphors may
readily suggest emotion sharing while simultaneously foregrounding the
inaccessibility of other consciousnesses. At the same time, highly innova-
tive metaphors are likely to be appropriate means of conveying a sense of
beauty as well. This is true because of their habituation-defying novelty,
their emotional force – when linked with attachment and/or reward – and
their cognitive capacity as models to reconfigure our prototypes or help
us to uncover otherwise unseen patterns. In all these respects, then, it is
unsurprising that metaphors are so pervasive in literature.
For me, college was a time of repeated aesthetic surprises as I dis-
covered a world of literary, cinematic, artistic, and other works the like
of which I had not encountered previously. One of the most profoundly
affecting works I came upon at the time was George Crumb’s Ancient
Voices of Children with its entrancing settings of poems by Federico Garcı́a
Lorca. One passage from Lorca struck me particularly and has continued
to haunt me for decades since. It is from his “Balada de la Placeta”13
(from the 1921 collection, Libro de Poemas):
Se ha llenado de luces
mi corazón de seda,
de campanas perdidas,
de lirios y de abejas.
y yo me iré muy lejos,
más allá de esas sierras,
más allá de los mares,
cerca de las estrellas,
para pedirle a Cristo
Señor que me devuelva
Mi alma antigua de niño.
13 The full poem is widely available on the Internet by searching the title. The entire
collection is available as well.
Unspoken beauty 103
Filled with lights

my silk heart,
with lost bells,
with lilies and bees.
And I will travel very far,
beyond those mountains,
beyond the seas,
near the stars,
to ask Christ
Lord to return to me
my old child soul.
(Translated by Frederick Luis Aldama)
On rereading the lines now, I find them less opaque than formerly, though
no less exquisite. The stanza begins with an attempt to communicate
a feeling, to share an emotion. The “heart” here is the least obscure,
because it is the most conventional. On the one hand, it refers to the
actual heart, or the speaker’s chest, thus a visceral sense of emotion that
the poet seeks to foster in the reader as well. Lights and bells suggest
joy; lilies, beauty; bees, a sort of restless excitement (akin to the idiom
of “butterflies in one’s stomach”). At the same time, the reference to
the bells as “lost” indicates that these emotions are not due to current
experience but to some flood of memories. The point is linked with the
speaker’s request. He has an emotional sense of the past, but it is not a
full experience of the past – the bells remain lost, even if they also remain
held in the shimmering and durable silk of the heart (like wealth in a silk
purse). In terms of current psychology, the speaker may be thought of as
experiencing the activation of emotional memories, feelings derived from
past experiences. However, the representational content of the associated
episodic memories, the precise sense of those past experiences, remains
elusive.
Here we come to a second, perhaps surprising way that one conscious-
ness is inaccessible to another, thus another possible sort of sublimity.
If one’s self is changeable, momentary, then one perhaps of necessity
becomes a stranger to oneself in much the same way that one is a stranger
to others. The speaker’s old soul of a boy is intimated by brief hints of
shared emotion in memories. But he no longer has that original experi-
ence. It is as walled off in a distinct consciousness as the experience of any
other person. Thus the shared inaccessibility of the sublime characterizes
not only the mystery of other consciousnesses, but no less forcefully the
parallel mystery of one’s own past (or future) consciousness.
While asserting and sharing the inaccessibility of the former self, the
poem also considers how it would be possible to fully share that earlier
self. In keeping with this, the opening images owe part of their novelty
to the substitution of external and accessible things for “internal” and

inaccessible states. Lights, bells, silk, lilies, and bees are all part of the
external world. Lorca is taking what the reader cannot experience, what is
“inside the heart” of the speaker, and placing it outside, where it is plainly
visible (the lights and lilies), audible (the bells and bees), or available to
touch (the silk).
In keeping with the preceding analysis of Yasmin, the paradox of shar-
ing and inaccessibility is given the hint of resolution in religious mysti-
cism. The speaker in effect considers his own death. The light here is
not (presumably) the light of S.ūfism, but it has the same general point.
It is perhaps the light of heaven. The bells are almost certainly those of
a church; the lilies may therefore be associated with funerary wreaths.
At least, the ellipses delimited by the radical metaphors allow these con-
cretizations. In the usual manner, death is connected with a journey, first
beyond what is visible even in the distance (“those mountains,” presum-
ably at the horizon), then beyond what may be imagined concretely (“the
seas” on the far side of the mountains), then to the limits of conceivable
distance (“near the stars”; we can, of course, see the pinpricks of stars
in the sky but can hardly imagine what it would mean to be near them).
This metaphorical boundary represents the continuation of the soul after
death. It is a journey undertaken by the soul understood as mundane
consciousness; it is the momentary, changeable self that undertakes the
quest to find Christ near to the stars. That ordinary consciousness is so
fully presupposed in the journey that the speaker even imagines that he
must make a request of Christ – despite the fact that the entire scenario
is inseparable from the belief in Christ’s omniscience and omnipotence.
In other words, to this point in the poem, the speaker tacitly assumes
the absolute opacity of individual consciousness even with respect to
God.
The key point, however, is just what he asks for. He asks for the return
of the (past) self that is as opaque to him now as if it were the self of
another person. I take it that the request is not that he be turned into
that child again, thus making his current self a mere incomprehensible
memory. I take it that he is asking for something more mystical and
more sublime – a sort of complete self, a self that somehow integrates
all aspects and moments of the self. It is an old theological problem. If
someone suffers dementia in old age, no religious person would be likely
to say that his or her resurrected soul will be that of the forgetful and
disoriented consciousness at the time of death. But then what exactly
is the consciousness after death? It would hardly seem to be the simple
consciousness of a particular point in life (e.g., this person’s conscious-
ness at the moment just before the dementia began), with its opacities
Unspoken beauty 105
of former and future selves. It is, rather, an idealized consciousness, one

that “return[s]” all the fleeting, momentary selves that have been lost.
Thus, once again, we have the suggestion of a mystical resolution of the
impossible longing for shared consciousness – a problem here extended
from other selves to one’s own self. But, in this case, the sublimity of
absence is developed through the opacities of metaphor, rather than
mere blankness. This gives us another form of targeted absence, another
way in which the reader may be coaxed into the cognitive and emotional
completion of an incomplete text. Here, as elsewhere, the key point is
that the completion is in part idiosyncratic, but the idiosyncrasies are, at
least in many cases, of the right sort. The right sort here means the sort
that fulfills the functional designs of the work, such as inspiring aesthetic
pleasure. In Lorca’s case, as elsewhere, the success of the work suggests
some convergence in readers’ aesthetic responses. It seems likely that
the emotions conveyed by the metaphors – along with some conceptual
constraints on feature transfer – help activate relevantly similar experi-
ences in readers. But those experiences themselves differ. For example,
the sense of one’s own limited self-understanding is not manifest in the
same degree or the same incidents for different people. In consequence,
readers fill in absences variously, even if that filling-in has common emo-
tional and other properties. Both the differences and the commonalities
are crucial for any convergence in response. Moreover, they both bear
directly on thematic concerns about the isolation of consciousness.
In sum, the operation of absence in art may seem to pose a problem

that is the precise opposite of that discussed in Chapter 2. Specifically,
the positing of aesthetic universality led us to ask about the obvious fact
of individual diversity in aesthetic response. Absence – whether due to
vagueness, ellipsis, or the sort of opacity found in radical metaphors –
would seem to present us with prime conditions for almost random indi-
vidual diversity. Despite this, there seems to be a degree of responsive
convergence in aesthetic appreciation, whether of Matisse’s drawings or
Lorca’s poetry. This appears to result from several factors. Some of these
bear primarily on information processing – for example, statistical expec-
tations concerning types of situation or generic and motivic structures in
literary or artistic tradition. Such processing is inseparable from such neu-
ral operations as pattern completion and confabulation. Particular types
of information-processing results are of course fostered by what is present
in the work. This includes a degree of category specification adequate to
activate and organize a tractable set of episodic memories for simulation
or context-related prototype definition. At the same time, some of these
processes are not only a matter of filling in absences, but are enabled in
other ways by absences that may not be filled in. For example, there are
enhancement effects produced by the removal of what might have been
distracting information. Other factors bear on emotion. These include
the affective congruence of emotional memories (as well as the orien-
tation of information processing) fostered by radical metaphors. Both
information processing and emotional factors are related to the greater
freedom that absence often allows an artist, who is not as constrained by,
for example, the plausibility of representational detail. In each case, the
responsive convergence achieved by successful works derives in part from
the idiosyncrasy in recipients’ completion of incomplete works (e.g., the
idiosyncrasy in their personal senses of beauty). Given our emotional and
cognitive diversity (e.g., in the precise nature of beauty-defining proto-
types), convergence of response requires at least some degree of diver-
gence in such completion. In this way, given the right circumstances,
absence does not so much contradict as enable aesthetic commonality.
Finally, the careful shaping of absence – the selective and targeted use of
vagueness, ellipsis, opacity, and related techniques – may be a particu-
larly apt means of fostering the sublime. This is because the sublime is
bound up with the acute sense of the particular inaccessibility (the ellip-
tical quality, the palpable absence) of other selves – and, indeed, even of
one’s own self at other times.
4 Aesthetic response revisited
Quandaries about beauty and sublimity
Chapter 1 articulated a componential account of aesthetic response,

which is to say, the valenced (positive or negative) aesthetic experience
of a target (e.g., a work of art) by some recipient (reader, viewer, or
listener). Specifically, we isolated two broad types of component – those
that bear on information processing and those that bear on emotion
system (equivalently, motivation system) engagement. The information-
processing component involves two subcomponents: prototype approx-
imation and non-habitual pattern isolation (non-anomalous surprise).
The emotional component involves constituents as well – prominently
the reward and attachment systems, along with the closely associated
systems of attention and interest.1 (Attention and interest are activated
by unexpected experiences that may subsequently arouse emotion sys-
tems; they are also activated by the arousal of emotion systems.)
By this account, the combination of these components – prototype
approximation, non-habitual pattern recognition, and activation of the
attachment, reward, and associated attention and interest systems –
produces aesthetic pleasure. This account predicts that the quality
and intensity of aesthetic pleasure are functions of the number of
components involved at a particular time as well as the degree to which
those components are engaged or active. For example, by this account
we would expect a sharp gradient of change from disorientation to
pattern isolation to produce a more intense aesthetic response than a
more gradual gradient, since a sharp change would be likely to intensify
relevant emotion system activation. Moreover, different configurations
of components are likely to produce different types of aesthetic expe-
rience. Thus one story may have a strong reward component with a
1 Note that the attachment system appears in at least two roles in aesthetic response.
First, it has this regular or direct function in defining the emotional quality of the
response. In addition, in relevant cases, it has an indirect or contributory function in
prototype formation. The two functions are, of course, related. A current context of
attachment activation is likely to make attachment-related memories more prominent in
one’s situated redefinition of prototypes.
107
weak attachment component; it will clearly foster a different response

from a story with the reverse configuration (e.g., the former might
be found in heroic quest narratives and the latter in family separation
narratives).
This account distinguished sublimity from beauty by reference to the
most profound uncertainty of the attachment system – the utter inac-
cessibility of other consciousnesses, the opacity of one self to another
self, which makes the reciprocity of attachment forever uncertain. More
exactly, we may distinguish the cherishing, delighted aspect of attach-
ment, commonly associated with attachment security, from the fretful,
uncertain, yearning aspect, associated with attachment insecurity. Both
aspects of attachment may enter into aesthetic pleasure. The former
is predominant in experiences of beauty; the latter in experiences of
the sublime. Put differently, the sublime is bound up with loneliness,
including the most intense form of loneliness or attachment longing –
grief.2
Chapter 1 also drew a distinction between public beauty and aesthetic
response. Again, public beauty is defined by standard categorizations
of targets as beautiful. Note that, by this definition, it is in principle
possible that no one actually experiences aesthetic pleasure at a particular
target of public beauty. In other words, public beauty is distinct not only
from individual aesthetic response but even from such ideas as, say,
“most common aesthetic response.” For example, it is quite possible for
a wide range of people to agree that a particular fashion model is “most
beautiful” when few of them actually have a strong aesthetic response to
her. The same point holds for works of art. This is not to say that the word
“beauty” has no place in discussions of aesthetic response. Indeed, I have
regularly used “beauty” to refer to properties eliciting aesthetic pleasure.
However, it is important to distinguish between our judgment that some
target fits the general usage of the word “beautiful” and our feeling of
aesthetic pleasure. The latter at least implicitly attributes beauty to the
target, but not necessarily public beauty.
Subsequent chapters treated two complementary problems. The first
problem concerned divergence: How can one reconcile the existence
2 As the references to loneliness and grief suggest, both sublime and beautiful forms of
aesthetic feeling will be inflected somewhat differently by the full emotional particularity
of the aesthetic experience, as a whole and moment to moment. Such inflections may
produce, for example, tears in one case and chills in another. An important task for aes-
thetics, beyond the scope of the present study, is examining these variations, their neural
substrates, their eliciting conditions, and so on. On the eliciting conditions of emotion-
ally distinct responses to music – e.g., the association of “shivers” with “unprepared
harmony” – see Juslin 134 and references.
Aesthetic response revisited 109
of aesthetic universals with idiosyncrasy of taste? The second problem

concerned convergence: How might one account for the apparent power
of absence to provoke at least partially similar aesthetic responses, given
that absence would seem to intensify idiosyncrasy?
These discussions leave a number of fundamental, theoretical ques-
tions unaddressed. The purpose of the present chapter is to consider
four key theoretical issues raised but not resolved by the preceding anal-
yses. These issues may be framed in terms of the following questions:
1. Are there any further emotions involved in aesthetic response? Our dis-
cussion of Lady Bexborough’s respect-inspiring stoicism in Chapter 1
and our consideration of sublimity in relation to religious exaltation
in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 both suggest that at least sublimity com-
monly involves some emotional response other than attachment and
loneliness or grief.
2. Why are there two information processing components to aesthetic
response? This is a particularly vexing issue as the two operate
largely as alternatives, but they do not bear any clear relation to
each other. In the case of emotional components, the multiplicity
is either cumulative or complementary. Attachment and reward
involvement enhance interest and attachment. Moreover, attachment
leads to reward pursuit – indeed, in intense cases, reward may be
dependent on attachment satisfaction, hence the general depression
and lethargy that often accompany grief. Thus these components
may work together in obvious ways. The sublime and the beautiful
do not work together in this manner. However, they operate in clearly
complementary ways. They are of the same general type, bearing on
different aspects of attachment relations. Thus it makes theoretical
sense that there would be different sorts of aesthetic response based
on the two different kinds of attachment feeling – secure and insecure.
In contrast, prototype approximation and pattern recognition do
not appear to integrate with each other. They can, of course, both
function in the same work. We may experience pleasure in the pat-
terning of the music in a film while also experiencing pleasure at the
prototype approximation of the hero’s face. But conjunction is not
integration. Indeed, these two sorts of information processing appear
to apply primarily to different sorts of target. However, there is no
clear way in which prototypes and patterns are complementary; there
is no clear general category within which they can be distinguished
systematically (in the way that the alternatives of secure and inse-
cure systematically distinguish between types of attachment). All this
makes the duality of information processing a pressing theoretical
issue.
3. What precisely is the nature of non-habitual pattern isolation?

Although the preceding chapters developed a technical sense for the
idea of a prototype, they left the idea of pattern isolation somewhat
vague and intuitive.
4. Is there any relation between public beauty and responsive beauty?
On the one hand, it is important to distinguish between the common
perception of beauty and individual response. On the other hand,
however, it is a commonplace that social aesthetic norms influence
individual taste. In part, this is simply a matter of verbal conformism.
If some man finds a chubby, large-nosed woman responsively beauti-
ful (to characterize Tanuja in rather unflattering terms), he is unlikely
to say this publicly. That is not a matter of a social effect on aes-
thetic response. It is, rather, a matter of a social effect on the usage
of certain words (such as “beautiful”) and the degree to which one
is forthcoming and honest about one’s responses. Moreover, some
effects are straightforwardly predicted by the preceding account. For
example, the representation of facial beauty by mass media will have
effects on prototype formation. Nonetheless, it does at least sometimes
seem that the consequences of social norms on aesthetic response are
deeper and more pervasive than this may suggest.
These four questions address what I take to be the most fundamental
theoretical issues raised by the three main elements of the preceding
account of beauty and sublimity – the emotional components of aesthetic
response, the information-processing components of aesthetic response,
and the difference between public and responsive beauty. The remainder
of the present chapter considers these questions in turn.
In addressing these issues, the following sections make reference to two
novels by Edith Wharton – The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.
As with my use of Mrs. Dalloway, I to some extent examine each text for
its insights into beauty. However, I primarily take them up as exemplary
of beauty and sublimity. Like Woolf, Wharton was a writer exquisitely
sensitive to aesthetic qualities, not only at the level of style but at the levels
of storyworld and story. Indeed, although her stylistic accomplishments
are not as breathtaking as those of Woolf, the extent to which she explores
beauty of character and action may be even greater, at least with regard
to typical human experience and behavior (as opposed to the extreme,
hallucinatory experiences of Septimus).3
3 Critical analyses of Wharton have taken up the issue of beauty, particularly in The
House of Mirth (see, for example, Lidoff). However, they have tended to focus more
on thematic concerns, especially those bearing on the characterization of Lily Bart as
beautiful. (For a particularly careful treatment of Lily’s beauty, see Steiner, Venus 65–
70.) These discussions are valuable for understanding the novel but directly address a
Before continuing on to these topics, I should perhaps remark on some-

thing that I am not considering – the evolution of particular aesthetic
responses or, for that matter, of aesthetic response generally. A great deal
of contemporary discussion of beauty treats putative evolutionary func-
tions served by, say, facial symmetry or some other recurring forms of
beauty. These are explained in my account by more general processes.
We have an evolved preference for prototype approximation, which yields
a preference for left-right facial symmetry. Thus it is redundant to pro-
vide a separate evolutionary account of the latter – though the adaptive
advantages of a preference for facial symmetry no doubt contributed to
the evolution of prototype preference more generally. Similarly, aesthetic
response per se is explained by the conjunction of components. The evo-
lution of these components seems to be a non-issue. Beyond prototype
approximation, the fitness-enhancing effects of isolating unfamiliar pat-
terns and enjoying (thus seeking) to isolate such patterns seems clear.
One hardly needs to point out that reward and attachment are adap-
tive. Thus the evolutionary work is all done at the componential level
and, it seems, nothing else is needed. Similar points apply to the puta-
tive evolution of “art” in sexual selection or survival and sexual selection
(see, for example, Rolls 147). There is no need to appeal to bowerbird
nest-building, or at least there is no need to view it as central to explain-
ing art. Distinct, evolutionary accounts of art appear to be redundant.
Once we have a series of specific (evolved) capacities and preferences
that produce aesthetic pleasure, art is going to arise, at least insofar
as intentionally producing aesthetic pleasure is within the capacities of
humans.
Aesthetic emotions: core, ancillary, and contributory

In Chapter 1, we considered the main recurring emotions involved in
aesthetic experience. Interest, with its associated attentional orientation,
is crucial. But it and even reward seem less distinctive than attachment.
Specifically, we might understand interest, attention, and reward as
necessary to the task engagement characteristic of “immersion,” “trans-
portation,” as Gerrig or Green and Donahue would put it, or “flow”
in Csı́kszentmihályi’s term. Similarly, the cognitive involvement of
simulation – the systematic imagination of conditions or trajectories
different topic. Some criticism does relate more to the aesthetic qualities of the work
itself, but often in limited ways. For example, McIlvaine’s observations on the use of
flower imagery in the novel take up one aspect of the novel’s stylistic beauty, although
that is not his main concern.
of events – is often crucial to such engagement. In keeping with this,

aesthetic experience is frequently (perhaps always) a sort of simulative
immersion.4 In its most intense form, such (immersed) aesthetic expe-
rience involves distinctive information processing – prototype approxi-
mation or non-habitual pattern recognition – and distinctive emotional
quality. That quality appears to be centrally a function of attachment.
However, there are several qualifications to this. First, aesthetic plea-
sure is a form of pleasure, often extremely intense. We would not wish to
characterize such pleasure as somehow marginal or merely preliminary
to aesthetic experience. Moreover, understanding such pleasure is com-
plex. It may result from the dopamine-based reward system. On the one
hand, as Fareri and Delgado report, “Dopamine is thought to be involved
specifically in reward wanting” (446) – hence Panksepp’s preference for
calling the system “SEEKING” (see Panksepp and Biven 98). In keeping
with this, we may distinguish different “parts of our rewards circuits.”
Specifically, we may distinguish the “liking” part that “uses opioid[s]”
from the “wanting” of the dopamine system (Chatterjee, “Neuroaesthet-
ics” 309). On the other hand, some “evidence suggests that dopamine
may be involved in the hedonic experience of reward” (Fareri and Del-
gado 446). In keeping with the present analysis, the dopamine system is
particularly sensitive to “unexpected rewards” (Fareri and Delgado 447),
which fits well with our observations on non-habitual pattern recogni-
tion. Aesthetic feeling seems to involve both parts of our reward circuits,
the seeking part and the pleasure part.
The second qualification is that these emotions are not somehow quar-
antined from other emotion systems. Virtually any other emotion may
combine with attachment and reward. Moreover, these ancillary emo-
tions will inflect the aesthetic experience. In some cases, the combina-
tion will enhance that experience. For example, the addition of sexual
desire may enhance reward or pleasure involvement or even intensify
attachment system activation. (The cross-cultural frequency of romantic
plots may point to the intensification of aesthetic enjoyment through the
4 Although it is difficult to tell just what her data indicate (for reasons discussed in the
introduction), Starr’s research may suggest that such simulative immersion is a key
feature of any intense engagement with art. Starr stresses the activation of the default
mode network. This is “a set of interconnected brain areas that are generally active in
periods of waking rest but whose activity generally decreases with external stimulation.”
The exception to this decrease comes “with intensely powerful aesthetic experience,”
when “parts of the default mode network are, surprisingly, engaged” (23). As Starr
notes, some cognitive scientists view the default mode as processes of “simulat[ing]
worlds that are separate from the one being directly experienced” (Buckner and Carroll
54).
empathic elaboration of romantic love, itself a combination of attach-

ment, reward, and sexual desire.5 ) In other cases, the ancillary emotion
would inhibit aesthetic experience. It would be anti-aesthetic. For exam-
ple, this is likely to be the case with certain instances of disgust. Attach-
ment and reward are not the only systems likely to be affected by further
emotions. Some added emotions will have effects primarily on interest
or attention. In some cases, the effects of the added emotion would be
orthogonal to any of these “core” aesthetic systems.
It is worth dwelling briefly on anti-aesthetic response before going
on. By the analysis developed in the preceding pages, we expect several
kinds of anti-aesthetic response, one in connection with each of the pri-
mary components of aesthetic response. Thus we anticipate anti-aesthetic
experience to, so to speak, invert the seeking and pleasure (or wanting
and liking) of the reward system, as well as attachment feelings. Seek-
ing is opposed to indifference or boredom, whereas pleasure is opposed
more straightforwardly to pain (which we seek to avoid). The inhibitory
pain of anti-aesthetic experience may be “extrinsic” – for example, the
physical pain of music that is too loud. But it may also be integrated with
seeking by way of frustration. Both simple pain and frustration are likely
to give rise to irritation or even anger. With respect to attachment, the
most obviously opposed system is that of disgust. In keeping with the
central function of attachment in aesthetic response, disgust is perhaps
the paradigmatic anti-aesthetic emotion.
These emotional oppositions have parallels in the information process-
ing components of aesthetic response. Habituation brings indifference,
the opposite of seeking. This leads to one of the three prime anti-aesthetic
responses – boredom. Pattern isolation is contradicted by disorientation,
a sense of chaos. This leads to frustration and irritation or anger. Finally,
rather than prototype approximation, we have prototype deviation. This
is a scalar relation, such that targets may be more or less similar to or
different from a prototype. Prototype deviation leads first to distaste,
then eventually to disgust. Severe prototype deviation (e.g., in extreme
facial or bodily asymmetries) defines ugliness. Thus being ugly, boring,
or incomprehensible may be understood as the three main aesthetic flaws
and disgust, boredom, and frustration/anger may be understood as the
three main anti-aesthetic emotions.
It is worth noting that disgust need not be connected with prototype
deviation. For example, most of us find colons disgusting because of their
5 On romantic tragicomedy and its cross-cultural recurrence, see chapter 3 of Hogan The
Mind; on romantic love, see chapter 3 of Hogan What Literature (see also Shaver and
Hazan 482 and Fisher 90–94).
link with feces. Thus most of us will not find a colon “cute” (as in the
case cited in Chapter 2). In this way, certain topics of representation
(or certain real objects) are unlikely sources of aesthetic pleasure since
our disgust responses are likely to overwhelm any aesthetic pleasure, no
matter how prototypical the target. However, such non-prototype-based
disgust may be diminished by habituation, leading to such cases as the
laboratory technician with her aesthetic appreciation of colons. This may
be particularly true when the habituation involves a complex redefinition
of the target in terms of disgusting and non-disgusting alternatives, here
cancerous and non-cancerous.
The preceding references to negative emotions, such as anger and
disgust, raise another issue. There is a tendency for writers to use the
word “sublime” for any form of aesthetic pleasure that involves negative
emotions. Thus a scene of fear or anger would be likely to be labeled
“sublime,” rather than “beautiful,” if it has relevant aesthetic properties.
This is clearly a broader usage than that developed in the preceding
chapters. Such a difference in usage need not reflect a difference of
opinion in what the sublime “really is.” Rather, it is, first of all, a simple
matter of how one chooses to use a certain term. Moreover, there is
clearly some difference in our aesthetic response to a work that involves
fear or anger, in contrast with a work that does not. In that way, the very
broad use of the term “sublime” makes some descriptive sense.
On the other hand, this very capacious usage of “sublime” may be
somewhat misleading. The mere fact of having a negative emotion along
with an experience of beauty does not entail that the experience of beauty
itself is different, except trivially in that the entire experience is different.
The point is clear when the negative emotion is wholly extrinsic. I may
appreciate the beauty of a painting even when angry with my department
head. My anger affects my overall emotional state. It therefore alters my
aesthetic experience. However, we would probably not wish to say that
this means I am undergoing a different type of aesthetic experience. The
same point holds when I am angry because of some particular aspect
of the work while having an aesthetic experience of another aspect. For
example, suppose I am angry because of the work’s political themes (e.g.,
outraged at the oppression it depicts) while appreciating its stylistic lyri-
cism. It seems important to distinguish the experience of theme-related
anger from the experience of aesthetic pleasure. Again, this does not
mean that the emotions do not affect one another, nor that we can-
not discuss the two together. However, it seems mistaken to see such
incidental anger (or fear or disgust) as part of the aesthetic experience
proper. The case is different when the anger, fear, or disgust is a func-
tion of the attachment system, whose involvement animates the aesthetic
experience, that is, when attachment insecurity is manifest in these other

emotions.
More precisely, we need to consider just what cases of aversive emotion
contribute to making an experience more sublime than beautiful. Funda-
mentally, reframing the general idea in terms of the preceding analyses,
we would have to say that, in these cases, the negative emotion is not
operating anti-aesthetically. Rather, we must be dealing with a situation
at least comparable to that described by Rolls, a situation that he sees
as directly relevant to the experience of “tragedy in literature” (154). As
Rolls explains, “If a mildly unpleasant stimulus is added to a pleasant
stimulus, sometimes the overall pleasantness of the stimulus . . . and per-
haps its beauty, can be enhanced” (153). It is perfectly reasonable to give
“sublime” this rather general meaning – that is, a form of aesthetic plea-
sure that involves intensification through the incorporation of some sort
of distress, such that the pleasure and the distress have the same target.
Nonetheless, there would seem to be a significant difference between the
kinds of limited distress that bear on the experience of reward generally
and the forms of distress that bear on the more distinctive emotional
component of aesthetic experience – attachment, or reward as integrated
with attachment. Indeed, the former seems to cover almost everything we
mean by “beauty” (including, for example, the presence of dissonance
in music). In contrast, an attachment-related distress seems much more
germane to what we commonly view as, for example, sublime tragedy. It
would therefore seem more theoretically valuable to isolate the latter as
constituting a distinct form of aesthetic pleasure.
To address this issue more productively, we might begin by distin-
guishing three levels of emotion system involvement in aesthetic response.
First, there are the primary or core emotions, the systems that constitute the
aesthetic experience per se – attachment and reward. Second, there are
the purely ancillary emotions. These emotions are orthogonal to the core
emotions. Finally, there are the contributory emotions. These are emotions
that interact directly with the core emotions, altering them and being
altered by them. We briefly mentioned some cases of this sort above. For
example, sexual desire may be connected with attachment feelings, in
part through the operation of oxytocin (on the relation of sexuality and
oxytocin, see Panksepp and Biven 257–258). Although fear and anger
do not have a necessary relation to attachment, they can certainly be
involved with attachment in a particular scenario (moreover, they are
inhibited by oxytocin [see Panksepp and Biven 232 on fear and 170 and
253 on aggression, including “reciprocal aggression,” presumably related
to anger]). In a relevant context, either emotion can intensify attach-
ment feelings. For example, a mother is not constantly feeling intense
attachment system activation with respect to her child. However, she is

likely to feel such activation when experiencing fear over the child’s well-
being. Moreover, as this example suggests, fear or anger may serve to
shift attachment feelings from secure to insecure.
To illustrate this division, we need to develop the ideas of attachment
security and insecurity, gaining a better sense of how other emotion sys-
tems may contribute to attachment system involvement (and not merely
be ancillary to it). Such a development is also important for understand-
ing the aesthetic operation of attachment on its own. First, in speaking
of attachment security and insecurity, I do not have in mind a trait or
disposition, but rather a state. Traits are, of course, very important. Some
people have a strong tendency to feel attachment insecurity; others have
only a weak tendency. Such traits bear on the occurrence of states of
security or insecurity, although the latter are necessarily more funda-
mental than the former (i.e., without state insecurity, there would be no
such thing as trait insecurity). Specifically, one experiences (a state of)
attachment security when one feels confident that the attachment object
will be there when one wants him or her. One experiences attachment
insecurity to the degree that one doubts such accessibility. The fullest
form of attachment security is fantastical – the complete presence of the
attachment object in a spiritual communion. The fullest form of attach-
ment insecurity is, unfortunately, not fantastical – the utter loss of the
attachment object in death.6
As these references to death and union indicate, attachment insecurity
has two sources – first, one’s inability to know what will happen in the
world (e.g., if the loved one will fall ill); second, one’s inability to know
other minds, thus to fully know the other person’s feelings or to com-
municate one’s own feelings to him or her. In previous chapters, I have
stressed that the sublime bears particularly on the second sort of attach-
ment insecurity. However, it bears as well on the first sort. Indeed, Lady
Bexborough suffers because of the contingencies of life and death, not
because of uncertainty over her son’s thoughts. On the other hand, both
ultimately come down to the same point. The pain that accompanies
attachment insecurity – whether it is the insecurity of mutual incompre-
hensibility or that of grief – is a form of loneliness, both quotidian and
existential loneliness for a particular attachment object.7
6 This may suggest one reason why “elaborate burial grounds” are among the earliest
instances of artistic elaboration, occurring some 35,000 to 45,000 years ago (Zaidel). As
Zaidel explains, “The elaborate graves reflect the symbolic representation of attachment
and love for the deceased” (185).
7 The general relevance of loneliness to aesthetic experience is suggested by the Japanese
aesthetic concept of sabi. Sabi refers to the “beauty of loneliness” (Miner, Odagiri, and
Now we may return to the difference between ancillary and contrib-

utory emotions. The preceding analysis indicates that there are cer-
tain cases where negative emotions may affect our attachment system
responses. These are, then, cases where negative emotions are not sim-
ply ancillary to core aesthetic emotions, but integrated with them. It is
worth stressing the word “integrated” here. Some ancillary emotions may
incidentally interact with core emotions in a particular case. For exam-
ple, when I am watching a romantic comedy, a neighbor’s ringing cell
phone may so annoy me that I cannot experience reward enjoyment at
the lovers’ union. I take it that distinguishing such extrinsic or incidental
emotion interactions from actual integration is straightforward enough.
For example, when systems are integrated, they share an emotional tar-
get, which is not the case for my annoyance with my neighbor and my
(inhibited) joy for the lovers (because the neighbor is the target in the
former case, whereas the lovers are the target in the latter case).
Affective processes do not end with emotion system interaction. There
are further complications concerning the unfolding of emotional experi-
ence. Clearly, the central role in an emotion episode is played by emotion
systems themselves, with their eliciting conditions and various outcomes.
However, such an episode commonly involves some degree of modula-
tion as well – most obviously, a dampening of aversive or socially inap-
propriate emotions (e.g., Schadenfreude at a funeral), but sometimes an
enhancement or other qualification of even pleasurable responses. The
point bears on our experience of the grief and existential loneliness of the
sublime, as we have already suggested with the case of Lady Bexborough’s
stoicism.
The issues here may be clarified if we consider the difference between
empathy and what might be called projection. By “projection,” I mean
imagining oneself in the target’s situation and simulating or inferring
what one would be likely to feel in that situation. In contrast, empathy is
our sharing of the character’s own feelings. The relation between these
two attitudes serves to guide our emotional response to the character.
Specifically, with respect to attachment insecurity – prominently, grief –
we may distinguish cases where a reader’s own response to the situation
would be comparable to that of the target (e.g., a literary character),
cases where it would be more competent or functional, and cases where
it would be less competent or functional. In the first case, we might
say that the reader is likely to feel compassion for the character; in the
Morrell 295; presumably, the authors do not intend to contrast beauty with sublim-
ity here). It combines the idea of “deprivation” with the idea of “stillness” (295), a
description not incompatible with a stoical response to grief.
second case, the reader’s feelings are more likely to be a matter of pity
(in the pejorative sense); and, in the final case, the reader’s response
to the character should involve admiration. (For a fuller discussion of
these distinctions, see chapter 8 of my What Literature Teaches Us about
Emotion.)
The least aversive of these feelings is presumably admiration. The
admiration does not come from a sense that the target is immune to
attachment insecurity; for example, it does not come from a view that the
character is insensible to grief. Rather, it comes from a complex simula-
tion of the character’s ability to modulate his or her response, suppressing
its expressive and actional outcomes for some greater purpose. Speak-
ing of expressive outcomes, Rainville notes that “‘stoicism’ during pain
reflects the active suppression of the facial expression by prefrontal cor-
tices” (235). Stoicism also reflects the suppression of actional responses,
such as social withdrawal. Lady Bexborough opening the bazaar after the
death of her son is a clear example. She stoically suppresses her weeping
in order to contribute to the collective effort. Presumably, she contin-
ues to feel the grief. This grief is foregrounded by the fact that it was
her “favourite” child who died (Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway 5). Indeed, there
would be nothing admirable in her act if she did not feel that grief.
Again, this is, to my mind at least, an exemplary moment of sublimity.
As such, it suggests that admiration is an important component emo-
tion for sublimity. However, here as elsewhere it seems that it serves as a
component only to the extent that it is systemically integrated with attach-
ment. We can if we like characterize all cases of admiration as “sublime.”
For example, we might refer to a runner’s new world record as “sublime.”
But, as with the expansive usage where any aversive emotion makes an
aesthetic experience sublime, this seems misleadingly broad; it includes
aspects of the response that are not aesthetic per se, but orthogonal to
the aesthetic feelings. In this case as well, we need to distinguish cases
where the admiration is ancillary and cases where it is contributory, thus
cases where it is part of the same complex emotion as the attachment
feelings. That is clearly the case with Lady Bexborough, since we admire
precisely her ability to modulate her attachment insecurity, with which
we sympathize.
This reference to admiration brings us to another set of emotions that
are often associated with sublimity, specifically, the emotions linked with
wonder or awe. Wonder and awe may be understood as more intense
versions of admiration, but without the requirement that the target be
an intentional agent. “Wonder” is perhaps the most general of the three
terms. We can experience wonder at Lady Bexborough or at a sunrise.
Because we view Lady Bexborough as an agent who engages in actions
counter to her own inclinations, we speak of the wonder in this case as
admiration. We would not say the same thing for a sunrise – unless we
attributed the sunrise to God, in which case some superlative version of
admiration would be directed to that agent. Note, however, that there is
still the same basis for the emotion in relation to what we ourselves could
or could not do. (This is why a standard, dismissive response to some
forms of modern art is, “I could have done that.” The implication is that
there is no reason for admiration.) Awe suggests wonder at something
that has power over us and could be threatening. Thus a terrible storm
may provoke awe.
Wonder emotions – including admiration and awe – bear most obvi-
ously on attachment insecurity, as in the case of Lady Bexborough. How-
ever, they may be contributory to attachment security as well.8 Specif-
ically, representations of ideal union with the beloved – as in mystical
poetry – have a strong quality of wonder. It seems initially that union in
love constitutes the culminating form of beauty. In ordinary speech, how-
ever, it appears that we are inclined to refer to this as “sublime.” Perhaps
it makes sense to distinguish cases of untroubled and complete sharing,
thus instances of beauty, from the more sublime cases where union some-
how transcends the sense of self, overcoming loneliness through a sort
of annihilation. The former would include cases such as that of Peter
Walsh when he feels that he and Clarissa Dalloway pass in and out of
one another’s mind without constraint during Peter’s “twenty minutes of
perfect happiness” (61). The sublime case would include mystical disso-
lution of the self in God, as in the S.ūfı̄ concept of fana’, “‘annihilation’ in
Allah, one of the highest stations in Sufism” (Waines 281). Alternatively,
the beautiful sort of union may simply be the sort of union in fiction that
is continuous with experiences readers are likely to have had or to believe
they have had. In contrast, the sublime sort of union may be such that it
makes salient the absolute strangeness and inaccessibility of the unifying
experience.
This last point suggests that we should perhaps distinguish two forms
of sublimity. The first – represented by Lady Bexborough – involves a loss
of the attachment object, but also a modulation of emotional response
that provokes admiration. The second – representing fana’ – involves
an overcoming of separation in wondrous union, but at the same time an
8 My account here is obviously different from that of Prinz, who maintains that wonder is
the key aesthetic emotion. However, it is perhaps noteworthy that Prinz’s initial examples
of wonder have an obvious relation to attachment – “staring into a lover’s eyes” and
“look[ing] at newborn babies” (83; his subsequent examples are different). I suspect
that some of what Prinz intends by “wonder” is covered by attachment and some is
covered by reward/SEEKING system engagement, particularly the experience of delight
at unexpected pattern recognition.
abandonment of oneself in that union.9 We may refer to these as stoical

and ecstatic sublimity, respectively. In effect, one loses one’s beloved in
the former and oneself in the latter. It is worth noting that the former case
is often linked with moral principles, whereas the latter is commonly con-
nected with spiritual mysticism, perhaps the two areas most commonly
associated with sublimity by earlier writers.
As the case of disgust suggests, emotions may not only contribute to
aesthetic response by enhancing it, as occurs with wonder; they may
also inhibit feelings of the beautiful or sublime. In the first chapter, we
saw that Woolf suggests that hatred undoes beauty, and that war, with its
intensification of hatred, is the antithesis of beauty, even though it is often
presented as sublime. Hate is inseparable from disgust (see Oatley, Best
192, 212). Moreover, as works such as All Quiet on the Western Front show,
the actual conditions of warfare are in general too cruel and brutish –
too provocative of disgust even outside hate – to be sublime. Of course,
a soldier may sacrifice himself or herself to save a comrade. That may
be aesthetically sublime insofar as it involves our attachment systems –
as it commonly does, often by reference to the attachment loss that will
be suffered by his or her parents, spouse, or children. This does not
really contradict Woolf’s suggestion, since it is just the ordinary case of
sublimity, contingently located in a war scenario.
However, war as such involves more than hate and disgust. Indeed, the
hate itself is inseparable from identity group divisions and the associated
in-group pride. The key question here, then, is whether there is any
sublimity that is particular to the group pride that is fundamental to
war. Personally, I do not see how this would work. It does not seem
that attachment bonds link individuals with groups. Indeed, as noted in
Chapter 1, a peculiarity of attachment is that it is a highly individualizing.
Most emotions respond to types: types of food, for hunger; types of
danger, for fear, and so on. But baby’s attachment to Mom will not be
satisfied by anyone of the same type; it requires a particular person. I
am therefore inclined to think that apparent cases of definitively martial
sublimity are in fact mistaken (unlike cases of ordinary sublimity that
just happen to occur in the context of war). In other words, my very
strong inclination is to see group pride as at best ancillary to beauty or
sublimity and, more often, contradictory with it (thus contributory, but
contributory to its inhibition).
Of course, it is possible that a given experience could involve
non-habitual pattern definition, prototype approximation, opacity of
9 Ishizu and Zeki’s research is suggestive in this regard. At the “highest levels” of sublimity,
they found deactivations indicative of “a suppression of self-awareness” and of “self-
related information” (9).
consciousness, reward system engagement, interest, and admiration, only

missing attachment, which is in effect replaced by group pride. I remain
disinclined to view this as a sort of sublimity. It may, however, constitute
a variant of aesthetic response, related to beauty and sublimity by shared
cognitive components, as well as some emotional components (if not
the crucial component of attachment). We might refer to this by some
term such as “aestheticized group exaltation” as it tends to involve a
sense that one’s group is elevated above other groups. In fact, some such
form of aesthetic (or semi-aesthetic) response seems to drive much art
reception in areas outside war. National, ethnic, racial, gender, or other
self-affirmation seems to be central to much aesthetic experience. To my
mind, this is an unfortunate aspect of art, which I believe has its most
admirable function in fostering our empathic response outside identity
categories rather than reinforcing such categories.
In sum, there are many emotions involved in aesthetic response.
Beyond the core emotions of reward and attachment (as well as the pre-
or para-emotional systems of interest and attention), these emotions may
be ancillary or contributory. The experience of sublimity is particularly
affected by contributory emotions. Specifically, attachment itself has two
forms, secure and insecure. The insecurity rests on both the psychologi-
cal inaccessibility and the material fragility of the beloved; however, the
inaccessibility is fundamental, and it is the final concern even in relation
to material conditions. Owing presumably to the dysphoric quality of
attachment insecurity, the sublime commonly involves integration with
positive emotion. That emotion is most often a form of wonder, espe-
cially admiration. This is particularly clear in the limit case of attachment
insecurity – grief. At the same time, wonder may attach to the limit case
of (apparent) attachment security – the union of lover and beloved. When
this union is untroubled by loss, it is a form of beauty. However, union
may involve insecurity as well. Specifically, it may in effect invert the usual
form of attachment insecurity by annihilating, not the other person, but
rather one’s own sense of self. As a result, in addition to the beauty of
idealized sharing, we have two sorts of sublimity – stoical and ecstatic.
Finally, it may be that there is another form of aesthetic experience that
replaces individual attachment with group pride. We may refer to this as
“aestheticized group exaltation.”
A note on wonder, prototypes, and functions

Before going on, it is worth remarking that the admiration involved
in some cases of aesthetic feeling may be related to the information-
processing component of aesthetic response as well. We may extend the
previous analyses of prototypes to accommodate a scale of constructs
ranging from relatively straightforward averages to extremes or “limit

prototypes.” As a zero-calorie food, lettuce represents the limit rather
than the average of diet foods. One possible reason for this is that some
categories are more strongly normative than others. If normativity affects
prototyping, we would expect that prototypes for different categories
would vary in the degree to which they approximate the statistical aver-
age. At least in popular imagination, diet foods have value only to the
extent that they allow one to lose weight. In that sense, the category “diet
food” is highly normative. In contrast, “bird” does not suggest a particu-
lar, biasing norm. Thus the category “diet food” would tend toward the
limit in prototyping, whereas “bird” would tend toward a purer average.
In addition, lettuce is particularly apt in that it not only exists at the
functional limit of diet foods (having zero calories); it is also a salient
subcategory of diet food.
For our purposes, the crucial implication of this is that, insofar as a
category is normative, the prototype is likely to be biased toward satisfying
the norm. Thus the more normative the category, the more likely it is
that the prototype will inspire esteem. This is presumably one reason that
Kant, for example, could connect the sublime with morality. It is probably
not that we find “the moral law” sublime (despite Kant’s comments at
the end of the Critique of Practical Reason [313]). Rather, we find moral
acts prototype approximating, particularly in contexts where they are
highly unexpected – for example, in contexts where the agent has a great
deal to lose (e.g., in sacrificing his or her life). In the case of war stories,
then, one is likely to find a soldier’s violence aesthetic to the extent
that one finds the soldier approximating the prototype for a normative
category or a set of normative categories. One such normative category
would be “soldier.” One is likely to find a military action aesthetically
pleasing, then, to the extent that the soldier is unusually close to one’s
(normative) prototype for a soldier (e.g., insofar as he or she is risking his
or her life for a moral ideal, such as patriotism or loyalty to comrades).
Crucially, this suggests that the intensity of one’s aesthetic response in
such cases will be a function of the degree to which one accepts the
norm at issue. (Note that the key form of acceptance here is emotional;
our self-conscious assessment of a norm may be greater or less than our
spontaneous emotional commitment to that norm.)
We consider these issues further in connection with Edith Wharton’s
House of Mirth. However, before going on to that, it is important to note
an implication of the preceding observations. To say that “diet food” is
normative is, again, to say that diet food is significantly defined by a func-
tion. This has consequences for the important issue of functional beauty.
Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson have presented strong arguments
for the relevance of function to beauty. The difficulty with Parsons and
Carlson’s account is that they sometimes appear to be arguing that, as a
matter of fact, knowledge of function directly affects our aesthetic plea-
sure, while at other times they appear to be defending the invocation of
function as a criterion for affirming a judgment of beauty. (They go so
far as to say that “being fit for function” is “sufficient” for “an object
to be beautiful” [section 1.1].) They make a strong case for the former,
but (I believe) fail to adequately explain the limits of functional consid-
erations in our aesthetic experience. Moreover, in connection with this,
they do not fully explain the mechanisms by which functional knowledge
operates in aesthetic response. I take it as an advantage of the present
account that it accommodates Parsons and Carlson’s observations, while
limiting their scope and explaining them.
Specifically, by the present account, there are three clear ways in which
functional considerations may enter into aesthetic response. First, dys-
function may enter emotionally, blocking aesthetic pleasure. This occurs
when reward involvement is inhibited by some loss of operation or when
the dysfunction produces antipathy or disgust that affects attachment
system activation.
More centrally, knowledge of function may give us a sense of the way
parts of a target are interrelated, thus forming a pattern where previously
we had seen only chaos. This fits cases ranging from complex mechanical
devices to ecosystems, such as swamps, to take an example from Parsons
and Carlson (see their discussion in section 5.4). This is not to say that
everyone will experience a swamp as beautiful if they simply know about
its ecosystemic function. However, it does mean that recognizing such a
function can produce an unexpected sense of pattern, which is a crucial
component of aesthetic response.
Finally, as just indicated, prototypes may manifest and enhance
functional properties. In consequence, it is very likely that prototype
approximation will, in some cases, produce aesthetic responses to objects
understood functionally. This is not to say that we respond aesthetically to
the functionality of an object or situation as such. We may, but that hardly
seems necessary. Rather, we respond aesthetically to surprising prototype
approximations and the relevant prototypes may incorporate features rel-
evant to the target’s function. Moreover – and this point differs somewhat
from Parsons and Carlson’s analysis – by the preceding account of pro-
totypes, we would expect the enhancement of functional features in the
prototype to involve the most distinctive functional qualities of the target
category, as in the case of “diet food” and lettuce. Parsons and Carlson’s
example of a Christian church might fit here. We might think of church
architecture as having several functions. Some of these functions are very
widely shared – for example, allowing for adequate air circulation. Some
are limited to a smaller group, such as allowing audiences/congregations
to witness a central event in the building. Some seem almost unique to
churches, such as fostering an attention to heaven, which we commonly
think of as literally upward. As a result of the last, we might expect
many people’s prototype of a Christian church to have an exaggerated
tendency to include spires or high ceilings that draw the worshiper’s gaze
and thoughts heavenward (cf. Graham 256). This at least appears to be
the case. In sum, the functionality treated by Parsons and Carlson may
be comprehended by reference to the ordinary operation of aesthetic
information processing as treated in the preceding analyses.
Mixed sublimities in The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth is a novel that, in my view, achieves
moments of great sublimity.10 For our purposes, it is particularly note-
worthy because it takes up both stoical and ecstatic sublimity, combining
them in complex and powerful ways. Again, ecstatic sublimity varies the
insecurity of attachment through the loss of self. It is in this way directly
opposed to idealized beauty, with its sense of unity through secure shar-
ing. Given this relation to insecurity and loss, we might expect ecstatic
sublimity to be conjoined with stoical sublimity, perhaps in alternation.
The point is consistent with some mystical experiences in which ultimate
union is preceded by sometimes extreme isolation. Thus Saint John of
the Cross writes that sometimes “the soul sees itself distinctly as far away
from, and abandoned by, all created things; it looks upon itself as one
that is placed in a wild and vast solitude whither no human being can
come” (160). In keeping with this, but in a more secular and mundane
manner, there are two moments in Wharton’s novel that are, for me,
particularly aesthetically intense. The first is Gerty’s selfless aid of the
protagonist, Lily, when the latter has just left a degrading meeting with a
man who believes he has, in effect, bought her; the second is Lily’s death.
Both involve the two forms of sublimity.
The House of Mirth concerns Lily Bart, a young woman of great beauty
and limited means who aspires to be part of New York high society. Lily
accepts money from Gus Trenor on the grounds that he is paying her
dividends on investments of her money. In fact, he is seeking to purchase
10 Aesthetic topics have figured in critical discussions of the novel, often treating thematic
issues bearing on Lily Bart’s beauty. For an alternative to the present approach to
aesthetics and emotion in the novel, an approach more in keeping with mainstream,
non-cognitive trends in literary study, see Bourassa.
her favors with his own money. Lily does not examine the scheme too
carefully and thus may be partially culpable for acquiescing in it. But, if
so, the guilt is in the nature of an Aristotelian hamartia, not a corruption
of character. Indeed, Lily manages to get herself involved in several shady
schemes. In every case, she makes the best moral decision she can, once
she realizes what has happened. But the result of these messes is that she
loses her position in society and the great bulk of her inheritance. This
drives her into poverty. Until the end, she remains capable of redeeming
herself socially. But she can accomplish this only by exposing the genuine
corruption of someone else. Unfortunately, that act would harm innocent
people and, ultimately, Lily forgoes the possibility (in a third moment of
sublimity in the novel11 ).
There are several marriage stories intertwined with the story of Lily’s
social decline. The most important concerns her relation with Lawrence
Selden. Lily has a clear connection with Selden and the two share affec-
tion and respect. However, Lily discounts Selden as a possible mate
because of his mediocre financial situation. It is only at the end of the
novel that she feels this was an error. However, the reader knows that it
was not solely the result of error, but also a consequence of tragic misun-
derstandings that are inevitable given the privacy of consciousness and
the particularity of individual experience.
There is also a story of friendship in the novel. Gerty Farish is a poor
cousin of Lawrence Selden’s. She engages in charitable work with young
women and, indeed, inspires Lily to contribute to that work when the
latter has funds (from Trenor’s “investments”). Though Lily makes fun
of Gerty at the outset of the novel, Gerty ends up being Lily’s only friend,
the only one who accepts her once she is seen as disgraced and excluded
from society.
The novel is divided into two parts. Each part culminates in a sort
of crisis for Lily. The first crisis occurs when she is confronted by an
angry and inebriated Trenor, who demands what he paid for. The second
occurs when, facing the prospect of debilitating poverty, Lily dies by a
11 Specifically, Lily burns a packet of letters that she could have used to blackmail Bertha
Dorset and thus restore her own social position, thereby in effect saving her life. We
have been prepared for Lily to use the letters for blackmail. The shift in her decision
is precipitated by her meeting Selden. Here then we find an unexpected but isolable
pattern – isolable because if fits with Lily’s repeated avoidance of corruption even in
the face of the strongest temptation. Moreover, the mutual isolation of Lily and Selden
is emphasized. We see this particularly when Selden barely notices that Lily throws the
letters in the fire and does not pay much attention to the fact. A life-changing decision
and act for her are mere ephemera for him. At the same time there is the attachment
bond between Lily and Selden that enhances the pain of this isolation. In short, the
scene has all the properties of stoical sublimity.
reckless act that has an element of suicide – although, as with the case
of Trenor’s “investments,” Lily’s fault lies more in not considering the
situation with adequate care than in making a positive decision.
The first sequence we will examine occurs just after the confrontation
with Trenor. Trenor had lured Lily to his home late one night and nearly
assaulted her. Lily left, physically unharmed but realizing at last what she
has done and the great financial debt she now owes to Trenor. That debt
will haunt her for the rest of the novel and contribute importantly to her
death at the end. Now, however, she first realizes her terrible isolation:
“she was alone in a place of darkness and pollution. – Alone! It was the
loneliness that frightened her” (161). As we would expect, this sense of
loneliness intensifies her need for an attachment bond. That draws her
mind to Gerty and she thinks, “[I]f only she could feel the hold of Gerty’s
arms” (162).
Having brought us to this point, Wharton now backs up and recounts
Gerty’s evening. Gerty had had dinner with Selden. We learn about her
affection for Selden and her hopes for a future with him. Indeed, at
one point, she has the very illusion of beautiful union that we saw with
Peter Walsh and Clarissa. Specifically, she feels a “perfect communion
of their sympathies” (169). But subsequently she recognizes the depth
of Selden’s affection for Lily. Wharton makes salient the mutual isola-
tion of consciousnesses by first suggesting the communion of Gerty and
Selden, then indicating that this communion was merely illusory. Whar-
ton emphasizes the loneliness, explaining, “The little confidential room,
where a moment ago their thoughts had touched elbows like their chairs,
grew to unfriendly vastness, separating her from Selden by all the length
of her new vision.” That new vision includes Gerty herself as a “lonely
figure” in “solitude” (170). Gerty’s first impulse is the blame Lily for this,
and she feels a deep hatred for her (177). After Selden has departed, and
when Gerty’s feelings are at the opposite extreme from attachment-based
care, the two plotlines converge and Lily rings Gerty’s doorbell.
Wharton’s simulation of Gerty’s character is complex. She is Lily’s
friend, but at the moment she is entirely alienated from her. She is
kind and charitable, but she also has largely unacknowledged egoistic
longings that are strongly activated at the moment. Wharton prepares
us for Gerty’s rejection of Lily by stressing her mood state. Thus the
reader is not shocked when, on seeing Lily, “Gerty’s first movement
was one of revulsion” (177), thus disgust, an opposite of attachment.
But Wharton has also unobtrusively reminded us of Gerty’s compassion.
Before opening the door, Gerty had wondered what could be the rea-
son for a late-night visitor, and “remembered that such calls were not
unknown in her charitable work” (177). This is part of the reason that
her subsequent and sustained response, although not anticipated, is also

not anomalous: “Gerty’s compassionate instincts . . . swept aside all her
reluctances” (178). This response achieves a culmination when Lily con-
veys her dilemma to Gerty and asks her if Selden would still accept her.
Gerty is tempted to say that no, he would not, that he is “like other men”
(181). Such a response would have the desirable consequence of preserv-
ing Selden for herself. But she does not say this. Instead, she reassures
Lily. The scene ends with a culmination of the attachment between the
two young women. Gerty “unlace[s] Lily’s dress” (181), has her lie down
on the one bed, and, at Lily’s insistence, pillows Lily’s head in her arm
“as a mother makes a nest for a tossing child” (182).
Again, for me this is a scene of exquisite sublimity (as well as beauty).
Gerty’s response to Lily’s despair is unexpected but immediately com-
prehensible in retrospect. It thereby produces precisely the sort of non-
habitual pattern recognition that we have seen is central to aesthetic
experience. At the same time, it deepens our understanding of such pat-
tern recognition, for here we have a pattern derived from the nuances
of character and circumstance, not simply physical repetition (as in, say,
a sound or image pattern). Gerty’s selfless response to Lily also brings
prototype approximation into play, and that in a less simple form as
well. Specifically, it seems likely that a common prototype for charitable
action – clearly a normative category – involves the sacrifice of one’s own
self-interest for the well-being of someone in distress. That the distress
and the sacrifice are bound up with attachment relations only serves to
intensify the aesthetic quality of the scene. Indeed, the entire sequence is
carefully designed to activate the reader’s empathic response to attach-
ment bonds. These attachment bonds do not overcome the loneliness and
isolation of consciousness, but they do temporarily assuage its pain. Thus
the sublimity of the scene is linked with the profound sense of isolation
that Lily experiences at the outset, along with the subsequent reminders
that the bonding of the two women does not in any way guarantee mutual
understanding. Most obviously, Lily, “blinded to everything” other than
her own “misery” is entirely oblivious to Gerty’s feelings (179). More-
over, Gerty reflects that she cannot know whether or not Selden would
accept Lily (181), and she has difficulty making out precisely what is
bothering Lily.
The preceding points all suggest the stoical sublimity of Gerty’s
response to Lily’s misery (as well as elements of beauty intertwined with
that sublimity). What, then, might be taken to suggest ecstatic sublimity?
Gerty does not know what Lily thinks. But there is a sense in which she
does share Lily’s feelings. Specifically, after her first response of “revul-
sion,” Gerty “heard her name in a cry, had a glimpse of her friend’s face,
and felt herself caught and clung to” (177). In short, she experienced
three forms of Lily’s emotion expression – the tone of her voice, the
expression of her face, and the quality of her touch and embrace. We
are highly sensitive to other people’s emotion expressions, which serve
to quickly communicate their feelings to us. Our susceptibility to such
emotion communication is only enhanced by feelings of attachment. To
some extent, this communication is a function of mirroring, the acti-
vation of parallel sets of neurons in the enactment and the observation
of certain actions. As noted briefly in Chapter 3, some authors seem to
believe that our monadic isolation is breached by the “intersubjectivity”
of mirroring. Depending on precisely what they have in mind, this is at
best an overstatement.12 It is evident that, however powerful the empathy
of Gerty, she is not experiencing Lily’s actual feelings or even a perfect
parallel to those feelings, with their nuances of experience and memory.
Nonetheless, Wojciehowski and Gallese are undoubtedly correct in
suggesting that our solipsism comes closest to being overcome in the
spontaneous communication of emotion through emotion expression.
The complex, multiple sharing of emotion through voice, vision, and
touch, enhanced by attachment – as represented in this scene – is
probably the nearest approximation in ordinary life to experiencing the
coincidence of consciousnesses. It would be going too far to say that this
scene represents the ecstatic sublime per se. Nonetheless, the sequence
hints at a form of self-annihilating union. Specifically, it suggests that,
however briefly, Gerty’s own egoistic emotions dissolve in the flood of
feelings conveyed by Lily’s multisensory emotion expressions. At the
same time, the scene reminds us that such intimations of fusion are
never as complete and aesthetically perfect as we might imagine or hope.
The other scene I would like to consider here occurs at the culmination
of the second part of the novel. Lily is alone in her room. She has lost
her job and has forfeited the possibility of blackmailing her way back
into society. She has just received the small sum that constitutes her
inheritance. That will, at last, allow her to square her debt to Trenor. She
writes the check to Trenor and places it in an envelope, even though that
expenditure will leave her nearly destitute. Unable to sleep, she takes too
much sleeping medication. After a hallucination that she is cradling a
child, she thinks that she has finally discovered the word to say to Selden,
the word that will reconcile them. We are never told what that word is.
At the start of the next and final chapter, we learn that Lily has died.
12 Indeed, Gopnik has argued forcefully that even the relation of mirroring to empathy is
far from clear (see 207).
As in the previous scene, we have unexpected but immediately compre-

hensible pattern recognition – most important, when Lily contemplates
her current situation and her need of the money, but nonetheless writes
the check to Trenor. Like the sequence with Gerty, this involves a sort
of moral prototype approximation, although in this case the subcategory
is slightly different. Rather than self-sacrifice in service to others, it is in
a sense even more extreme. It is self-sacrifice in the cause of fulfilling
obligations. Far from being in distress, Trenor has no particular need
of the money. Moreover, Lily has nothing to gain by giving it, her fall
from grace having ended her interaction with the smart set, and thus
Trenor’s harassment. In that sense, it is even more prototypically moral
than Gerty’s compassion because it involves more definite personal sac-
rifice (Gerty probably had no chance with Selden even with Lily out of
the way) and more complete absence of personal benefit (because Gerty
had an attachment bond with Lily, whereas Lily has no such feelings for
Trenor).
The sequence also recurrently emphasizes isolation. As Lily is going
home that evening, she experiences “a deeper loneliness” (345). In her
room, having already considered her future poverty, she faces “something
more miserable still – it was the clutch of solitude at her heart” (347). Of
course, this is merely quotidian loneliness. But Wharton hints at the exis-
tential loneliness of consciousness when Lily thinks how “[a]ll the men
and women she knew were like atoms whirling away from each other”
(348), self-enclosed monads that can never coincide, but at best merely
contact one another on the surface. It is only when she is committed
to sending the check to Trenor that she feels “kinship” and “exaltation
of her spirit” (349). Indeed, it is this feeling that leads her to write the
check. Kinship points toward attachment, whereas the exaltation sug-
gests sublimity. But both turn out to be false, or at least temporary. The
selfless act does not sustain her. Subsequently, “she felt as though the
house, the street, the world were all empty, and she alone left sentient in
a lifeless universe” (350).
Later still, when the drug begins to take its effect, the loneliness
seems to disappear. The terror of isolation falls into abeyance once again
through attachment. In this case, attachment is rendered both profound
and pathetic by the hallucination of a child. Lily had earlier seen some
hope for herself in the example of Nettie Struther, a young woman who
remade her life and now had a child whom she loved and cherished. Lily’s
hallucination of Nettie’s daughter lying in her arms reflects the longing
for such an attachment bond – that with a child and that with a partner to
share the child. Lily’s “sense of loneliness had vanished” because “Nettie
Struther’s child was lying on her arm” (352). But this claim that loneliness
has ended only intensifies the terrible loneliness of the scene for readers.
It does this in part because it recalls the earlier scene with Gerty. In the
hallucination, Lily cradles the child’s head as Gerty cradled her head.
But now she does not even have Gerty. Despite what she dreams in a
drugged stupor, she is irrevocably alone.
The final moments before Lily falls asleep apparently turn this isolation
to her other attachment bond, that with Selden. She thinks “that there
was something she must tell Selden, some word she had found that should
make life clear between them.” She feels that “if she could only remember
it and say it to him . . . everything would be well” (352). It is not even
clear to the reader that there is such a word. It appears to be as chimerical
as the child cradled in her arm. Here, then, we seem to have only stoical
sublimity, combined with a sort of aesthetic pathos in Lily’s suffering.
But Wharton’s treatment of sublimity is more complex, more intense,
and perhaps more disturbing. At the start of the following chapter, we
learn that Selden is hurrying to speak to Lily. He “only knew that he
must see Lily Bart at once,” for “he had found the word he meant to say
to her” (353). The fact that both Lily and Selden found this numinous
utterance suggests a link between them that goes beyond the quotidian
connections of emotional expression and mirroring. It suggests a sort
of mystical or spiritual link. But this is not simply a matter of idealized
beauty for three reasons. First, the reader is never privy to this word. This
stresses our own isolation of consciousness, thus keeping that sense of
separateness alive in our response. Second, this communion is purchased
at the cost of Lily’s death. Again, mystical identification seems to require
the annihilation of one of the partners to the identity. Third, it is an odd
sort of communion that gives Selden no hint that Lily has died. Thus
it faces us as a strange and pathetic moment of elevation – an ecstasy
of union that serves only to recall the profundity of mutual isolation.
Indeed, that sublime and terrible impermeability of self to self is brought
out all the more powerfully by the tragic fact that, while we know that
Lily and Selden share this word, neither Selden nor the (now dead) Lily
can know it.
On the types of information processing

in aesthetic response
We may now turn to the second of our four lingering problems about
beauty and sublimity. The key issue that arises in connection with the
information-processing component of aesthetic response is the follow-
ing. If aesthetic response is one thing, then why is it produced by two
apparently completely different and largely mutually exclusive forms of
information processing? In previous chapters, I treated non-habitual pat-

tern recognition and prototype approximation as if they are simply com-
ponents of beauty. But that is somewhat misleading. They may be com-
ponents, particularly in our response to a complex artwork. But with
regard to a specific target (e.g., a face), they seem to be alternatives. For
example, we seem to respond to, say, musical theme and variations by
reference to pattern recognition and faces by reference to prototypes.
Cases such as the averaged sonata performance (Repp) do suggest that
the two information-processing components may be combined. But that
is not much help, since it is difficult to make sense of how such a com-
bination might work. In contrast, reward and attachment feelings – and,
for that matter, interest – combine unproblematically with respect to a
single target.
This is a curious state. It might be taken to suggest that there are
different varieties of beauty, one for each sort of processing operation.
Then image patterns in literature and abstract art would constitute one
sort of beauty (e.g., Chatterjee cites research suggesting that “we respond
to hidden . . . regularities” in abstract art [Aesthetic 136; see also 63 on
mathematics]). In contrast, faces and some representational features of
art would constitute another sort of beauty. There is nothing wrong with
such a division. But we would expect some difference in function or
consequence (e.g., in the phenomenological experience of beauty); we
would expect some neurocognitive rationale. Even so, it seems arbitrary
to class both types of experience as instances of the same sort, given the
divergence in information processing. In short, there is an anomaly here
that would seem to count against the theoretical validity of this analysis.
To resolve the dilemma, we need to find out what general principle might
be involved in this apparent duality, whether or not that leads us to posit
two forms of beauty.
My first inclination in trying to explain this duality in information
processing was partially inspired by Ramachandran. There are two sig-
nificant processing pathways in the human brain. One is the ventral or
“what” pathway, which treats object identities. The other is the dorsal
“how” or “where” pathway, which treats, for example, spatial location
and relations (on the visual pathways, see Wurtz and Kandel, “Percep-
tion” 548; on auditory pathways, see Rauschecker and Tian; on this
division in speech processing, see Hickok and Poeppel). As noted in
chapter one, Ramachandran saw peak shift as a key feature of beauty. By
our account, peak shift is a product of the weighted averaging that consti-
tutes prototype formation. In his laws of aesthetics, Ramachandran also
lists “symmetry.” In our analysis, this too results from prototype approxi-
mation. Thus these two aesthetic features of Ramachandran’s “laws” are
cases of prototype approximation. What is interesting for our purposes is

that Ramachandran connects symmetry with the ventral or “what” path-
way of neural processing and explains that “the symmetry rule applies
only to objects, not to large-scale scenes”; in consequence, “preference
for symmetry is rooted in the ‘what’ stream” or pathway (see chapter
8 of Tell-Tale). Given Ramachandran’s claim about symmetry, it would
seem to make sense that the “what” and “where” pathways have more
general or systematic consequences for aesthetic information processing.
The “what” pathway does fit with prototype approximation, whereas the
“where” pathway may be seen as relevant to patterned relations across
diffuse objects.
From the beginning, I was not entirely satisfied with this account,
however. First, there is the problem that symmetry is not confined to
prototypes. It may be an aspect of patterns also. In connection with this,
Ramachandran’s own arguments seem problematic. His initial example
of symmetry is the Taj Mahal – an object, to be sure, but also a massive
structure for which spatial relations are crucial, especially when placed in
its larger physical context with the approach of symmetrical paths, parallel
trees, and so on. In addition, Ramachandran claims that “objects placed
symmetrically in a room would look downright silly” (Tell-Tale 236),
thereby suggesting that the “where” pathway would not contribute to
symmetry as an aesthetic property. However, we do arrange rooms with
at least some symmetry. Moreover, the aesthetic organization of gardens
involves considerable symmetry – if also breaks in symmetry, due to the
need to overcome habituation. The arrangement of the area around the
Taj Mahal is an example. The point even holds for natural beauty as
in the case of sand dunes (see Stewart 98–103; Stewart’s analysis also
indicates that such symmetries are partial, involving partial symmetry
breaking as well).
In and of itself, this would not pose a problem. The isolation of
symmetry might simply be both prototype and pattern relevant. Indeed,
that seems to be the case. As such, it does not provide evidence for a
relation between the different types of aesthetic response and the differ-
ent processing streams. But it also does not provide evidence against the
division. The simplicity and potential explanatory value of the parallelism
is appealing in any case. There is clearly a connection between the ventral
(“what”) pathway and prototype approximation, since prototypes are key
in our categorization processes. Conversely, as Rauschecker points out,
“The involvement of the dorsal auditory pathway . . . in the encoding
and representation of temporally extended sounds (or sound sequences)
became especially evident, when imagery of musical melodies was
investigated.”
However, a possibly more serious problem arises from the fact that both
prototype approximation and pattern isolation appear to rely on forms of
categorization. For example, in listening to classical Hindustānı̄ music,
my categorization of the piece as, say, a dhrupad guides my encoding of
rhythmic and melodic structures; it organizes what I listen for. Catego-
rization is evidently a function of the “what” pathway. But the aesthetic
appreciation here is primarily a matter of non-habitual pattern isolation.
This seems to contradict the simple mapping of one form of aesthetic
information processing onto one processing pathway. Worse still, empir-
ical research links the ventral pathway with pattern isolation in some
cases, at least for expectation regarding visual transitions (see Meyer
and Olson). In short, an account based on pathways seems inadequate,
perhaps untenable.
The preceding problems, however, suggest an alternative. Specifically,
it might be productive to turn our attention toward categorization. This
connection receives support from Noël Carroll’s work on aesthetic evalu-
ation (see On Criticism). I disagree with many aspects of Carroll’s account,
but his central claim – that aesthetic evaluation is a function of catego-
rization – is highly plausible. This is abundantly clear with respect to
prototype approximation, as we discussed in Chapter 2 (treating “The
Ugly Duckling”). It is not as clear that pattern-based beauty is a function
of categorization. However, as the case of Hindustānı̄ music suggests,
categorization does orient our listening – our encoding and further pro-
cessing – and thus our isolation of patterns. This point is consistent
with Kivy’s careful argument that the “enjoyment . . . of classical music
is concept-laden” (225) and that “when one hears something,” crucially
including music, “one hears it as something” (226, italics in the origi-
nal). In noting this, I do not at all mean to claim that some standard or
agreed-on categorization is a necessary condition for experiencing aes-
thetic pleasure, particularly in pattern recognition.13 However, we have
prima facie reason to turn our attention to categorization processes, look-
ing there for possible algorithmic accounts of the apparent bifurcation of
aesthetic information processing.
13 Such categorization does enter into some aspects of our response to art. In “Categories
of Art,” Walton has made an illuminating argument about this. However, Walton’s
observations do not seem to bear primarily on prototype approximation or pattern
recognition as such. Indeed, as Walton develops them, they bear more on the specific
issue of style, rather than on beauty and sublimity in general. Initially, I hoped to treat
style as part of this project. However, beauty and sublimity proved a big enough topic.
I have therefore put off style, and a discussion of Walton’s ideas, for a later work. A
parallel point holds for Stockwell’s careful work on the “cognitive aesthetics of reading,”
which focuses more on issues of style.
As it happens, there is evidence that we have distinct concept types

and that these have consequences for a range of information-processing
tasks. For example, Pinker and Prince discuss the ways in which English
past tense formation is guided by rules, on the one hand, and the “sta-
tistical contingencies” (“Nature” 195) of prototypes on the other. More
generally, as, for example, Murphy and Hoffman point out, there are
several common accounts of concepts or categories. These are often
seen as mutually exclusive alternatives. However, they argue, “There is
no single type of concept or single way of learning and representing
concepts.” They point to three sorts of concept learning with three asso-
ciated accounts of concepts – “rule testing, prototype extraction, [and]
exemplar learning” (166).14
Prototype approximation in aesthetic response is clearly based on the
second sort of concept. What I have been referring to as “pattern recog-
nition” may be understood as a matter of rule isolation.15 The pattern
instantiates a general principle that one is able to extract tacitly in the
case at hand. I say “tacitly” because rule isolation in these cases is not
self-conscious. It is not a matter of articulating a law. It is, rather, a
matter of being able to anticipate outcomes. Here, we might consider a
standard example from linguistics. Children quickly learn to form plurals
by adding [s] after unvoiced non-sibilants (as in “cats”), [z] after voiced
non-sibilants (as in “dogs”), and [ǝz] after sibilants (as in “bushes”).
However, it would be quite a prodigious child that would be able to
articulate the rule. Children isolate and follow the rule without being
able to formulate or even recognize it.
The idea of rule testing seems to fit the case of pattern isolation par-
ticularly well. Listening to a rāga performance, for example, involves
anticipating some outcomes and finding our anticipations confirmed or
denied. When our expectations are denied, we may gain a retrospective
14 As I hope is clear, the sorts of concept at issue here are not primarily the “aesthetic
concepts” influentially discussed by Sibley. Indeed, the first application of this account
is to precisely the concepts deployed by “anyone” (356), thus not aesthetic concepts
in Sibley’s view. In relation to Sibley’s work, an interesting question for future research
would concern the degree to which such concepts as “serene” guide our aesthetic
response (e.g., through prototype approximation) and the degree to which they merely
express that experience, produced by other categorizations.
15 It may be the case that pattern isolation and prototype approximation – and the related
categorization processes – share a common underlying process, perhaps with some sort
of subsequent differentiation. An obvious possibility for this is Bayesian. The relation
of Bayesian analysis to rule isolation, thus pattern recognition, is straightforward. (We
return to this in a later section.) In addition, the prior expectations of a predictive model
are optimal when they represent a statistical average of occurrences in the target of the
model (see Berkes and colleagues). Given this, Bayesian analysis may be germane to
prototype approximation as well.
understanding of just what new rule guided the unanticipated sequence

or, probably more often, how a previously known rule did so. This ret-
rospective understanding is presumably most effective if it occurs almost
immediately after the unexpected event (e.g., the melodic variation), thus
before we begin to process the next aesthetically relevant event.
Such rule-based retrospection is probably facilitated when the rule in
question has a complex structure of default and alternative sequences
or when it is probabilistic with alternative possibilities (or both). The
default/alternative organization is standard for abstract schemas. Thus
we would say that the default value for “human” in “sight” is “sighted,”
with a specified alternative as “blind.” In other words, we assume that a
given person is sighted unless we have specific reason to believe otherwise.
This can be framed statistically – the majority of people are sighted, but a
minority are blind. Similarly, we may say that the default pet is a dog, with
a hierarchy of alternatives – cat, fish, hamster, and so on; alternatively,
we may say that the most common pet is a dog, then cat and others, with
decreasing frequency. In the case of a rāga, the default may be to play
the resolving tone on the initial beat of the rhythmic cycle and as the
culmination of a musical phrase (perhaps sustaining the resolving tone,
then further stressing it by means of a following rest). However, there
are alternatives, such as playing the resolving tone, but in the middle
of a musical phrase or having a rest (thus no tone) on the initial beat
of the cycle. The relation between the default and alternatives would
readily contribute to producing non-habitual and retrospective pattern
recognition.
We may understand aesthetic response to decorative arts in these terms
as well. Stewart takes up a technical concept of symmetry as the “transfor-
mation” of a “structure . . . that leaves specified properties of the structure
unchanged” (19; note that this use of symmetry is rule based, rather than
prototype based). He explains that there are “seventeen distinct symme-
try types of lattice pattern,” all of which appear in Islamic art. He goes on
to note, “In addition, Islamic artists invented many patterns that at first
sight appear to be perfectly symmetric, but cleverly avoid rigid mathemat-
ical obstacles to create ‘impossible’ patterns” (24), thereby presumably
avoiding ready habituation. Another good example along the same lines
is the general sense that “the spiral shell of Nautilus” is beautiful. In that
case, we implicitly extract a rule that “is very close indeed to a logarithmic
spiral,” defined by a specific equation (89).
Similar points could be made about principles governing less intuitively
straightforward operations. For example, Locher explains that “a large
area of a dull, unsaturated color can be balanced by a small area of a
highly saturated color” (168). In our terms, a given work may manifest
a pattern of equivalence across an axis, with the equivalence governed

not by obvious features (such as the size of figures), but by Munsell’s
“law of inverse ratios of areas, which states that the areas of color used
in combination should be inversely proportional to the product of their
values (brightness) and chromas (saturation)” (Locher 168).
In rule isolation, the rules for a work – statistical or default and alterna-
tive – are often provided by the work’s actual categorization. For example,
a soliloquy in Shakespeare invokes certain recurring principles due to the
categorization “blank verse.” The principles would be either “standard”
or “optional.” An instance of the former would be the use of iambic
pentameter; an instance of the latter would be assonance. Categorization
also clearly identifies prototypes in relevant cases. On the other hand,
the key elements in this account are the processes associated with cate-
gorization – whether prototype approximation or pattern isolation – not
categorization per se. In other words, the crucial point here is that we
engage in the same processes (e.g., “rule testing”) in aesthetic response
and in categorization, not that aesthetic response is itself necessarily a
case of categorization. Indeed, a possible problem with basing aesthetic
response on categorization as such is that it would apparently disallow
aesthetic appreciation of “isolates,” relatively unique works that do not fit
into a well-defined, prior category. However, rule-abstraction may apply
to any target with adequate internal structure. There is, of course, always
some general category for a work – for example, “music” – a category that
orients our rule abstraction even for the most apparently unique works.
The point is that there are cases where few of the relevant principles are
given by categorization per se. But the rule-abstraction process remains
the same.
Related to these points, pattern isolation may also apply to new config-
urations of targets, what Barsalou calls “ad hoc categories” (“Ad Hoc”).
Thus one might appreciate features of pieces of music or works of litera-
ture from different traditions that share particular patterns – or, perhaps
more significantly, mixed-genre works. Indeed, the same point holds
for prototypes, as long as we understand prototype formation to be an
ongoing or “situated” process (rather than a process that establishes the
prototype in a single, fixed shape). In other words, we can form proto-
types for ad hoc categories, at least in many cases – as when we read
two or three postmodern detective stories and tacitly begin to formu-
late a standard case. (In fact, this process probably begins even with a
single postmodern detective story, set in contrast with classical detec-
tive stories.) These processes are associated with categorization as such,
but they are not confined to rules or prototypes associated with a prior
category.
In sum, we have good reason to view pattern isolation and prototype

approximation as cases of category-related processing by rule and by
prototype. It is a further advantage of such an account that it entails
predictions. We have already seen this in a limited way in its allowance of
isolates, as well as new and mixed-genre works. A more significant pre-
diction is that there should be a third, exemplar-based form of aesthetic
information processing, parallel to the third form of category processing.
This is a highly consequential prediction because previous research does
not lead to the inclusion of exemplar-based aesthetic cognition. Thus the
prediction points us toward new areas of research. Or, rather, it points us
toward new areas of research in neuroaesthetics. In fact, the importance
of exemplars – single, highly salient instances – has not been ignored in
the history of aesthetics. Most obviously, one could understand mimesis
as a matter of imitating exemplars, at least in some cases.
More exactly, there are three ways in which exemplars might operate
in categorization processes. The first is in relation to prototyping (on
the relation between prototype and exemplar theories of categorization,
see Shanks). Our memories store exemplars, which is to say, a range of
instances. Various processes are engaged when we evaluate and respond
to new particulars of the same type. Thus we have memories of post-
modern detective stories, and we respond to a new postmodern detective
story in light of those stored instances. The processes involved would
centrally include weighted averaging – often, one assumes, in relation to
previous, weighted averages, thus stored prototypes. Indeed, this is the
way we have treated prototype definition up to this point.16
The second way in which exemplars may enter into aesthetic process-
ing involves what we might call “exemplar approximation.” One form
of such approximation is representational resemblance or mimesis. As
Aristotle pointed out, there is a “universal . . . pleasure” in “imitation”;
people “enjoy seeing a likeness,” such that, “in contemplating it they find
themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, ‘Ah, that is he.’”17
A painting of someone we know may strike us as delightful simply by the
fact that we know the person. Of course, in the wake of photography,
we are all so habituated to mimetic accuracy in representations that the
effect is limited. But it does not seem to be entirely absent. This would be
an exemplar-based parallel to prototype approximation. The difference is
16 I leave aside pure exemplar theories, which assume that the outputs of averaging disap-
pear without any trace, making them perhaps uniquely psychologically ephemeral.
17 On the topic of universality here, the Nigerian scholar Nkiru Nzegwu has maintained
that the “concept of art . . . as imitation does play a role in African art,” though it is not
the dominant principle in African or Western art (176).
that we know precisely what the exemplar looks like, whereas prototypes
are vaguer, at least for our self-conscious knowledge.
Mimesis is not limited to visual resemblance. It bears on distinctive
vocal qualities and even distinctive action or gestures as well – perhaps
accounting in part for our fascination with impressionists. More impor-
tantly, exemplar approximation is not confined to perceptual mimesis.
Discussing portraits, Jordanova explains, “Portraits are endowed with
significance precisely because they seem to distill something special about
a person.” Indeed, “[i]n some contexts . . . ‘likeness’ means not a literal,
empirical verisimilitude but the capacity to evoke the spirit and personal
qualities of the sitter,” which is to say, the capacity to intimate the inac-
cessible self of the person. The point is even clearer when Jordanova illus-
trates her claims with reference to a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The
Prophetic Pictures.” Jordanova summarizes how the “highly esteemed
artist” makes “portraits . . . capable of exceptional psychological pene-
tration.” Quoting Hawthorne’s story, she explains that the portraitist
“catches the secret sentiments” of the person portrayed (144).
Exemplar approximation is also not limited to subject matter; it may be
a matter of story structure, narration, style, or some other feature of the
work. Consider, for example, Shakespeare adaptations, such as Geoffrey
Sax’s Othello, which makes Othello into a police officer in contemporary
London. A great deal of the aesthetic pleasure that I experience in watch-
ing the film derives from the way it surprisingly approximates and varies
Shakespeare’s original. For instance, toward the end, Othello gives the
corpse of Desdemona a (wordless) kiss before taking his place beside her
in bed, holding her hand, and killing himself. This act implicitly takes
up and varies Othello’s lines, “I kissed thee ere I killed thee. No way
but this, / Killing myself, to die upon a kiss” (V.ii.363–364). As I dis-
cuss in Chapter 5, I find these lines in the play to be excruciatingly ill
conceived. The kiss in the film would ordinarily be banal. However, its
approximation to the exemplar (Shakespeare’s original) gives the act a
fuller resonance. In this case, that resonance includes a sense of greater
sincerity in the attachment bond of Othello and Desdemona, as it avoids
the self-dramatization of Othello’s lines. In any case, this is an instance
of aesthetic delight deriving from exemplar approximation.
The final way in which exemplars might enter into aesthetic infor-
mation processing occurs when a single instance serves as an explicit or,
more significantly, implicit standard for our response to another work. We
invoke exemplars all the time in our explicit evaluative statements. Thus,
on reading Shakespeare’s King John for the first time, I might say that it’s
fine, but it is no King Lear. Similarly, I might read a Renaissance sonnet
and comment, “Not bad, but it’s not ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like
the sun’” – or, alternatively, “This is even better than ‘My mistress’ eyes
are nothing like the sun.’” When explicit or self-conscious, we refer to
such exemplars as “touchstones.” In his influential essay, “The Study of
Poetry,” Matthew Arnold wrote that “there can be no more useful help
for discovering what poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and
can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one’s mind lines
and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone
to other poetry.” In this case, the point is not that the form or reference
of the target necessarily approximates the exemplar. As Arnold explains,
“[W]e are not to require this other poetry to resemble them; it may be
very dissimilar.” The point, rather, is that the aesthetic effect is or should
be comparable.
The crucial issue for our purposes is whether touchstones enter into
our aesthetic response to a target or simply serve as a convenient way
of explaining our response to that target. Put differently, the question is
whether they have a genuinely cognitive – and emotional – function or
only a rhetorical use. It is, of course, clear that in some cases they have
only a rhetorical use. However, it does also seem that they have gen-
uine responsive consequences as well. More exactly, some instances have
particularly strong consequences for our cognitive and affective response
to a target. For example, it seems possible that, for some people, the
aesthetic elevation of Miley Cyrus is due to a superficial resemblance to
Marilyn Monroe.18 (At the very least, she has much greater resemblance
to Monroe than to the statistically average woman, considered objec-
tively.) Earlier, I analyzed my preference for Tanuja and Raj Kapoor in
terms of prototypes that gave particular weight to my attachment objects.
However, it seems equally possible that the preference is, at least in part,
based on a more direct effect of exemplars – my wife and my father,
respectively. The same point holds for my response to stories involving
a “fallen woman.” In Chapter 2, I explained my aesthetic response to
such stories by reference to a prototype in which biblical stories weighed
18 There is a strange phenomenon discussed by Ramachandran and Seckel that exemplar

approximation may help to explain as well. When a mole is placed on a face, people gen-
erally seem to judge the mole as more disruptive of aesthetic response as it approaches
the vertical and horizontal center of the face. (Ramachandran and Seckel do not inter-
pret the data this way, as they seem to take “center” to refer only to the left-right axis
[see 387 on the chin as “centrally placed”].) However, there is an exception to this
when the mole is placed on the labial crease (387, 388). As it happens, this is where
Monroe had a mole. Other exceptions occur where the lips meet, which at least for me
recalls Cindy Crawford. In both cases, then, the exceptions may be exemplar based.
For some exemplars of beautiful faces with moles, see Marci’s “The Ten Most Glorious
Celebrity Moles,” http://www.xovain.com/skin/the-10-most-glorious-celebrity-moles#
awesm=∼opK0ykb0vOREPS (accessed 11 December 2013).
heavily. It might equally be the case, however, that the biblical stories
operate more independently as aesthetic exemplars. Alternatively, both
might be the case. My wife and father and the biblical stories might have
effects through the formation of relevant prototypes, but also on their
own. Indeed, if the present account is valid, we would expect that dif-
ferent sorts of categorization processes would enter in many cases and
our aesthetic response would be a result of their interaction. Sax’s Othello
actually presents an instance of such interaction, in this case interaction
across the different operations of an exemplar. First, Shakespeare’s work
is a source for exemplar approximation. But, at the same time, it operates
as a touchstone – arguably to Sax’s advantage, in the case of the liebestod
kiss.
More theoretically, it appears to be the case that evaluative processes
often operate in relation to a “comparison set.” This is a group of com-
parable instances that one uses to judge relative quality for a target. For
example, if I am judging my level of fitness, I may compare myself with a
few colleagues in my department. I am unlikely to compare myself with
Olympic athletes or with octogenarians (I am fifty-six at this writing). I
may do this self-consciously or implicitly. In either case, my evaluative
response – my feeling, and not merely my cool judgment – is likely to be
a partial result of just how I place myself in that company. Exemplars are
salient instances in a comparison set.
Note that exemplars bear not only on people, but on characters and
real or fictional situations, as well as literary or other art works. Panksepp
and Biven point out that “one learns more easily to love people who
resemble people one has loved before” (328). They are speaking of one’s
own emotions for real people. But the point would seem to apply to our
empathic response to fictional love as well (e.g., the ease with which we
share Romeo’s love of Juliet or Juliet’s love of Romeo). More generally,
one’s own experiences with romantic love and separation are likely to
serve as (affective and information-processing) exemplars for responding
to romantic narratives; similarly, one’s experiences with the deaths of
attachment figures are likely to serve as exemplars for narratives treat-
ing grief. This point has the advantage that it suggests one reason why
our aesthetic response to literary works is likely to change and why we
might say that sometimes our undergraduates are too young to have the
experiences necessary to appreciate certain works.
Another benefit of this account is that it is consistent with some aes-
thetic features that might not otherwise cohere clearly with the preced-
ing analysis. Most obviously, exemplar-based aesthetic processing points
to one reason why allusion and allusive modeling have an important
function in aesthetic production and response cross-culturally.19 By

“modeling,” I mean the establishment of a structural parallel between
a new work and a prior work. By “allusive modeling,” I mean model-
ing of which the reader should be aware. For example, James Joyce’s
Ulysses allusively models Homer’s Odyssey; the paradigmatic Sanskrit
drama, Abhijñānaśākuntalam arguably does the same with the Rāmāyan.a
(see Hogan, Affective 165–181). The authors of these works assume that
the competent reader will see the parallels and that the parallelism will
enhance the reader’s experience. There are undoubtedly many reasons
for linking works through allusion or allusive modeling (e.g., such linking
often serves thematic goals). However, one purpose is to repeat and vary
those precursor works, thereby enhancing the aesthetic impact of the new
work through its unexpected exemplar approximation.
This analysis also suggests some reasons why influence is such a promi-
nent feature of aesthetic creation. Influence involves a sort of concealed
modeling, the use of a precursor to guide the production of a new work.
When an author writes a novel, for example, he or she is likely to be
animated in part by a desire to produce an aesthetically pleasing work.
His or her evaluation of that new novel is likely to proceed in some degree
by reference to earlier works, touchstones. In some cases this reference
may lead to prototype approximation. In other cases, however, a par-
ticularly salient or aesthetically admired precursor may have obtrusive
effects, particularly in cases where it disproportionately affects the new
novelist’s sense of what is aesthetically effective.
In sum, the division of aesthetic information processing into pattern-
and prototype-based poses a significant theoretical problem for the study
of beauty. One possible account of this duality refers to ventral and dorsal
processing streams. A more promising approach, however, takes up the
clear importance of categorization in prototype approximation. This sec-
ond approach distinguishes types of aesthetic processing in parallel with
types of categorization processing. There appear to be three varieties of
categorization. In consequence, this account predicts the existence of
a third form of aesthetic information processing, one that is exemplar
based, beyond non-habitual pattern isolation and (non-habitual) proto-
type approximation. More research is undoubtedly needed. However,
19 The point is presumably obvious for readers with respect to the West, but allusion
is no less evident in other traditions. For example, Arthur Cooper remarks on “the
great importance attached by the Chinese to ‘literary allusion’ in poetry” (52). Indeed,
allusion is also treated self-consciously in non-Western poetics; see, for instance, the
entries on the Japanese concepts of “Honkadori” (“Allusive Variation”) and “Honzetsu”
(“Allusion”) in Miner, Odagiri, and Morrell (277–278).
there is reason to believe that the prediction is fulfilled and that there is a
form of (non-habitual) “mimetic” exemplar approximation in aesthetic
information processing – as well as a more affectively oriented operation
of exemplars as touchstones. The latter is a kind of exemplar approxi-
mation, although it is not mimetic in the narrow sense. The exemplar in
this case does not resemble the new work (as occurs in, say, a person’s
portrait). It is, rather, a member of a comparison set and salient owing
to its aesthetic power. An account based on categorization processes also
has the advantage that it suggests reasons for the importance of some
recurring aesthetic phenomena, such as allusion, allusive modeling, and
the aesthetic influence of individual works.
Countess Olenska’s parasol and its exemplar

When I first read Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, I found myself
deeply affected by several scenes in the novel. These moments of deep
aesthetic feeling often exhibited a particular structure. They usually
included a character with high social standing going against social norms
and social judgment to humble himself or herself, directly or indirectly,
before someone who is morally condemned for sexual faults. For exam-
ple, Ellen Olenska has scandalized society by leaving her husband and
considering a divorce; I find Newland’s defense of her to be deeply affect-
ing. Similarly, Newland is engaged to May Welland, an “untainted girl”
(thus very much unlike Ellen); I am moved by May’s statement to New-
land that he can call off their wedding if he has any obligations to another
woman, a statement that accepts a non-marital relationship as legitimate,
even (in this case) on the side of a married woman. Most significantly,
on first reading, I was perhaps most affected by Newland’s kissing of the
parasol he took to be Ellen’s, thus his treatment of this artifact as if it
were a holy relic associated with a saint.
It should be clear that my response to the novel was strongly guided
by the powerful, critical period exemplar of Jesus’s acceptance of the
woman who violated sexual rules (though, incredibly, I myself noted the
link only after drafting the first version of this section). This is not because
Newland or even “untainted” May is sinless. Indeed, the aesthetic effect
of these actions depends in part on a tacit recognition that there is no
moral superiority at issue. In other words, they are not hypocritical, like
the Pharisee in the Gospel story, but neither are they idealized, like Jesus.
On the other hand, there is some link with Jesus in that their acts represent
sacrifices, if small ones, at least potentially. Defying social norms, they
give up part of their own privilege. Importantly for our purposes, this
sacrifice was bound up with attachment. In Newland’s case, it was in
part an expression of attachment to Ellen; in May’s case, it involved the

possible, stoically modulated sacrifice of her attachment to Newland.
Again, the strongest impact came with the third example. I will there-
fore focus on that scene. Newland’s kissing of the parasol is particularly
relevant to our present concerns because of its relation with a series
of exemplar approximations developed by Wharton. In addition, Whar-
ton directly represents the operation of a literary exemplar in aesthetic
response, thereby introducing the topic of allusion as well. Moreover, her
treatment of the exemplar suggests a theoretical point: that there may
be a set of related exemplars, even a trajectory of particular instances
that recall one another but that still have emotional and cognitive con-
sequences individually (i.e., not simply as elements contributing to an
average or prototype). Before relating the literary exemplar, however, we
need to sketch the first instance of this trajectory.
In an early meeting with Ellen, Newland “bent and laid his lips on her
hands” just before leaving her. He finds her hands “cold and lifeless,”
and she withdraws them quickly. It is a moment of sudden intimacy after
he has counseled her not to divorce her husband and she has accepted
his advice – a decision that will ultimately separate them. We have, then,
a moment of particular emotional poignancy. Newland and Ellen are just
beginning to feel an attachment bond with one another (a bond furthered,
as it happens, by their shared interest in literature). But they have both,
unwittingly, sacrificed the fulfillment of their attachment longings.
A week or so later, Newland finds himself particularly moved by a
scene in Dion Boucicault’s The Shaughraun.20 The scene concerns the
separation of a man and a woman, “a sad, almost monosyllabic, scene of
parting.” The woman, standing at the fire, buries her face in her hands.
The man turns to go, but before going he kisses a tassel of the woman’s
gown. She is unaware of the gesture. For Newland, “the little scene
acquired an added poignancy by reminding him . . . of his leave-taking
from Madame Olenska” at their recent meeting. I take the poignancy to
involve an enhancement of the work’s aesthetic effect, to which Newland
had already attested. Specifically, the single memory served to define a
sort of category or comparison set for the scene – not just a leave-taking
or even a leave-taking of lovers, but just the sort of separation he felt in
his (then-developing) attachment relation to Ellen Olenska. Indeed, the
memory was “so vivid” that “as the curtain fell on the parting of the two
actors his eyes filled with tears.” Thus the biographical memory serves
as an emotion-enhancing exemplar for Newland in his experience of the
20 The scene is presented differently in the novel than in the written text of the play,
perhaps following performance practice (see Gargano 10).
scene from the play. The scene is very successful for him due in part to
its exemplar approximation.
The reader now has two exemplars, two specific instances that may
form a category or comparison set for subsequent scenes in The Age of
Innocence. Wharton in effect develops this relation over the subsequent
meetings of Newland and Ellen.21 A striking instance occurs when New-
land confesses his love to Ellen. She explains that he has made their union
impossible by counseling her against divorce. At a moment of anguish,
he kisses her shoe. This is clearly intended to recall the kissing of the
tassel in the play and thus to connect this scene of attachment separation
with the two others. In fact, I never found this a particularly effective
scene. One might imagine that it would link effectively with the woman
washing Jesus’s feet (Luke 7) or Jesus washing the disciples’ feet (John
13; these incidents have always been connected in my mind). But I imag-
ine the scene perhaps too concretely and feel disgust (when simulating
Newland’s perspective in kissing the shoe), and a sort of embarrassment
(when simulating Ellen’s perspective). The activation of these emotion
systems inhibits my aesthetic response to the scene.
There are other scenes that are relevant here as well, including one in
which Newland again connects his relation to Ellen with the scene from
Boucicault. But for me, at least on first reading, the most poignant scene
occurs after Newland has married May. Ellen is staying nearby, and he
sets out one day in the hope of seeing her – or even in the hope of merely
glimpsing her habitual surroundings so that he can imagine her daily life
more readily. Specifically, he feels that “if he could carry away the vision
of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed
it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.” That in itself is movingly
evocative of attachment, along with a deep feeling of loneliness, a
pervasive sense of the impossibility of unity with the attachment object.
It thereby fosters empathic versions of both feelings in at least some
readers. When Newland arrives, it seems that no one is there. He takes
a walk around the deserted grounds and suddenly sees a red parasol.
He is convinced that it is Ellen’s. It turns out that he is mistaken. But
before he learns this, he takes up the thing, appreciating its “rare wood,”
savoring its “aromatic scent” – the rareness particularly reminiscent of
Ellen herself, for rareness is one of the primary properties we attribute
to someone we love. (This is connected with the individuality of
attachment.) In response, he lifts the handle to his lips.
Newland kissing the parasol is likely to activate the reader’s memories
of the entire sequence of other such kisses. This is the culmination of
21 For a catalogue of these scenes, and a different analysis of them, see Gargano.
that sequence with its elaboration of attachment, a brief possibility of

union, and a steep gradient to painful separation. In the course of these
incidents, the lovers are increasingly distant, their complete separation
more inexorable, their attachment relation more profoundly insecure.22
First, he kissed her hands, however “cold and lifeless,” these were still
a part of Ellen herself. Then there was the scene in the play, with the
tassel. Then Newland kissed Ellen’s shoe – more peripheral than the
tassel, but at least still connected with her body. Finally, there is this
kissing of the parasol, an object that is clearly not in contact with Ellen at
all. Moreover, we learn almost immediately that it never was in contact
with Ellen. That final irony does not make the scene any less moving.
Indeed, it only reinforces our sense of the tragic distance that makes the
attachment feelings of these two characters impossible to follow through.
That impossibility reaches its final point years later when, after May’s
death, Newland stands outside Ellen’s apartment building but decides
not to go in. This scene acquires part of its emotional force by its relation
to this series of exemplars, for which it is a sort of culmination.
A note on patterns and rules (with a brief

example from Beethoven)
The emphasis on pattern recognition in the preceding analyses is in
keeping with observations on human cognitive operation generally. For
example, it is consistent with the assertion of Nobel laureate Gerald
Edelman that pattern recognition may be the most fundamental opera-
tion of human thought (103). However, the account of pattern isolation
has been somewhat imprecise, in contrast with our more fully specified
treatments of prototypes and exemplars. We have the beginnings of a
technical account with the link between patterns and rules. But the pre-
ceding account of rules remains relatively general as well. The reason
for this is simple. Just what sorts of rules our brains isolate and how
we habituate to those rules are empirical issues. Our brains are capable
of implicitly isolating complex patterns well beyond our self-conscious
capacities. Thus we cannot simply rely on introspection to determine
such rules. To take a simple example, as we run and reach to catch a ball,
our brains are calculating where the ball will end up. The calculation is
approximate and not always accurate enough for us to make the catch.
But it is much better than most of us are likely to do if asked to actually
articulate a law (with associated calculations) governing the trajectory
22 This is not a simple trajectory as there are variations in the scenes we have not consid-
ered. The point is simply that this is the broad tendency of the relevant exemplars.
of the ball. In keeping with this, the determination of the exact rules or
even types of rules bearing on aesthetic response should be part of an
empirical research program, which falls outside the scope of the present
book.
Nonetheless, there are some things that we can say about rules given
our general understanding of the human mind. Specifically, there are
two topics we may address in considering rules for a given target (a
novel, symphony, or whatever): (1) The encodable patterns in the target.
This has been our main concern up to this point. (2) The properties
and relations of the rules themselves. In this section, we consider some
aspects of the rules themselves.
The first thing to note is theoretical. There has been considerable
debate on whether or not the human brain follows rules (for one sig-
nificant discussion of the topic, see Pinker and Prince, “Rules”). For
our purposes, the debate may sometimes be misleadingly phrased. It is
clear that neurological events conform to rules, in the same way the rest of
nature does. Moreover, it seems clear that the mental correlates of these
neurological events themselves conform to rules (as in the formation of
regular plurals in English). All that is important for rule isolation is that
the human brain operates in such a way that it is systematically correlated
with the mentalistic rules. Returning again to regular plural formation,
it is only necessary that the brain operates in such a way as to produce
“s” after unvoiced non-sibilants, “z” after voiced non-sibilants, and “ǝz”
after sibilants. In consequence, we do not strictly need to posit even an
unconscious formulation of that rule. We only need patterns of neural
activation that, in some systematic way, may be said to embody that
pattern. This embodying of the pattern may of course be a function of
unconsciously formulated rules. However, it may also be understood in
terms of expectations derived from, say, Bayesian statistical processing –
a point broadly in keeping with the complex statistical properties that
enter into our response to at least visual art (see Mather 143–160 and
Ishai 337).23
Of course, rule isolation is not all that is at issue. It is non-habitual
rule isolation. This appears to mean that there is some deviation from
Bayesian anticipation or from the precise formulation of a target’s antici-
pated pattern (thus the prior rule governing that pattern). But, of course,
23 An advantage of Bayesian accounts is that they permit the extraction of a broad range
of types of pattern, in keeping with human cognition (see the articles by Kemp and
Tenenbaum). In principle, this allows for isolating the many different sorts of pattern
that bear on the arts. Conversely, we might say that different types of pattern – visual,
musical, narrative, and so on – share a Bayesian derivation, which makes them a single
kind of cognitive operation and thus allows them, as a class, to have an aesthetic function.
not every deviation is aesthetically successful, because not every devia-

tion counts as pattern defining. In other words, not every deviation may
be understood as conforming to a relevant rule. As Forsythe and Sheehy
note, “[P]ositive aesthetic experience” requires both “complexity” and
“order” (507).24
So, two broad and complex questions arise here. First, a double ques-
tion: When does the isolation of a rule become possible, and when does
it become habitual? This clearly has something to do with the nature of
repetition in art. King Lear has two of his daughters profess their love
before turning to Cordelia, who does not quite comply with his demand.
In Riders to the Sea, John Synge has all the men of a family killed, but he
only directly presents us with two of these deaths. Moreover, the first of
the two deaths is uncertain for much of the play and the second occurs
only shortly after the first is confirmed (thus before the audience has had
a chance to fully accept and/or assimilate the first death). In cases of this
sort, the author is establishing a pattern, but in such a way as to prevent
or at least discourage habituation. The nature of such repetition and its
limitations prior to the development of habituation are empirical issues.
One suspects that they depend in part of the frequency of the pattern or
type of pattern in the artistic tradition generally as well as the intrinsic
complexity of the pattern. In other words, the more common the general
pattern and the simpler it is, the less repetition is required for pattern
isolation or for the development of habituation. For example, in English
poetry, iambic pentameter is so ubiquitous that it can probably be iso-
lated even from a few feet in a single line. We are probably habituated to
it almost immediately – although, in this case, habituation is acceptable
since the standard meter provides a non-focal background structure, only
occasionally drawing our direct attention.
The second question that arises in this context is also double: When
does deviation from a pattern count as a variation, and when does it
count as an anomaly? Think of the famous opening of Beethoven’s
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Opus 67 (what one critic called “the best
known four notes in all of music” [Nilsen]).25 In the first two measures,
we hear a motif of four notes – an eighth note rest, then three eighth
notes at G and a half note at E. In the third through fifth measures, we
hear an eighth note rest, followed by three eighth notes at F, then two tied
(thus continuous) half notes at D. The second sequence (FFFD) clearly
24 Research by Forsythe and colleagues indicates that the order – thus pattern or rule –
will often involve implicit sensitivity to fractals, suggesting once again the breadth of
patterning encompassed by aesthetic response.
25 A recording of the first movement accompanied by a visual tracking of the score is
available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWEVKyEwi4A
forms a pattern with the first (GGGE). But the two are not identical.
Specifically, the second keeps the same rhythmic structure for the open-
ing measure and second measure, and it keeps the same pitch relations
(moving down two scale tones – G to E and F to D). However, the second
phrase changes the absolute pitch of the notes. In addition, the final note
of the first phrase is doubled in length in the second phrase.26 These
are very simple and accessible variations. In the following measures,
variations become more complex, although still easy to recognize. (By
Nilsen’s count, there are 382 repetitions; the variations must presumably
be both extensive and recognizable to prevent either habituation or
disorientation.) We might contrast this with a hypothetical case where the
first two measures are followed by, say, three half note A-flats. One could
argue that this is a variation of the opening phrase. While in the actual
symphony the final note is extended, here the final note is eliminated,
but the three opening notes are extended. Moreover, whereas the actual
symphony presented us with a variation in which the absolute pitch is
reduced by one scale tone, this case presents us with a single scale tone
elevation in pitch. Thus, objectively, there does not seem to be terribly
strong reason to see the two cases as greatly different. However, I suspect
that few listeners would hear the hypothetical version as a variation on a
single rule.27
There is, then, both similarity and difference in the two cases (i.e., the
actual and the hypothetical symphony). If we think in terms of math-
ematics, we might say that the similarity between the two cases is that
both can be understood as rules with variables. The rule might be “three
notes of the same pitch and duration; a fourth note, one scale tone lower
in pitch.” The variables would be, first, initial pitch (the pitch of the first
note; other pitches follow from this) and, second, duration for the first
and fourth notes. In both the real and hypothetical symphonies, the
second phrase begins with a different pitch, maintaining the same pitch
26 The relation between the final notes is somewhat complicated by the fact that each
has a fermata, but the “extra measure . . . is a strong hint to the conductor . . . to make
the second fermata longer than the first” (London 112). Presumably, it hints that the
second fermata should be about twice as long as the first. (See London 110–120 on
some of the metrical and rhythmic patterns and variations of the piece.)
27 The following points are not confined to Western music, but apply equally to, for exam-
ple, Hindustānı̄ or Karn.āt.ak rāga performances. Moreover, the same sort of analysis
fits modern and contemporary composition as well, insofar as one experiences this as
beautiful or sublime. For example, Karol Beffa’s 2010 Manhattan – in parts, exquisitely
sublime, in my view – opens with a very short motif, which Beffa expands, then alters
through changing the values of variables, such as switching instruments or adding har-
mony. Similar points could be made about a work such as Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata
(from the early 1950s). Both pieces are available on the YouTube. The video of Ligeti’s
work has the advantage of presenting the score along with the performance.
for the first three notes along with the same duration. There are two dif-
ferences between these symphonies. In the real symphony, the duration
of the first part of the phrase is set at one beat, whereas in the hypothetical
symphony it is set at two beats. Much more significantly, in the real
symphony, the duration of the final note is set at four beats (yielding
FFFD), while that of the hypothetical symphony is set at zero (yielding
A A A ).
Alternatively, we could formulate the difference in Bayesian terms. As
Tenenbaum and colleagues explain, “Abstract knowledge is encoded in
a probabilistic generative model, a kind of mental model that describes
the causal processes in the world giving rise to the learner’s [here, the
listener’s] observations as well as unobserved or latent variables that
support effective prediction . . . if the learner can infer their hidden state”
(1280). A variation is successful to the extent that, within some very
limited period (probably a fraction of a second), one is able to substitute
a new model that does predict the given outcome or, what is more likely,
a new variable within the old model – “updating beliefs about latent
variables in generative models given observed data” (1280).
Here, we begin to get a sense of just what is wrong with the hypothetical
symphony. Among other things, for the rule as stated (rules would vary
to some extent across observers), the hypothetical variation relies on a
very unusual case of the variable – zero duration. The problem, however,
is not the zero duration as such. For example, in his performance of
Rāga Āsāvarı̄, Asad Ali Khan uses a variation in which he simply skips
the resolving tone, in effect giving it a duration of zero.28 In that case,
however, the rest does operate as a variation. In other words, listeners are
likely to hear it as the absence of the expected tone. The problem with the
hypothetical symphony is that very few listeners are likely to hear the rest
after the three half notes as an absence of the fourth note expected by the
rule. Thus it is not simply a problem with the variable being set to zero.
Rather, it seems to be a matter of the rule-based distinctiveness of the
whole phrase. The second phrase of the hypothetical symphony conforms
to the rule. However, it conforms to many rules, and the relevant rule
has been so little established thus far in the piece that it is inadequate
to activate specific expectations. A Bayesian account would treat this in
much the same way that it treats concept acquisition. A child learns that a
particular thing is a “horse.” The child does not infer that all visible things
28 Khan’s performance is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGAGzK1srS4

(accessed 26 March 2014); the variation is used in, for example, the nineteenth minute
of the video. Of course, the rest substituted for the tone has a duration in this variation;
it is the resolving tone that has zero duration.
are called “horse,” even though that is consistent with the data. Prior
probabilities in this case favor “more coherent and distinctive categories”
(Tenenbaum et al. 1281). Something similar presumably holds for the
musical rule. Hearing the three A-flats as instantiating the same rule as
the symphony opening would violate the prior probability about “more
coherent and distinctive categories.”
At the same time, it seems clear that we would quickly get bored if
the opening simply repeated precisely the same sequence – three quarter
notes at G and a half note at E. Thus it seems that we would expect
pattern recognition to involve the isolation of a distinctive rule, but one
with variables – ultimately, variables that we may need to change or
update in a Bayesian manner. This begins to characterize the nature of
the principles at issue in aesthetic response.
As the actual symphony continues, we have greater reason to tacitly
abstract a rule that favors varying the relative duration of the final note
of the motif, rather than that of the opening notes. Thus we several times
hear variants on the pitch of the first three notes, but the duration of those
notes remains a half beat each. In contrast, the fourth note changes. (The
dynamics and instrumentation are also variable.) The greater constancy
of the first notes is to some extent predictable in that we would expect
the opening to be more consistent and distinctive in order to activate the
relevant rule so that subsequent parts of the variant phrase are heard in
relation to the governing rule or pattern.
Thus we see that rules plus variables go some way toward explaining
non-habitual pattern recognition. However, it is important to point out
that the isolation of patterns – whether they occur in stories, in music, or
in mathematics – is not confined to some basic set of rules and variables.
As already suggested, we sometimes change rules in the course of a work.
In connection with these changes, a recipient (e.g., a listener, in the case
of music) may recognize a higher-level pattern across all or some of the
rules, yielding further aesthetic pleasure.29 In other words, there may
be relations among basic rules as well, which is to say, there are often
patterns across patterns. To take a very simple example, we sometimes
find the opening motif of the Fifth Symphony altered so that it does
not simply fill the variables differently but changes the principle itself.
A simple case is the occurrence of phrases such as three quarter notes
at one pitch followed by an extended pitch two scale tones above the
29 Some good examples of different levels of patterning may be found in the use of
metaphors. It often happens that seemingly different metaphors are drawn from a com-
mon domain and thus exhibit patterning at a more general level, as when different
metaphors of war are used to characterize sexuality in Shakespeare (a point discussed
valuably by Oncins-Martı́nez).
opening pitch. Here, the pitch descent in the original rule is inverted to
produce a scale ascent. Of course, one could consider this particular
instance to be a simple variation on the initial rule. That is because it
is an elementary case. More complex cases of inversion, however, make
it clear that there is a range of possible relations among different rules.
To some extent, these are given by the ordinary principles of music
analysis or some basic principles of mathematics – including principles
that even grade school children can learn to manipulate.30 The general
points about rule abstraction (e.g., regarding distinctiveness) apply to
these cross-rule relations as well.
In short, the somewhat vague idea of non-habitual pattern recogni-
tion is specifiable in terms of rules, variables, and relations across rules,
which is to say, meta-rules. The applications of the rules and meta-rules
are governed by some broad tendencies. Rule isolation and habituation
may both be in part a function of the complexity of the pattern in the
artwork, as well as the frequency of that type of pattern in the artistic
tradition. Rule isolation appears to favor distinctiveness or restrictiveness
of rules and meta-rules (when a number of rules or meta-rules would
apply to a particular case). In all these cases, rule derivation may be
understood in terms of cognitively implicit Bayesian calculations, pro-
duced by mechanisms that generate rule-conforming outputs, but need
not involve “rule following” in any usual sense. Finally, an analysis along
these lines has the advantage of further clarifying how not only art, but
also mathematics or physics might foster aesthetic feelings.31
Aesthetic response and public beauty

Our last, lingering theoretical quandary concerns the relation between
aesthetic response and public beauty. Again, aesthetic response is one’s
actual emotional reaction to a work. It is distinct from one’s self-conscious
evaluation of the work, that is to say, one’s aesthetic judgment. The
judgment may be guided primarily by response (thus personal beauty);
30 As Mark Ryan points out, “Any function can be transformed into a related func-
tion by shifting it horizontally or vertically, flipping it over (reflecting it) horizontally
or vertically, or stretching or shrinking it horizontally or vertically” (61); for illus-
trations, see http://www.mathsisfun.com/sets/function-transformations.html (accessed
26 March 2014).
31 The observations of Nobel laureates such as Heisenberg, Gell-Mann, and Chan-
drasekhar all suggest not only the importance of beauty in physics, but also the centrality
of unexpected pattern recognition to our experience of beauty. It is worth noting that
some writers have treated the issue of sublimity in science as well (see Greig and
Hoffmann).
however, it may also be guided primarily by one’s sense of general social

assessment (that is, public beauty), or by some combination of the two.
In Chapter 1, I stressed the importance of such differences. It is
necessary to emphasize the distinction between aesthetic response and
judgments of public beauty in particular because the two are so often
confused. Moreover, they are not simply notionally different. They are
substantively different as well. I suspect, for example, that there are some-
times vast discrepancies between individual persons’ aesthetic judgments,
on the one hand, and their actual aesthetic responses, on the other. These
discrepancies bear on targets ranging from human faces to works of art.
Indeed, I imagine that people are often rather ashamed of these discrep-
ancies and seek to conceal them. Even when admitting the difference,
we may try to minimize it. For example, when giving talks based on the
analyses of this book, I chose to illustrate my argument with a photo-
graph of Tanuja. For this purpose, I selected a photograph that did not
emphasize her plumpness or the size of her nose, which seemed to me
out of keeping with the Miley Cyrus–like public standard.
The point bears not only on ordinary folk, but on artists themselves.
In claiming that an artist did not remain true to his or her vision but
succumbed to commercialism, people probably conceive of themselves as
referring to dominant taste (e.g., the aesthetic response of “the masses”).
In at least many cases, however, the contrast at issue is between the
author’s individual aesthetic preference (his or her aesthetic “vision”) and
his or her conception of public beauty. This is one reason why betrayal
of one’s aesthetic vision may result in failure. An author’s sense of public
beauty may in fact be far removed from common aesthetic response.
The point also has consequences for judging putative cultural dif-
ferences. Public aesthetic norms present a degree of uniformity that is
unlikely to be realized in actual aesthetic preferences among ordinary
people. I suspect that the distributions of aesthetic preferences found in
different cultures are quite similar, at least relative to the usually more
uniform public norms. To take a simple example, two cultures may pub-
licly value very different body types – say, slender and plump. But it seems
unlikely that everyone in the first culture finds slender most aesthetically
pleasing while everyone in the second culture finds plump aesthetically
pleasing. Rather, there will be individuals with each aesthetic preference
in both groups.
On the other hand, stressing the difference between aesthetic response
and public beauty leaves out the relation between public judgments and
personal responses. It seems clear that there is a relation between the two.
Moreover, the relation goes in both directions. Specifically, there are two
ways in which public judgments and personal responses are linked.
First, public judgments appear to be broadly constrained by personal

responses – or, rather, by some general principles governing personal
responses. For example, no one who suffers from severe facial asymmetry
is likely to achieve the status of publically beautiful. In keeping with this,
Miley Cyrus probably does not grossly violate anyone’s prototype approx-
imation. But such constraints are fairly limited. Most obviously, the appli-
cation of general responsive principles is largely confined to the public
domain, which skews their output. First, there is a non-representative
sampling of people’s faces and bodies in mass media. Miley Cyrus may
be close to an average across publicly visible women’s faces, but that
does not mean she is close to an average of my personal experiences.
Second, prototyping presumably operates here in the same way that it
does elsewhere, with weighting by contrast. Many contrasts (e.g., male
versus female) would be the same for personal and public beauty. But one
relevant contrast in the definition of public beauty – perhaps understood
as “star” beauty or “celebrity” beauty – may be between publicly beau-
tiful women and “ordinary” women. If so, then public beauty would be
likely to exaggerate the discrepancy between media-disseminated faces
and bodies, on the one hand, and the faces and bodies of people from
ordinary life, on the other. Despite these and other distorting factors,
however, it does seem that public beauty is unlikely to deviate radically
from personal aesthetic response. This is because some properties – such
as facial symmetry – are likely to result from virtually any averaging, given
an adequate number of cases (which is not an issue in the case of faces).
The second way in which aesthetic feeling may be related to public
beauty is the reverse of the first. It seems clear that public norms of beauty
may affect individual aesthetic response. This occurs in a number of ways.
First, and most obviously, overexposure to certain types of target will
affect our prototypes. If we see disproportionately many blonde, button-
nosed, underweight models, our prototype formation will be affected
by that disproportion. The same point presumably applies to novels,
films, and other works of art. In this way, there is at least some truth
to Horkheimer and Adorno’s criticism of spokespersons for the culture
industry. As they put it, “the claim” that mass culture production “is done
to satisfy the spontaneous wishes of the public is no more than hot air”
(122); rather, the culture industry produces a “circle of manipulation and
retroactive need” (121). The culture industry does not simply present
us with images of what we already consider beautiful; it rather presents
images that form our sense of beauty.
On the other hand, this is not precisely a matter of public beauty
affecting aesthetic response. It is, more technically, a matter of some
experiences bearing on both public beauty and personal response. For
instance, the images of fashion models contribute to our formation of pro-

totypes for both “woman’s face,” thus aesthetic response, and “beautiful
woman’s face,” thus public beauty. However, once the two are differenti-
ated, public beauty may guide our behavior, and even our self-conscious
judgment about our own aesthetic responses. In other words, because
of his or her conformity with public beauty, we may judge that we find
someone beautiful even when we have little aesthetic response to him or
her. Moreover, we may act with the sort of interest that would ordinar-
ily be provoked by actual aesthetic delight, even though that experience
is in fact absent. This may be particularly true when social prestige is
associated with the public norm.
Crude examples of this may be found in men’s mating choices. I do not
have any data for this. However, it seems very likely that even men who
pursue women for aesthetic (and sexual) reasons often choose possible
mates based on the women’s prestige value rather than personal aesthetic
appeal. This is suggested by the idea of a “trophy wife” and to some extent
by Girard’s notion of mimetic desire – or perhaps Lacan’s claim that
desire is the desire of the Other (235). However, to take up the Lacanian
phrasing, the present account indicates that the “desire” at issue in the
two cases is different. The “desire of the Other” is one’s simulation of
what other people will take to be beautiful. One’s own “desire,” as derived
from this simulation, is not a matter of actual aesthetic response, but of
striving for prestige.32 On the other hand, in many, perhaps most cases of
this sort, the man is unaware that he is seeking prestige and may actually
confuse his judgment of public beauty with his own aesthetic response. In
other words, he may become, so to speak, blind to his aesthetic response.
The point is not confined to Donald Trump and to adolescent boys’
dating practices. It extends to our response to literature and other works
of art. As I discuss in Chapter 5, I have in effect deceived myself about
my own aesthetic response to Othello for many years. This has not been a
matter of psychoanalytic repression. There were certainly moments when
I realized that I did not really care for particular lines or a particular scene.
However, I put the thought out of my mind. My response to the prestige
32 I have focused on men here since, traditionally, women’s prestige has rested in part on
their beauty. That has largely not been the case with men. In consequence, we would not
expect public beauty to be as consequential in women’s mate selection. Rather, men’s
prestige has rested on social position defined by wealth and power. Thus, if women are
driven by the same hunger for derivative prestige as drives men, we would expect their
mate selection to be guided in part by the man’s social position. This is indeed what we
seem to find, as noted in almost any work on evolutionary psychology (see, for example
Panksepp and Biven 254). Evolutionary psychologists commonly see this as a function
of innate gender differences. In light of the present analysis, it may be viewed as a matter
of gender similarities operating in different social contexts.
value of Othello and to my own aesthetic feeling was, then, more a matter
of Sartrean bad faith (see his Being) – or, perhaps more appropriately,
Bourdieuian bad faith, given its relation to standards of aesthetic taste
(see, for example, The Field 50).
Finally, public beauty may affect our aesthetic response not only in
its formation (through, for example, mass media) and after its forma-
tion (through bad faith bearing on prestige norms), but also prior to
its formation. Specifically, it seems that prestige norms can guide us in
the isolation of possible targets for aesthetic appreciation. This is true
in a banal way with literary works, where we may simply never read low
prestige works. But it bears equally on the ways in which we respond
to targets, the degree to which we attend to and encode details, seek to
isolate patterns, and so on. For example, we are highly motivated to find
patterns in high prestige works, but little motivated to find patterns in
low prestige works. In short, public beauty orients our observation in
ways that guide the formation and application of prototypes, as well as
our inclination to find patterns in works.
By way of illustration, consider the following sort of Hollywood-like
story: The main characters are a young man and his gal pal, perhaps a
young woman with baggy clothes, pulled-back hair, and thickly rimmed
glasses. The young man searches for love in all the wrong places, com-
plaining about his mistreatment to the gal pal, who secretly longs for
his romantic attentions. Through some series of developments – which
necessitate the woman removing her glasses, letting down her hair, and
donning a more shape-flattering outfit – the man suddenly comes to see
that the partner he was seeking has been almost literally right under his
nose the whole time. This is a case of romantic discounting, the exclusion
of someone from even possible consideration as a romantic partner. (Put
differently, it is a failure to fit the person into one’s “love template,” the
“unconscious list of traits” that define the sort of partner one is seek-
ing [Fisher 102].) As the change in appearance suggests, part of this
discounting is aesthetic. The man is unaware of the woman’s aesthetic
appeal. In technical terms, he does not encode the relevant features, nor
does he link her with the relevant prototype. This type of story is not
perfect for our purposes since the young woman in question would be
conventionally (publicly) beautiful as well, played by some actress who
represents and helps define public beauty. On the other hand, it suggests
something revealing. This sort of scenario relies on the fact that glasses,
hairstyle, and clothing are salient ornaments that operate conventionally
to govern attention. Glasses, unfashionable clothing, and what we might
call “prudent” or “sensible” hair (to go along with the sensible cloth-
ing) are all distractors. Conventional signals of absence of beauty, they
foster discounting. Fashionable and flattering clothing and hair have the
opposite effect. The man is simply more likely to think of the woman in
aesthetic terms when she has certain signals of public beauty as opposed
to when she does not. Another way of putting the point is that public
beauty is bound up with a set of more or less arbitrary markers, such
that incidental, largely non-aesthetic properties may lead to a failure to
categorize someone in such a way as to foster aesthetic response to him
or her.
The same point holds for literature, film, and other arts. When watch-
ing a play by Shakespeare, we are inclined to look at it and listen to it
as an aesthetic object. For critics, this is in part a matter of attending to
matters other than plot – ranging from interiority of characterization to
the poetic quality of the speech. In watching a film by an art director,
such as Resnais or Godard, we are likely to pay particular attention to
film style and narrational features, seeking our aesthetic pleasure largely
outside the story line. In contrast, when watching a television program,
we are much less likely to concentrate on style. Or, if we do pay attention
to style, we are likely to see it in terms of glitter and sparkle (e.g., in
costuming), cheap techniques of keeping the viewer glued to the tube –
thus an extension of the suspense of the plot. But this may mean that
we discount the aesthetic qualities of the popular film or television pro-
grams, in addition to overestimating the aesthetic value of the canonical
works. For example, when it was first broadcast, I was an avid viewer of
Miami Vice, finding the visual and aural style of the show to be often aes-
thetically fine and its thematic concerns to be nuanced. However, many
people seem to have dismissed the show even before viewing, whereas
many who watched did not approach episodes as aesthetic objects. In
other words, many people seem to have engaged in aesthetic discounting.
More exactly, with aesthetic response as with other sorts of cognitive
and emotional processing, we cannot consider everything about a target
in detail. There are many dangerous things in the world. However, we
would never get around to eating breakfast if we examined everything
for possible threats. We therefore rely on tacit heuristics for discounting
possible objects of consideration. One of these heuristics is that we do
not pay much attention to whatever is familiar. That is the general form
of the problem of habituation in art. It is also part of the gal pal’s problem
in the story we just considered. In addition to habituation, there are two
evident ways in which any sort of discounting – for example, fear or
danger discounting – might operate. These are, first, by category and,
second, by property or condition. Some categories of things (e.g., tables)
are not dangerous. Some properties or conditions (e.g., being in a cage)
make objects not dangerous. The points apply to aesthetic discounting

just as they apply to other sorts of discounting.
First, some targets do not fall into a category that is compatible with
public beauty. For instance, in the 1950s, for U.S. mainstream white cul-
ture, black (or African) was it seems a category widely viewed as incompat-
ible with beauty. This meant that the beauty of African-American men
and women often went unrecognized. One part of African-American
political struggle in the 1960s involved working against that form of dis-
counting, through such slogans as “Black Is Beautiful.” The same point
holds for genres, media, and outlets in narrative. For some time, cinema
struggled to be categorized as an art, thus appreciated for, for example,
aesthetic pleasures of style (as opposed to, say, thrills of vicarious expe-
rience). Television and graphic fiction are perhaps underappreciated in
that regard even today. Critical work on television, graphic fiction, and
even film sometimes involves arguments aimed at establishing work in
these forms as meriting careful aesthetic attention (see, for example,
Greg Smith, Aldama, and Gaut, Philosophy on television, graphic fic-
tion, and film, respectively). In each of these cases, individual targets
are discounted because of their category, and are thus not considered as
possible sources of aesthetic pleasure.
The second sort of discounting involves the isolation of salient faults,
which is to say, features that count as faults. Indeed, in looking at a pos-
sible aesthetic target, we seem almost to follow an implicit algorithm.
We seem to begin by scanning for salient flaws. If the number of defects
or extent of faultiness reaches a certain threshold, then we discount the
target. Alternatively, we may operate by scanning for features bearing
on the negative option in a pair of alternatives. For example, we may
initially scan an object for danger (rather than safety). A preponderant
sensitivity toward negative alternatives would have obvious evolutionary
benefits, at least in the case of some emotions, such as fear. (For exam-
ple, it would lead us to avoid predators more readily, even if it would
also lead us to avoid some innocuous animals.) In the case of beauty
versus ugliness, ugly properties would draw this scanning preference.
Thus we would scan for features associated with ugliness, discounting
targets on the basis of an adequate number or intensity of such features.
In the oblivious youth and gal pal example, such features would include
glasses (particularly glasses with large, face-concealing rims), an unstylish
hairstyle, and unfashionable clothing – not triggers of disgust per se, but
markers of public ugliness, that is, what counts as ugly.
An interesting suggestion of this account is that the contrast between
public beauty and markers of public ugliness may serve to enhance
prototype effects not only for public beauty but in some cases for personal
beauty as well. For example, if being overweight comes to be viewed as a
salient fault (e.g., for women), we would expect contrast effects and asso-
ciated aesthetic discounting to make the beauty ideal thinner than aver-
age. This is due to the weighting of distinctiveness in prototype formation
and the discounting of overweight individuals, which would presumably
reduce their impact on averaging. Such processes could then have recur-
ring or cyclical effects. Once a certain degree of thinness becomes the
prestige norm, then average weight may become marked as an aesthetic
flaw. If so, this will, in turn, drive the ideal of thinness further down
through prototype formation. Similarly, if being scrawny comes to be
viewed as a fault (e.g., for men), we would expect contrast effects to
make the ideal more muscular than average, with the same sort of cycli-
cal process ensuing.
These general points apply not only to people’s faces and bodies, but
also to literary and other arts. As already noted, categorization appears
consequential in aesthetic discounting in the arts. However, defect-based
discounting probably occurs as well – with “defect,” again, defined by
public beauty or at least public value. (I say public value because our
public norms for art combine aesthetic and non-aesthetic judgments.)
It is even possible that the spiraling effects of contrast-derived prototype
formation operate on the public aesthetics of arts. For example, I find
much late twentieth-century American poetry to be linguistically banal,
even in comparison with prose. If I am correct, this may have resulted
from the establishment of non-poetic or “common” speech as the public
aesthetic norm for poetry. This definition of a linguistic norm included
the isolation of putatively “poetic” diction as a (public) aesthetic flaw. The
establishment of such standards of public beauty and such flaws – with
associated contrast effects and aesthetic discounting – could readily have
the effect of making the prototype of poetically valued speech, first, more
ordinary than traditional verse, then more banal than early free verse,
then more unadorned than even some normal speech. I am undoubtedly
overstating the case here, but hypothesizing some process of this general
sort may not be entirely unwarranted.
In sum, my earlier analysis of public beauty and personal aesthetic
response may have appeared to suggest that the norms or prestige stan-
dards for the former are without consequences for the latter. However,
this is not the case. The consequences seem to be much more limited
than is usually thought. Indeed, it is very important not to assume that a
putative cultural standard – a public norm accepted widely in a society –
reflects the aesthetic responses of individuals in that society. Nonethe-
less, there are three ways in which public norms may affect individual
response. The first has a constitutive role in aesthetic response. Public

norms may govern the frequency with which certain types of target are
disseminated throughout a population. These targets include not only
images (such as photographs of supermodels), but also texts or, in oral
cultures, tales. These targets are likely to influence the formation of pro-
totypes and even routines of encoding and pattern recognition.
The second form of influence is incidental – or what we could call
“occlusive” – rather than constitutive of aesthetic response. Specifically,
prestige standards may substitute for aesthetic response in our expression
of aesthetic preference – not only to others, but even to ourselves. In
other words, it happens at least sometimes that we do not admit even to
ourselves that our aesthetic response diverges from prestige standards.
The final form of influence is a matter of biasing our approach to
targets. There are commonly two ways in which such biasing occurs.
The first is via categorization. This may apply positively. For example,
we are likely to assume that canonical works of art have complex stylistic
or other patterns, even if we do not understand these initially. In keeping
with this, we are likely to revisit such works, seeking to discern such
patterns. Alternatively, categorization may lead us to discount an entire
class of targets as aesthetically inferior, even without direct consideration.
Thus we are likely to simply ignore many objects as possible targets of
aesthetic pleasure (e.g., by not reading a particular book). The second
sort of bias involves the isolation of flaws as these are defined by public
standards. Depending on the nature and severity of the flaws, this may
lead to discounting of the target work. Such discounting may also result
in ignoring the target (e.g., closing the book on seeing that it uses an
out-of-favor idiom). Alternatively, it may lead to a confirmatory reading
of the work, which is to say, a reading that presupposes its faultiness and
involves a strong confirmatory bias in that direction. This final form of
influence through bias is partially constitutive in that it may affect our
aesthetic response through, for example, prototype formation. But it is
also in part occlusive in that it in some degree leads us to ignore or
mistake our own spontaneous aesthetic responses.
A brief example of prestige, aesthetic response, and

publication decisions
Since Chapter 5 is devoted entirely to the interaction of prestige standards
and aesthetic response, I confine myself to a brief example of part of that
relation here. The case concerns a very practical issue – publication
decisions. It indicates that points of divergence between public norms
and individual response are not only a private matter. They may have
public consequences, consequences that are likely to reinforce the public

norms.
As a graduate student in English at the State University of New York
at Buffalo, I was coeditor of a literary journal, Buff. We received a sub-
mission from George Chambers, whose name meant nothing to us. It
was a strange poem, entitled “Early in the War.” Every sentence ended
in an exclamation mark, and it included ejaculations, such as “Ahhh!”
My coeditors were uniform in deriding the poem. Now I remember only
their laughter at what they considered a thoroughly incompetent piece
of writing. I suspect that their objections were that the poem was overly
expressive (as signaled by the exclamation marks) and generally premod-
ern, as in its use of ejaculations. In other words, I suspect that they took
it to have the fault of lacking novelty, of being cliché ridden as it recalled
the idioms of Romanticism. But in fact the idiom was highly unexpected.
The speaker’s voice was transformed into a sort of marching militarism
by the repeated exclamation marks in a way that was, in fact, quite inno-
vative. Some lines struck me as brilliant, such as, “Damn the symphonies
of Dmitri Shostakovich! No music for us! No pop-corn! No war!” I am
afraid that, as the other four editors guffawed at the absurdity of this worst
of all possible submissions, my own defense of the poem was halfhearted,
even though I had liked it a great deal on first reading. I maintained that
some of the lines had great vigor and force, even though I conceded that
it was overwrought. I briefly urged inclusion in the next issue, but then
(I am ashamed to admit) conceded that it was too problematic.
Fortunately, before we sent out the rejection, we learned from our
resident postmodernist, Raymond Federman, that Chambers was not
some ill-educated, premodern crank, but an accomplished writer. That
changed his categorization and the resulting evaluation of the editorial
board. It seems to me likely that most of the editorial board read the
poem very superficially in the first instance, in effect seeking public flaws
that would justify aesthetic discounting. In this case, the public flaws
were arguably the true (responsive) virtues of the work, at least for my
own response. What appeared to be cliché from the public value point
of view was, again, innovative. For instance, the public markers of exces-
sive emotional expressiveness (the exclamation marks) had the quality of
creating a rather obsessive and, in one sense, depersonalized narrating
voice – depersonalization that was emotionally unvarying. Despite the
stated antimilitarism of the speaker, his or her attitude had the unwaver-
ing quality of military fixation (this was part of the complex patterning
of the work). In any case, the recategorization of Chambers as an accom-
plished – and postmodern – writer changed the editors’ reading strategy.
Sadly, the editors’ subsequent support of the poem might in the end
also have been a judgment of public value, a reflection of Chambers’s

status, rather than an expression of their own aesthetic response. One
way of putting this is to say that the judgment – certainly the initial rejec-
tion, possibly the subsequent acceptance – was professional rather than
personal, an expression of confirmatory bias concerning how one should
respond to the putative (public) faults of the work (e.g., by asking “Are
they naive, or are they satiric?”) rather than an individual engagement
with the positive particularity of the work leading to an actual aesthetic
response. Such interference of public norms with personal response –
presumably in part constitutive and in part occlusive – may well be the
rule rather than the exception, both within and outside editorial boards.
5 My Othello problem
Prestige status, evaluation, and aesthetic response
Bardolatry – the estimation of Shakespeare’s talents and accomplish-

ments as virtually divine – has been a topic of analysis and debate among
Shakespeare scholars for many years. In keeping with this, critics have
examined such topics as the way attitudes toward Shakespeare have
developed many of the trappings of religion (see, for example, Rupp
and Döring) and the degree to which he has been given authority in
such fields as psychology. For example, Reiss examines the surprising
fact that “[i]n the first three decades of American psychiatry, no figure
was cited as an authority on insanity and mental functioning more fre-
quently than William Shakespeare” (769).1 However, no one seems to
have systematically considered the cognitive and affective consequences
of Shakespeare’s reputation for individual aesthetic response.
In this chapter, I consider a specific case of this “bardolatry effect,”
as we might call it – my own (long-denied) problem with the ending of
Othello. If I am honest with myself, I have to admit that I just don’t like
the conclusion of the play.2 Indeed, I am not sure I like the play overall.
I’ve written on this play more than on any other work by Shakespeare –
or probably any other play (see “Othello,” Philosophical Approaches, and
chapter 6 of What Literature). Moreover, part of that writing involves
defending the play against criticisms. In light of my response to the play,
this repeated critical attention begins to look like an attempt to convince
1 There are, of course, more specifically literary consequences of bardolatry. For example,
Ravassat and Culpeper note that “bardolatry lives on, notably in the still-common notion
that Shakespeare’s vocabulary dwarfed all others (“Introduction” 3). For a discussion of
the data on the extent of Shakespeare’s vocabulary, see Elliott and Valenza; see also their
discussion and that of Goodland regarding the similar issue of coinages.
2 This is not to suggest that being honest with oneself is a simple matter. In an insightful
article on this general topic, Kieran points out that “we are often particularly bad at
knowing when our appreciation and judgments are being driven by aesthetically irrelevant
factors” (“Fragility” 34). Kieran goes on to cite research that indicates prestige value has
palpable consequences, at least for our aesthetic judgments. When these judgments are
insincere, then the problem of honesty is simple and straightforward. However, there are
cases where we “mistake the pleasures of status” with those of beauty (35). In connection
with this, Kieran gives a fine account of snobbishness (36).
162
My Othello problem 163
myself of its value. Admittedly, I do in fact agree with my defense of

the play. Specifically, I have argued that the play is not racist, but is
rather opposed to what we would now call “out-grouping,” especially
when that out-grouping is linked with disgust. That seems to me correct
and is indeed one of the values of the play. Put differently, the play
does seem to me successful in its thematic or ethical/political aims.3 This
thematic endorsement of the play is in keeping with many critical views of
Shakespeare.4 What is at odds with those views is my aesthetic response,
a response that is likely to seem simply nonsensical. That a critic has
artistic qualms about Othello is likely to suggest, not a deficiency on the
part of Othello, but a deficiency on the part of the critic. How else can we
reconcile such qualms with the evaluation of the most important literary
critics of our time, writers such as Stephen Greenblatt, who asserts that
Shakespeare is “the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all
time” an author of “the most important body of imaginative literature
of the last thousand years,” a body of “timeless work” with “universal
appeal,” plays that contain “the most beautiful language any English
audience had ever heard,” work “so astonishing, so luminous, that it
seems to have come from a god and not a mortal.” Indeed, I myself am
perfectly willing to admit that part of my distaste is merely personal, a
quirk. But I have a nagging doubt that not all of it is mere quirkiness.
The purpose of analyzing my Othello problem is threefold. First, such
an examination aims to further explore the cognitive and emotional
effects of social norms or prestige standards on individual aesthetic eval-
uation, thus self-conscious judgment. As noted in Chapter 4, our judg-
ments about our own literary and other responses are often distorted by
our sense of how other people assess a particular target (e.g., a particular
play). Distortions of this general sort occur even in cases of simple per-
ception. For example, subjects will deny the clear evidence of their senses
in order to conform to what the rest of the group is saying (see Biener
and Boudreau 449–451). The tendency is presumably only enhanced in
the case of such complex experiences as aesthetic response. (There is
also empirical evidence that prestige affects our aesthetic judgments and,
indeed, neural processing [see, for example, Kieran, “Fragility,” and Kirk
327].) Second, this analysis considers the consequences of the bardolatry
3 I do not mean that Shakespeare had these aims self-consciously in mind. But they appear
rather to be part of his implicit imagination of the work. In other words, he would not
have judged the work to be quite right, quite in keeping with the effect he desired, if
it did not have these thematic implications. This in no way depends on him explicitly
formulating such implications.
4 See, for example, Orkin and Bartels. An early case of thematic analysis that in effect takes
up out-grouping may be found in Fiedler’s examination of the “stranger” in Shakespeare.
effect for actual understanding of and aesthetic response to works of art.

This effect of prestige is not confined to bad faith. It extends to “good
faith” as well. Finally, the third purpose of these reflections is to prepare
the way for the treatment of aesthetic argument in chapter four. That
chapter considers, at a theoretical level, what might constitute a rational
argument in favor of one aesthetic response over another. The following
sketch of my aesthetic problems with Othello begins to address the issue
of where and how differences from standard evaluations of the play might
(or might not) be justified. In this way, it introduces the topic of chapter
four through a concrete example.
More precisely, in connection with these purposes, the following sec-
tions isolate three ways in which my response to Othello diverges from
standard views or has diverged from such views (in one case, I have altered
my evaluation). These reflect broader possibilities that recur across read-
ers and works, though with necessarily different particulars in each case.
Specifically, divergence in aesthetic response may result, first and most
obviously, from inadequate comprehension or interpretation of the work.
(This is, of course, the case where I have altered my evaluation.) Second,
divergence may result from differences in identification with characters.
These differences are largely a matter of emotional diversity on the part
of readers. As such, they do not seem open to adjudication, but are
irreducibly individual, a matter of “taste.” Finally, there are sometimes
difficulties in the simulation of the work itself. Difficulties regarding con-
sistent simulation may reflect differences in propensities or capacities on
the part of readers. But – and this is crucial for the topic of aesthetic
argument – they may also be a matter of flaws in the work itself.
Comprehension errors, variable identifications, and difficulties in sim-
ulation are not the only factors that may contribute to divergence in
aesthetic response to Shakespeare or any other author. They are sim-
ply the most salient factors in my Othello problem. They do, however,
represent three central or recurring ways in which our individual literary
responses may conflict with prestige standards. Such conflict is significant
for both theoretical and interpretive reasons. First, at a theoretical level,
it is important to acknowledge and analyze different forms of diversity
in individual response to literary works, particularly when formulating
general principles for aesthetic experience. For example, we will con-
sider the components of literary identification, including what I will call
“emotional congruence.” In at least certain sorts of artworks, emotional
congruence may be an important factor in a sense of beauty. Second,
interpretively, it seems clear that ignoring our divergences with standard
opinions serves to inhibit our interpretive examinations. Conversely, rec-
ognizing those divergences is likely to return our attention to the text,
leading us to examine its complexities more fully. That examination may
lead to the isolation of problems with the text or it may lead to a fuller
appreciation of its successes. In any case, it is likely to enrich our compre-
hension of the work and thereby alter our aesthetic response. Finally, the
reference to “problems” and “successes” of “the text” points us toward
the issue of aesthetic argument. Having a clear sense of divergence in
aesthetic response and its sources should help to clarify what it means
not only to differ, but to rationally dispute such responses. In the fol-
lowing pages, then, we consider these three modes of divergence from
prestige standards – comprehension errors, variable identifications, and
difficulties in simulation.
Qualms about Othello (I): a matter of understanding

In reading the final scene of the play, I find myself already put off by
the opening line, spoken by Othello as he enters, “It is the cause, it is
the cause, my soul” (V.ii.1). I initially find it both obscure (what is he
talking about?) and contrived (the narrator, so to speak, clearly knows
what Othello is talking about, so why this coyness in beginning the scene
just too late for us to learn?).
Bardolatry is likely to lead me to suppress my response. But, if I allow
myself to recognize this discomfort, I may reconsider the line. Of course,
that reconsideration is still due to the social status of Shakespeare. But it
appears salutary in this case. First, there is a peculiar emplotment here.
This opening suggests something that had gone before and from which
we are excluded. Understanding this is, I believe, bound up with the
precise way in which the line is performed, specifically its stress pattern.
I imagine that most readers stress “cause” as the “content word” in the
sentence. Actors playing Othello seem to place greatest emphasis on that
word. That is at least the case with Welles, Olivier, and Fishburne (in the
film versions directed by Welles, Burge, and Parker, respectively). On the
other hand, each of these actors draws out the line rather monotonously
as if they are not quite sure what to do with it – evidently in keeping
with my own initial response. In any case, the second and third lines
actually indicate that the focus of the utterance is “it.” Specifically, these
lines involve Othello imploring the “chaste stars,” “Let me not name it
to you . . . / It is the cause” (V.ii.2–3). It seems, then, that the first line
should be read as “It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul.” Given that “it”
is simply a pronoun, we are then led to explain this stress as contrastive –
the cause is it, as opposed to something else.
What precisely is going on here? Clearly, Othello is referring to the
explanation of or justification for some consequence. Given what occurs
in the scene, it seems clear that the consequence presupposed by the
sentence is the murder of Desdemona. He is thus saying that “it” is what
is causing that murder. This leads me to ask just what that cause might
be and what it might be contrasted with, both of which are unnamed.
The two forms of address used by Othello hint at the alternatives. He
cannot name the “it” to the “chaste stars.” The suggestion is that naming
would be incompatible with the chastity of the stars. Evidently, then, the
“it” is unchastity, specifically, Desdemona’s adultery. The other address
is to his soul. Just why would he be answering his soul? Presumably to
defend his own blamelessness. Thus the other possible “cause” would be
some wickedness on his part – presumably jealousy. Thus the opening
line involves Othello insisting that he is driven by the unnameable sin
of Desdemona, not by his own sinfulness. The point fits with various
aspects of the longer speech. For example, he later shows concern not
to “kill” Desdemona’s “soul” (V.ii.32). This is parallel to the concern
shown for his own soul at the outset.
This is actually brilliant at the level of both simulation and emplotment.
The simulation shows not only Othello’s obsession with Desdemona’s
sexuality and his current focus on the murder (hardly surprising in con-
text), but, what is more important, his own meta-emotional response to
both – specifically, his great aversion to both, so great that he will not
name either. Indeed, this aversion prominently includes the feeling of
his own guilt for the imagined act, a guilt he is struggling to rationalize
away. The ellipsis at the beginning of the scene emphasizes this point to
the audience, occluding Othello’s thoughts just as he would like to forget
them himself. Note that in both cases there is a complex pattern, thus
an aspect directly relevant to aesthetic response. Of course, noting such
a pattern cannot compel aesthetic response. But its presence suggests
the possible aesthetic value of the passage. Moreover, in my case, it does
greatly enhance my aesthetic response. In this instance, then, it seems
that the self-criticism fostered by Shakespeare’s social status was produc-
tive. (Without that self-criticism, I might simply have dismissed the line
as meritless.) But it was productive in leading to reconsideration of the
text. I engaged in that reconsideration not only because of Shakespeare’s
reputation, but also as a result of taking seriously my own dissatisfaction.
Had I simply dismissed my dissatisfaction (as I did until I began to work
on this chapter), I would not have tried to discover what exactly was
going on in that passage.
Qualms about Othello (II): a matter of taste

The preceding points suggest that some skepticism about the aesthetic
value of Shakespeare’s text may lead us to examine the text more
carefully and more critically, sometimes producing not only an enhanced
understanding of the work, but an enhanced appreciation as well. How-

ever, not all qualms about the work are of the same sort, and not all
responses to such qualms have positive, revelatory consequences. For
example, some problems with a given text are likely to be emotional and
based on a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the work. Turning again
to the opening lines of act V, scene ii, I find that, even at the start, I
am not always immersed in the story, transported in such a way as to
foster the work’s emotional effects. (Some sort of absorption in the work
seems to be at least a contributing factor and perhaps even a necessary
condition for ongoing experience of the emotions associated with the
work. On literary transportation, see Gerrig, as well as Green and Don-
ahue.) I find, for instance, the apostrophe to “stars” incomprehensible
(the preceding section explained only the adjective “chaste”), and calling
his lamp a “minister” (V.ii.8) verges on comic exaggeration. Both distract
from the flow or absorption of the story. But these are small faults. More
generally, even with the recognition of the subtlety of Shakespeare’s sim-
ulation here and its manifestation of striking patterns, I am simply not
deeply emotionally engaged by this opening. This seems to be a matter of
my own emotional propensities. It is connected with what is sometimes
called “identification,” which perhaps we can understand a bit more fully
in this context.
We may distinguish different types or degrees of involvement or con-
nectedness with a character. First, we may or may not simulate his or
her point of view and experiences. If we do simulate that point of view,
we may have different emotional orientations to it. Specifically, our emo-
tional response may be either parallel or complementary (i.e., aligned
with or opposed to the character’s emotions or interests). (We may refer
to parallel orientation as sympathy, as when we speak of being broadly
sympathetic to someone’s political orientation.5 ) Finally, if there is view-
point simulation and parallel orientation – or sympathy – there may or
may not be adequate emotional congruence to produce a comparable
degree of emotional response in the reader as in the character. In other
words, a reader’s own response to the simulated condition of a charac-
ter may or may not be similar to that of the character. That similarity
or dissimilarity is a function of the reader’s own emotion systems. For
example, a reader who has a propensity toward attachment insecurity may
respond with panic to a threat facing a character’s primary attachment
5 There are, of course, different ways in which one might distinguish between empathy
and sympathy and a number of writers have broached this issue (see, for example,
Gaut, “Identification,” 270). The distinction here is the one most relevant to the current
analysis. My usage is related to Murray Smith’s idea of “allegiance.”
relationship. However, the character may have greater attachment secu-

rity and thus respond to the threat more calmly.6
Identification, including emotional identification or empathy, may be
understood as a joint function of these three factors: viewpoint sim-
ulation, sympathy, and affective congruence. Degree of identification
may vary along any of the three axes. Thus it may involve more or less
detailed simulation, more or less fully parallel emotional response, or
greater or lesser congruence in the type or degree of emotion. As to the
first, it is relatively easy to decide that one will simulate a character’s
response. Indeed, it would usually be difficult to follow a story if one did
not do this. On the other hand, there are differences in the degree to
which different readers simulate the viewpoint of a character. Sometimes
those are differences in spontaneous simulation, the degree to which we
imagine the character’s thoughts, experiences, and so on, in the course
of reading. Sometimes the differences concern effortful simulation, our
self-conscious reflections on the character’s viewpoint, as in classroom
discussions. One form of uninvolvement in (or alienation from) a story
results from insufficient simulation. Many instructors face this issue when
students do not adequately imagine the character’s inner life, including
sometimes conflicting motives and beliefs.
Parallel versus complementary responses to simulated internality often
reflect an in-group/out-group division (for relevant research, see Gaz-
zaniga 164, Keestra 237, Hain and colleagues 155, and Klimecki and
Singer 542). This could obviously arise in the case of Othello, with white
readers taking up a complementary orientation to an out-group member.
Sometimes, political activists have urged readers to adopt a “resisting”
role (to use Judith Fetterley’s term) in, for example, cultivating a parallel
response to the emotions of minor characters or even villains if they hap-
pen to be members of an oppressed group (thus, for example, the strategy
of “reading as a woman” [see Culler 43–63]). As this suggests, emotional
orientation (parallel versus complementary), like degree of simulation, is
in part open to choice, thus rational aesthetic discussion.
Despite the differences on these axes, I suspect that the greatest diver-
gence in identification is a matter of emotional congruence. It is no
simple thing to simulate Othello’s viewpoint. One must envision not
only the (imagined) disloyalty of one’s spouse but also a social situation
where one is continually put in the position of being an out-group mem-
ber – even at times by that very spouse. Nonetheless, having engaged in
6 Of course, characters do not have attachment security or insecurity. To refer to character

psychology is shorthand for the implicit simulation of character psychology as guided by
the text and associated linguistic and cultural context.
that simulative effort, one’s own propensities toward jealous feelings and
vengeful actions would appear to be the only emotional sources one has
for empathizing with Othello’s feelings and actions. These propensities
are not open even to the limited choice we have in the degree of sim-
ulation or type of emotional orientation. As it happens, my inclinations
simply do not correspond very closely to Othello’s. Thus, in the fifth act,
I feel very little identification with him. This is a large part of the reason
that the act fails for me.
Specifically, Shakespeare simulates Othello as experiencing sexual
betrayal leading to shame. Shame readily leads to rage and thereby to
violence (see Walker and Knauer, as well as Ray, Smith, and Wastell7 ).
The violence of shame-induced rage seeks for a restoration of pride and
is commonly referred to as a matter of “honor.” Relative to Othello, my
emotional response is askew at each step. Specifically, simulating Oth-
ello’s condition and responding with my own emotion systems, I begin
with a sense of attachment loss that inspires a feeling related to grief.
There is a sense of betrayal as well. But any resulting anger is limited
by at least two factors. First, there is the inhibition of anger by sorrow.
Second, I have, it seems, less anger sensitivity to betrayal. A feeling of
being betrayed fills me with a sense of disorientation, a feeling of shocked
distrust of the social world, a form of anxiety and despair that also tends
to inhibit rather than arouse anger. My overall emotional response is
depressive and lethargic, thus the opposite of energetically violent. This
is consistent with research by Scheff and others that suggests many people
will have a response of “withdrawal” to shame and humiliation, whereas
some will respond with active rage.
In keeping with this, if I simulate my own physical condition in circum-
stances of betrayal, my feeling might manifest itself in a fixed, lowered
gaze, lips perhaps parted in dismay. In contrast, Othello’s “eyes roll so”
and he “gnaw[s]” his “nether lip” (V.ii.37–38). I would sit motionless,
but “bloody passion shakes [Othello’s] very frame” (V.ii.44). In short
our physiological responses and resulting expressive outcomes would be
almost polar opposites.
More significantly, my feeling of grief indicates that the most painful
aspect of the betrayal is precisely attachment loss, the loss of the sort
of mutual delight and cherishing that is central to attachment bonding.
In other words, it is a feeling that, in some sense, the loved one has
already died. Killing the loved one is as distant as one can get from
7 The latter treat the relevance of humiliation to identity group violence (in addition to
personal violence directed at individual targets). This may have bearing on Othello’s case
as well.
an appropriate actional outcome in this case. Othello tells the sleeping

Desdemona, “I will kill thee/And love thee after” (V.ii.18–19). The idea is
bizarre in the context of attachment. The greed of attachment is greed for
the other person’s attention and care, greed about sharing emotions and
experiences. A corpse represents the complete loss of that possibility.
Thus Othello’s comment makes no sense in terms of attachment. Put
differently, attachment presupposes the personhood of the other person.
Othello’s concern with Desdemona here seems to be solely a matter of
possessing her body. That possession can be more certain and complete
to the extent that she has no will. In a sense, bodily possession is most
complete for a corpse.
This divergence in response extends necessarily to Othello’s rational-
ization of the murder as a “sacrifice” (V.ii.66) in some sense ordained
by moral law. Even at the end, he proclaims himself “[a]n honorable
murderer,” explaining, “For naught I did in hate, but all in honor”
(V.ii.299–300). Having such a different emotional response to the sit-
uation, I cannot share this self-exculpation. Of course, there is complex-
ity and contradiction in Othello’s response. For example, shortly before
this statement about honor, he expresses a severe feeling of guilt, call-
ing for his own punishment in hell (V.ii.283–286). The simulation of
Othello’s ambivalence is part of Shakespeare’s accomplishment here. It
gives the character greater psychological depth and thus human plau-
sibility. Indeed, if we consider this aspect of the play in greater detail,
we see that the psychology is quite nuanced. Specifically, there are two
aspects to Othello’s ambivalence. The more obvious is the direct opposi-
tion between guilt and self-justification. The more concealed, but also the
more important, is the intertwining of moral pride or self-righteousness
with shame and disgust. This second aspect is worth examining more
fully.
The word “honor” has several senses. One concerns integrity, thus
one’s conformity to moral principles (as when someone is spoken of
as “honorable”). Another concerns one’s standing in a community (as
when someone is spoken of as “dishonored”). The latter sense is in play
when one speaks of “honor killings.” In that sense, honor is roughly the
opposite of shame or, more precisely, public shame. The most intense
form of public shame occurs when one is the object of other people’s
disgust, particularly their moral or more generally personal (not solely
physical) disgust. (On the relation between physical and moral disgust,
see Rozin, Haidt, and McCauley.) One’s subjective feeling of shame
is increased to the extent that one senses that disgust. This does not
necessarily require actual public disgust. One’s sense of shame may result
from simulating the disgust of other people should they discover some
“shameful” fact about oneself. Perhaps one’s sense of shame is at its worst
when other people’s (real or possible) disgust is combined with a sense
of superiority in contempt. Othello has been subjected to the physical
disgust of Venetians because of his putatively ugly color and features (as
when Roderigo calls him “the thick-lips” [I.i.63] or Brabantio refers to
“the sooty bosom of such a thing” [I.ii.69–70]). He envisions them as
having further disgust for his lack of manliness and a sense of superiority
toward him as a cuckold. One imagines that this sort of contempt would
be especially painful to a soldier, whose self-esteem is bound up with a
sense of manliness.
As it happens, my self-esteem does not rest greatly on being manly. I
can partially identify with Othello by comparing his condition with my
own with respect to something else (e.g., intellectual integrity). Nonethe-
less, I do find it very difficult to identify with controlling one’s spouse
as a defining property of one’s self-esteem. On the other hand, there is
nothing inconsistent or implausible about Shakespeare’s simulation of
Othello here. Rather, many people – men and women – are likely to have
a much greater sense of congruence with his feelings.
As already noted, shame is important because of the well-known rela-
tion between shame and rage. In a common scenario, an act of humilia-
tion produces shame, which provokes rage. Desdemona’s adultery is the
humiliating act. Othello targets her and her supposed paramour, Cassio,
seeking to destroy the humiliation by a putatively manly act of honor that
destroys those who caused his shame.
But rage is not the only motivating force for Othello’s murders. This
is not an act committed in the heat of the moment. He plans it – and
he plans it against someone he supposedly loves. As such, he must have
to some extent have disabled his own sympathy for Desdemona partic-
ularly, a sympathy that should have been enhanced by his attachment
bond with her. That disabling is made possible by his own feelings of
disgust. When justifying his act to Emilia, he associates Desdemona’s
adultery with “the slime / That sticks on filthy deeds” (V.ii.151–152).
He subsequently exclaims, “O, she was foul!” (V.ii.206) and wails that
she has “committed” “the act of shame” (V.ii.217–218), an act that he
had earlier linked with “a cistern for foul toads” (IV.ii.61). Disgust tends
to be dehumanizing and thus to inhibit normal empathic responses (see
Harris and Fiske, Nussbaum Upheavals 347–349, and Gazzaniga 204).
That dehumanization is just what we see here.
Here, again, I find it difficult to identify with Othello. My disgust
system is not so sensitive to sexuality. I find it difficult to think of sexuality
as involving slime, filth, and foulness. My disgust responses are more
directly related to gustatory and olfactory experiences involving decay.
In Shakespeare’s time, or in Shakespeare’s personal experience, sex may

have been a more odorous and oozing business. There is also the issue
of feeling disgust specifically for women’s sexuality, manifest in Othello’s
reviling Desdemona as a “strumpet” (V.ii.80), although what he means
is that she has had sex for pleasure, not for money. Perhaps I am built
backward or something, but I find the idea of women’s sexual desire to be
rather pleasant. Again, my emotion system does not seem well calibrated
to resonate with Othello’s disgust – which must be so severe as to help
enable murder.
There is, then, a mismatch between my emotion systems and those
required for emotional congruence with Othello. This helps to make
sense of my rather tepid response to the conclusion of this widely
celebrated play. Again, my dispreference here is a matter of personal
inclination, of “taste.” The preceding points do not constitute an
argument against the quality of the work in itself. On the other hand, the
fact that tastes can differ on this fundamental feature of the work suggests
that there are significant individual limits to the putatively general or
objective appeal of the play, limits that are not simply a matter of ill
comprehension or some sort of emotional dullness. Finally, recognizing
this emotional incongruity has interpretive consequences. By training
our attention on the details of Othello’s emotions, it led us to consider
complexities of Othello’s character that we might otherwise have failed
to notice. Indeed, these complexities form an unexpected pattern
that may itself foster aesthetic pleasure, even in the face of emotional
incongruence.
Qualms about Othello (III): a matter of simulation

Again, the depressive response I simulate in Othello’s circumstances
would hardly incline me to murder. However, with an adequate degree
of intensity, the associated emotional pain could put me in mind of sui-
cide. This may appear congruent with Othello’s death. Nonetheless, I
have never been genuinely moved by Othello’s final speech. Indeed, I
find Othello’s tragic despair difficult if not impossible to simulate con-
sistently. In this case, I believe that the problem lies not in my limited
understanding of the play, nor in my idiosyncratic emotional constitution
(thus taste), but in features of the Othello monologue itself. Specifically,
the sincerity of Othello’s speech – and thus its sublimity – rest on his
having had a deep attachment bond with Desdemona. However, I can-
not simulate such a bond and at the same time simulate a state of mind
that would produce this speech. In short, the emotional requirements of
the speech are psychologically incompatible with the performance of the

speech itself. In consequence, Othello’s suicide becomes either shocking
or ludicrous, unless I allow myself to ignore significant features of the
speech in keeping with Shakespeare’s, and the play’s, reputation.
Othello has just killed his beloved wife owing to an error. Panicked
remorse would be the usual reaction of someone who had strong attach-
ment relation and has mistakenly harmed that beloved person.8 Such
a panicked response is what most of us would spontaneously simulate
here. Indeed, we would anticipate a searing pain of realizing the hor-
ror the loved one must have felt, and the terrible sense of betrayal. But
Othello engages in a speech where he shows greater concern with his
reputation than with any other effects of what has just occurred.9 I can
resimulate Othello’s character as having no real attachment bond with
Desdemona at all beyond a strange, obsessional possessiveness. How-
ever, if I imagine any sort of bond, I find this calm, legalistic argument
incomprehensible – opaque to my Theory of Mind simulation. Indeed,
the problems go deeper. Even in the resimulation, I cannot cognitively
and emotionally imagine a state of mind that produces both the start and
the outcome of the speech. If the agitation of the murder did not upset
his rhetorical self-defense, surely the anticipation of suicide would, and
the speech would not conclude with the line about dying “upon a kiss”
(V.ii.364).
More exactly, at the start, his focus is on their “letters” back to Venice
(V.ii.345). I find it impossible to imagine a state of mind that would lead
to this focus – given what just happened and given what he is contemplat-
ing. He urges that they should not “extenuate” anything (V.ii.347). But
he has already extenuated his premeditated murders by referring to them
as “these unlucky deeds” (V.ii.346), as if they were a matter of chance,
not an extended and continually renewed intent. (Action theorists would
8 A somewhat parallel case may be found in Hermione’s reaction to the death of her
beloved Pyrrhus in Jean Racine’s Andromache. Although Pyrrhus was not innocent, and
Hermione did not commit the murder herself (rather, she had Oreste do the killing), she
still responds with panicked remorse. Her final speech and death are far more sublime,
in my view, than Othello’s.
9 My comments here may put some readers in mind of T. S. Eliot’s remarks – most
obviously, that Othello “has ceased to think about Desdemona, and is thinking about
himself” with the aim of “cheering himself up” (Selected Essays). Although Eliot is often
cited as if he is criticizing the speech, he is not. Rather, he claims “never” to have “read a
more terrible exposure of human weakness.” Moreover, he elsewhere cites the speech as
a prominent example of the “really fine rhetoric of Shakespeare.” From the perspective
of the present chapter, Eliot’s account does not mitigate the problems. However weak
we conclude Othello might be, the entire response remains incompatible with profound
attachment bonding.
say that there was an “initiating” intent, but there were also planning
or “guiding” and monitoring or “controlling” intents [Pacherie 96].)
Moreover, he then comes out with the explanation of just what it means
that nothing should be extenuated, what presumably defines the full
blame for what he has done. This is the claim that he “loved not wisely
but too well” (V.ii.350). This is a lovely phrase and, decontextualized,
can surely be admired for its beauty. But, in context, it should so outrage
any reader or audience member that the anger would, at the very least,
inhibit the aesthetic response. There is no sense in which someone who
murdered his wife loved her too well. Of course, I feel the point morally,
and I expect my readers do so as well. But this observation is not contin-
gent on a moral viewpoint. The systems of attachment and sexual desire –
which presumably combine to produce romantic love – in no way lead to
intentional murder through their overarousal. We can all imagine cases
of having loved not wisely but too well. Indeed, we can readily attribute
this state to Desdemona. It is, however, singularly inappropriate for
Othello.
So, the problem here is twofold. First, it is very difficult, perhaps
impossible, to simulate Othello’s viewpoint in such a way as to make it
compatible with what preceded and follows. Thus it should be almost
impossible to identify with Othello at this time, which should inhibit
most readers’ emotional response to the scene – or drive them to sup-
press aspects of the scene, in an unself-conscious effort to make their
response conform to prestige standards. Second, Othello’s outrageous
claim that he “loved . . . too well” is so inaccurate and so contradictory
with his behavior that the evident insincerity should at least irritate read-
ers, probably anger them, thereby inhibiting their aesthetic experience
of the scene. Note that neither case is simply a matter of personal taste.
Both are at least closer to broad patterns in the way human affection
operates.
The apparent insincerity of Othello is only intensified with the final
lines, which I actually find excruciatingly bad: “I kissed thee ere I killed
thee. No way but this, / Killing myself, to die upon a kiss” (V.ii.363–
364). Here, again, we have in part a fine phrase, if considered out of
context. “To die upon a kiss” is highly quotable and, taken alone, appears
highly romantic. But it is, in fact, ludicrous. First, there is the logistical
problem that Othello should now be weak from bleeding to death and he
is somehow going to position his body in order to keep his lips pressed
to Desdemona’s lips. If we did not all become so serious-minded as soon
as the label “Shakespeare” is produced, I imagine that many of us would
laugh out loud. In other words, we would feel mirth, an emotion entirely
incompatible with that of the tragic sublimity we might otherwise be

experiencing at the end of the play.10
Then there is the problem of the logic of the phrase. How can there
possibly be “no way” other than dying with his lips on Desdemona’s
lips? Clearly, this does not mean that there is physical necessity. But it is
equally clear that there is no moral necessity here, since pressing his lips
to hers in death will hardly serve to compensate for the prior crime. It
seems purely a matter of whimsy and poetic formality. We had A/B before
(kissing/killing); now we have B (killing), so let’s make it a full chiasmus
by adding A (kissing) to produce A/B/B/A (kissing/killing//killing/kissing).
But this is simply too frivolous.
Personally, I am always disturbed by blatant displays of illogic (except
when they are instances of flouting logic to elicit, say, metaphorical inter-
pretation). I recognize that that is often a matter of personal taste. How-
ever, the illogic in this case seems to go deeper. If we try to simulate
Othello’s point of view here, what will we come up with? He does not
seem either so stupid or so frivolous. Perhaps the best one can do is see
him as hitting on what seems to be a fine phrase to impress his listen-
ers. But that too makes no sense. He could hardly be seeking to impress
Lodovico and Gratiano with phrasemaking after he has just murdered
his wife and committed suicide.
Note that my evaluation here is not a matter of simple realism. It is
not merely a claim that people do not do things like this. Rather, it is a
claim about the possibility of simulating Othello’s point of view given his
character and the circumstances. Such simulation is presumably crucial
to one’s aesthetic response to the play.
Epilogue: narration and character

The preceding analysis suggests that bardolatry inhibits readers’ critical
response to Shakespeare with four possible consequences. First, it may
distort our aesthetic judgments, thus our understanding of our own
aesthetic response. Second, it may prevent us from reexamining a work’s
apparent flaws and thus discovering that the high reputation is merited
and the complex patterning of the work is more subtle than we had
previously recognized. Thus it may deprive us of an enhanced aesthetic
experience resulting from such a discovery. Third, it may prevent us
10 Emma Smith makes a similar point about comic awkwardness with respect to “heav[ing]
Antony aloft” (IV.xvi.38) in Antony and Cleopatra, although personally I feel that this
need not be comic or awkward if performed appropriately.
from acknowledging the differences in response that are a matter of taste.

These differences do not in themselves affect Shakespeare’s stature.
However, they do indicate that there will be significant individual
variation in aesthetic response to Shakespeare’s works. More precisely,
a portion of this individual variation is a function of character identifi-
cation. Character identification – including emotional identification or
empathy – is the complex product of viewpoint simulation (spontaneous
and effortful), sympathy or emotional parallelism (in part a matter of in-
group/out-group divisions and in some degree open to modulation), and
emotional congruence (due to the particularity of one’s emotion systems,
which are for the most part not open to choice). Finally, bardolatry pre-
vents us from recognizing or at least acknowledging what might be some
more significant aesthetic problems with Shakespeare’s work, such as
problems with consistent viewpoint simulation or the activation of emo-
tion systems that contradict the main aesthetic purposes of a passage (as
when mirth is activated in the context of tragic sublimity). (Sanskrit the-
orists referred to the last as “rasabhaṅga,” “destruction of the aesthetic
mood” [Gitomer 66].)
I close, however, by noting that one can never be sure that a given prob-
lem, with Othello or with another work, might not be resolved, despite
initial appearances, which is to say, one can never be sure that an aesthetic
argument has been definitively concluded. In this case, one might argue
that the opening and closing of Othello’s final soliloquy, the passages
to which I objected in the preceding section, actually suggest a differ-
ent voice. The problem with simulation here comes from the fact that
they are lines that never should have been spoken by Othello. Readers
of Hamlet might recognize the voice that says, “When you these unlucky
deeds relate . . . set down aught in malice” (V.ii.346, 348), the voice that
makes the outrageous claim that Othello loved “too well.” It is the voice
of Horatio, the loyal friend who has stayed behind to eulogize the tragic
hero. The problem is that there is no Horatio who might remain. Othello
thought Iago was his good Horatio, and he tried to murder Cassio, who
might actually have played the Horatio role.
Of course, Shakespeare did still put the lines into Othello’s mouth.
Thus, for me, the problem remains. However, I suspect that audience
members at a play do not always pin statements entirely to their sources.
Crucially, we all sometimes treat character utterances as substitutes for
narration. When there is no narrator, key information may be placed in
the voice of one character or another, not as well-simulated expressions of
that character but as a convenience for conveying the information. This is
at least part of what is going on here as well. The difference is that this is
not precisely information. It is, rather, something that perhaps someone
should have said at Othello’s death, some acknowledgment of Othello’s

qualities and of his love for Desdemona. (If someone else makes these
statements, they no longer make his love appear insincere.) I imagine
many readers in effect section off these “ventriloquized” sections, as we
might call them. Again, for me, they remain a deep problem. However,
perhaps the possibility of such ventriloquism renders this too a matter of
taste, at least in part.
Or perhaps in seeking out this further possible justification I am simply
falling prey once more to the seductions of bardolatry.
6 What is aesthetic argument?
In Chapter 5, we considered several possible aesthetic problems with

Othello. As the analysis proceeded, we saw that the first case involved my
own cognitive errors. I had not fully understood the text. The second case
turned out to be a matter of individual taste. Only the third case was, at
least in part, the result of some flaw in the play itself. Put differently, of my
three Othello problems, only the third was arguably non-idiosyncratic and
genuinely normative, thus a matter of genuine aesthetic argument (i.e.,
the marshaling of logic and evidence in favor of an aesthetic evaluation).
But clearly the observations of Chapter 5 do not constitute an account
of aesthetic argument. First, my third objection to Othello, concerning
problems of simulation, is too particular. We need a systematic account
of the sorts of considerations that would count as normative for aesthetic
response and evaluation. More significantly, we need to establish just
what the normative force of such considerations might be.
Sticking with the last point for a moment, we might remark that there
is no clear way of making the third contention about Othello win an argu-
ment and still be genuinely normative. Suppose I claim that most people
are as a matter of fact more aesthetically pleased by works that maintain
consistency of simulation (a point that would be compatible with Reber’s
research on aesthetic response and processing fluency). Suppose further
that the claim is established as true. As a true assertion about a fact, it
is not normative. Consider a parallel example. It is almost certainly the
case that people respond to out-group characters less sympathetically
than to in-group characters. But that hardly makes lack of sympathy for
out-group characters an evaluative norm. More important, our concern
throughout this book has been with personal aesthetic response. But, if
we are speaking of aesthetic response, then it appears that a simple, “But
I still like it” (or “I still don’t care for it”) always wins. No matter how
rigorous my argument about simulation may be, it does not seem possible
for such an argument to establish that aesthetic pleasure in the ending
of Othello is wrong. In other words, one might be “wrong” about, say,
social prestige, which is an empirical issue, not a normative one. But it
178
What is aesthetic argument? 179
would seem that one’s own aesthetic response cannot be “wrong” relative
to anything else. If we are speaking about individual aesthetic response,
then your individual response is the only norm for you.
There are some aspects of individual response – or at least one’s
judgments about one’s response – that may be mistaken. For example,
suppose Jones is in a psychology experiment where he is given some
mood-improving substance, then exposed to a group of people who are
praising a work of art. Given other research (see, for example, Gilbert
and Wilson 183 and Damasio 75), we would expect Jones to attribute
his improved mood to the painting, perhaps concluding that he had a
strong aesthetic appreciation of the work. (As Clore and Ortony note,
“[P]eople tend to experience their affective feelings as reactions to
whatever happens to be in focus at the time” [27]; see also Zajonc 48.)
It would be reasonable for the experimenter to say, “No, Mr. Jones, I’m
afraid that your feelings had to do with the happy juice we gave you at
the beginning of the study. You have simply misattributed your fluttering
blissfulness to the painting.” This would include a normative element.
But it would not be a normative element bearing on the work of art.
It would be a normative element bearing on the identification of one’s
feeling. In other words, the norm would enter at the level of determining
whether the feeling was or was not an aesthetic response at all.1
On the other hand, the case of the hypothetical psychology experiment
does begin to suggest something about the nature of aesthetic argument.
Aesthetic argument can do something other than simply assert a rival
response. It can rationally and through citation of evidence address cer-
tain features of accuracy – in this case, the accuracy of explaining one’s
experience by reference to a particular target. As such, it can reasonably
lead to reconsideration of the object (e.g., a work of art). In other words, if
Jones and Smith disagree about the value of a particular painting, Jones
may offer rational arguments that Smith is mistaken about some aspects
of the painting or her response to the painting. That does not demon-
strate that an aesthetic response of the sort asserted by Smith is wrong
as such. Moreover, Smith should not simply concede the argument and
decide to agree with Jones’s judgment. Rather, if she is being reasonable
and open-minded, and if Jones’s arguments are rational, Smith may take
1 The issue is not confined to psychology experiments. Indeed, I take it that this is the
point of the common characterization of aesthetic feeling as “disinterested.” This char-
acterization is often taken to mean that a work of art should have no utility. But the key
point is simply that we are not dealing with actual aesthetic pleasure if the pleasure has
another source – the fact that one’s child produced the artwork, the fact that the success
of the film will make one a lot of money, or whatever. (For a useful overview of some
different senses of “disinterested,” see Lyas 28–29.)
those arguments as a reason to reconsider the work. On reconsideration,

she may or may not find that her response has changed.
Indeed, this is, in effect, the case with my first example from Othello.
I began with a negative assessment of part of the play. However, I
then reconsidered the work and revised my understanding. That revised
understanding in turn altered my aesthetic response to the line at issue.
In this case, I was in the position of both interlocutors. I was Smith
in having an initially debatable response to the work, but also Jones in
offering an argument about accuracy – in this case, interpretive accuracy.
We might revisit my second example in this context as well. Again,
there I explained my negative response, but discounted it as idiosyncratic.
In this case, too, we see a form of aesthetic argument. I began with a
negative response to the play. One might envision me disagreeing with
someone who experienced the depiction of violent jealousy as sublime.
In connection with this, I in effect took up the role of my own antagonist
once again. But in this case the point was not that I should reconsider
my response. The point was, rather, that my response does not count as
an argument against anyone else’s response. Thus it does not constitute
a good reason for others to reconsider their responses. Alternatively, if
other people did reconsider their responses, but still differed from me,
the analysis could help to explain why this might be the case. It indicates
that we differ in our aesthetic response due to differences in emotional
profiles. Either way, it turns out that the discussion constituted a rational
argument. In this instance, that argument was perhaps more difficult
to recognize, because it did not seek to establish a particular aesthetic
preference. Rather, it served to disarm possible arguments for or against
such a preference, distinguishing the contradictory responses as a matter
of taste.
It turns out, then, that I was mistaken in initially considering only my
third qualm relevant to aesthetic argumentation. In fact, all three are
relevant. Moreover, there was a tacit assumption in my initial claim –
that aesthetic argumentation is necessarily negative. That is probably the
usual case for paradigmatic authors. But for uncanonized authors, the
opposite would be true; for unknown or unappreciated artists, positive
arguments are more important. Moreover, the first and second qualms,
as just discussed, show that both negative and positive arguments may
be involved in complex ways with responses to even a paradigmatic
author.
All this returns us to the first of our two problems – the need for a
systematic account of the sorts of consideration that legitimately bear on
aesthetic argument. In other words, we need to address just what sorts
of criteria may be invoked reasonably in urging the reconsideration of

a target. Presumably any such criteria must be systematically related to
the components of aesthetic experience. Thus they must fall into two
broad categories – information processing and emotion elicitation. In the
following pages, we consider the ways in which the preceding analyses
of aesthetic response suggest guidelines for aesthetic argumentation. In
connection with this, I draw some distinctions that should allow us to
discuss the topic more precisely, while (I hope) advancing our under-
standing of aesthetic response as well. I illustrate these analyses with only
brief examples, since Chapter 5 has already presented a more extensive
case study.
A preliminary note on categories and value

Before going on to the systematic treatment of aesthetic argument, how-
ever, it is important to address one feature of the following analysis and
the ways it differs from one influential account of art criticism, that of
Noël Carroll. As noted in Chapter 4, Carroll and I share the view that
categorization is very important for aesthetic evaluation. However, we
differ on at least two matters. First, although we concur that art cannot
be reduced to aesthetic pleasure (see chapter 4 of Carroll’s Philosophy
and On Criticism 160–162), we take this to have different consequences.
For Carroll, this appears to mean that we should have a theory of the
value of art, rather than examining beauty and sublimity as such. This is
the conclusion many authors seem to draw from the irreducibility of art
to beauty. Having recognized the irreducibility, they continue to examine
art as a single topic, setting aside the focused examination of beauty.
For me, the non-identity of art and beauty has precisely the opposite
consequence. It shows us that art is a complex category that we can
understand only by analyzing it into components, which are themselves
often complex. Thus, to my mind, the non-identity does not detract from
the focused examination of beauty. It merely indicates that we should not
draw inferences to all art from our conclusions about aesthetic response.
(In terms of Starr’s experiment, for example, it indicates that we need to
design experiments that will distinguish sensitivity to beauty from other
components of response to art, rather than mixing them all together.)
My second disagreement with Carroll concerns the nature of cate-
gorization. I have no doubt Carroll would admit that targets may be
categorized in countless ways. Nonetheless, his argument about critical
evaluation seems to rely on definitive categorizations that are most often
a matter of genre. Thus he insists that criticizing a mystery for not having
psychological depth is misguided because mysteries need suspense, not

psychological depth (see On Criticism 29 and 97). There is, of course, a
sense in which this is true. To take an example that Carroll does not use,
one might say it is unreasonable to object to a piece of Nazi propaganda
that it is anti-Semitic, since anti-Semitism is presumably a virtue within
the category of “Nazi propaganda.” But, as this example suggests, to
reduce the judgment of aesthetic value to satisfying the criteria intrinsic
to a genre ends up being somewhat trivial. It comes down to saying that
something in category C can only be called a good instance of category C if
it has the values associated with category C. There is no reason, however,
that we should confine the evaluation of a work to a particular category.
We might reasonably ask if something is a good novel or a good work of
art or aesthetically excellent in terms of beauty or sublimity.
Consider Carroll’s (reasonable) view that it is unfair to object to a lack
of psychological depth in a mystery novel. This point seems to apply
only negatively. In other words, it remains reasonable to praise a mystery
novel for psychological depth. If you like mystery A and I like mystery
B, it is perfectly reasonable for you to say, “Both are good as mysteries,
but A has much greater psychological depth.” Indeed, even if A does not
have much suspense, you might reasonably say to me, “Okay, A is not
very successful, considered narrowly as a mystery. However, it has great
psychological depth, stylistic polish, narrational innovation, and a degree
of acute social observation that are absent from B. Overall, then, it seems
to me a much superior novel, a far greater work of verbal art, whatever
its lack of suspense.” As John Passmore once wrote, “A good detective
story need not be a good work of art” (52).
Carroll would probably respond to this by saying that some categories
of work are more “culturally important” than others (see On Criticism
193–194). But it is not clear that this solves the problem. Yes, it is the
case that, for example, the category “sonata” is more substantial than the
category “advertising jingle.” (I leave aside the specific topic of “cultural
importance” per se, because it is not clear that sonatas are more culturally
important than advertising jingles.) But we may reasonably wish to say
that one mystery novel is aesthetically exquisite, although not very sus-
penseful, whereas another mystery novel gets high marks on suspense but
is weak as verbal art. This is because we can categorize both as works of
verbal art, or as aesthetic works (here used to mean works with properties
relevant to the experience of beauty or sublimity). It is not because we
can categorize one in a more important or consequential category than
the other (e.g., novel versus anecdote). In other words, it results from the
possibility of multiple categorizations of the same works, placing them in
the same aesthetic categories, not different genre categories.
The possibility of aesthetic categorization is not simply a complication

of Carroll’s scheme. Carroll’s analysis can accommodate differences
in, say, genre versus subgenre (e.g., mystery novel versus postmodern
mystery novel), probably with subgenre-based criteria being definitive
relative to genre-based criteria. But his account works, I believe, only if
the evaluative criteria of some lower-level categories (prominently genre)
substitute entirely for any more general, aesthetic criteria. As soon as
“aesthetic works” becomes a possible, encompassing category – that
is, as soon as this category can supply evaluative criteria for aesthetic
argument – then we are back to the problem Carroll was trying to
overcome by displacing evaluative criteria onto the (lower-level) genre
categories to begin with. That problem is, again, just what criteria there
might be for aesthetic evaluation – or, in our terms, just what might
constitute reasonable grounds for aesthetic argument.
Problems and obstacles, qualities and

enjoyment features
It may be useful to begin by drawing a broad theoretical distinction
between problems and qualities, on the one hand, and obstacles and
enjoyment features, on the other. As a first approximation, we may say
that the former are aspects of the work that may be reasonably invoked in
arguments regarding the aesthetic value of a target, for example, a literary
work. Problems and qualities are not proofs or demonstrations. They
simply provide grounds for the reconsideration of works that one believes
has been overvalued (in relation to problems) or undervalued (in relation
to qualities). Qualities would include, for example, patterns. Problems
would include predictability. Thus one might reasonably argue against a
low estimation of the work by maintaining that it involves patterns that
the recipient missed. For example, if someone hears a rāga improvisation
as mere noise or randomness, one might point out the rhythmic cycles,
the recurrence of the resolving note, and other patterned features. In
contrast, if someone expresses rapture over a very ordinary dancing Śiva
statue, one might point out that such statues are entirely commonplace,
thus predictable. In the former case, one would be citing qualities to
oppose undervaluation. In the latter, one would be citing a problem to
oppose overvaluation.
In contrast with problems and qualities, obstacles and enjoyment fea-
tures are aspects of a work or the recipient of the work that respec-
tively inhibit (obstacles) or enhance (enjoyment features) one’s aesthetic
response to that work. Specifically, an obstacle is a de facto difficulty
with isolating a pattern, recognizing prototype approximation, sustaining
interest, experiencing attachment system activation, or having other pos-

itive aesthetic experiences. Enjoyment features are features that enable
any of these experiences. It is important to stress that obstacles are not
equal to problems. For example, a logical or empirical error in a novel
may constitute a problem, but it need not have any effect on a particular
reader. Without having any such effect, it cannot constitute an obstacle
for him or her. Moreover, obstacles are not a subset of problems. For
example, the allusiveness of a work, or simply its extensive vocabulary or,
even more simply, its great length may constitute an obstacle for a given
reader, whereas the allusiveness and the vocabulary may contribute to
qualities for those who understand the allusions and the nuances of the
terms.
Parallel points hold for enjoyment features. For example, I recently
watched DVDs of a number of art house films that I remember liking
particularly when I was eighteen or nineteen. Some of them I continued
to admire a great deal; others, less so. I was somewhat uncertain as to
what had previously given me such enthusiasm for the works, especially
those of the second sort. I was inclined to think that it was almost entirely
their unpredictability, due to deviation from the practices of Hollywood
cinema. My wife, however, had another theory, which had not occurred
to me. She said that each of the films in question had a prominent scene
with an attractive, naked woman. I am disinclined to accept this as the
primary reason I was drawn to these works. (Surely I must have seen
films with naked women that I judged inferior cinema!) However, if she
is at all correct that the nudity served as an enjoyment feature for my
aesthetic response, then this is a clear case where an enjoyment feature is
not a quality, because merely having a nude scene is hardly an aesthetic
virtue.
There are other differences between qualities and problems, on the one
hand, and enjoyment features and obstacles, on the other. Perhaps most
significantly, any aspect of an aesthetic event may constitute an enjoyment
feature or an obstacle. Such aspects include, for example, the moods or
dispositions of the recipient (e.g., the reader of the novel). However,
as a general rule, we would be inclined to confine the qualities and
problems to features of the work itself (as the work guides its realization
in recipients’ interpretation and response).
As the preceding points suggest, one important form of aesthetic argu-
mentation involves maintaining that, for a particular recipient and work,
obstacles are not in fact problems or enjoyment features are not in fact
qualities. In such cases, obstacles lead to undervaluing that work, whereas
enjoyment features lead to overvaluing it. Aesthetic arguments of this
sort may take two forms, depending on whether the parties do or do not
agree on the obstacles or enjoyment features. For clarity of exposition, we

might distinguish an initial “evaluator,” which is to say, the person whose
response gives rise to the dispute, and the “critic,” the person articulating
a counterargument. The evaluator may attribute his or her response to a
particular property or set of properties in the target (e.g., the artwork).
The critic may agree or disagree with this attribution. In other words,
the critic may say, “Yes, you are responding badly to the work because it
is very allusive” or “No, you are actually responding badly to the work
because you are in such a bad mood.”
If the critic agrees with an attribution, he or she may contest the rel-
evance of the property or properties to aesthetic response. For example,
Smith might object to “The Waste Land,” saying that it is too allusive.
Jones might respond that the allusiveness of the work is part of what gives
it the complex breadth of patterning that makes it sublime. Both agree
that the work is densely allusive, but they disagree on the consequences
of this property. Note that, by the preceding account, Jones’s argument
cannot reasonably be taken to represent a demonstration of the value
of Eliot’s poem. Rather, it can only be taken as a recommendation that
Smith undertake the requisite study of the allusions and reconsider the
poem.
In a case of this sort, the argument may lead to a stalemate. Smith
may not be in a position to cultivate the degree of erudition required to
respond spontaneously to the allusions in the poem. Thus it may not be
possible for him to reconsider the poem as urged by Jones. Alternatively,
he may be unwilling to invest that amount of time and effort in such an
uncertain project. Indeed, aesthetic arguments often lead to stalemates
of this sort. In addition, however they end, their results are not general-
izable. If Smith reconsiders the poem and ends up agreeing with Jones,
that does not “verify” Jones’s normative argument. Conversely, if Smith
reconsiders the poem and still dislikes it, that does not falsify Jones’s
normative argument. In other words, Jones may still reasonably proffer
the same argument to other readers later on.
The case of disagreement over attribution operates in much the same
way, with one difference. When there is disagreement about the sources
of an evaluator’s aesthetic response, then there are two levels of critical
analysis. First, there is the separation of false from true causes; second,
there is the characterization of those true causes as neither qualities nor
problems. For example, in watching the films mentioned above, my con-
tention was that my earlier aesthetic enjoyment was a function of the
refusal of the films in question to conform to canons of Hollywood sto-
rytelling. My wife’s contention was, roughly, that I had confused sexual
titillation with aesthetic enjoyment, that I was affected by enjoyment
features, but then convinced myself that I was delighting in aesthetic

qualities. In this case, we agreed that the features in question (nudity)
do not in themselves constitute qualities, but only enjoyment features.
In that sense, the process of aesthetic critique was simplified. However,
there is another sense in which it was complicated. Suppose we travel
back in time by thirty-five years and face my younger self with my wife’s
account – how exactly would her argument affect my aesthetic response?
What consequences would her argument have for my reconsideration
of the films in question? Presumably, I would try to adopt an attitude
toward the film in which I distinguished my aesthetical pleasure from the
sexual interest provoked by the nudity. This is similar to the case where
someone tries to respond to, for example, a film directed by his or her
child. In both cases, there are cognitive biases and affective inclinations
that one might try to modulate.
The preceding examples suggest that arguments about qualities and
problems versus enjoyment features and obstacles are purely negative.
They set out to show that a recipient’s response to a target is mis-
guided. However, aesthetic argument also involves attempts to isolate
qualities and problems as such – as opposed to merely debunking pseudo-
problems (i.e., obstacles) and pseudo-qualities (i.e., enjoyment features).
Indeed, we could not avoid this in the preceding examples, as when our
hypothetical Jones defended Eliot’s allusiveness on the grounds that it
enhanced the work’s breadth of patterning.
Again, by the account presented here, qualities are not beautiful owing
to their simple presence in the target and problems are not ugly owing
to such simple presence. Rather, aesthetic argument involves a response-
related admonition: Try thinking about the work in this way (recognizing
this quality), and (I believe) you will like it better. Or, try thinking about
the work in this way (recognizing this problem), and (I believe) you will
not care for it as much. More technically, the idea is that if the quality
enters into one’s information processing of or affective engagement with
the target, that will enhance one’s aesthetic enjoyment. Conversely, if the
problem enters, that will diminish one’s aesthetic enjoyment.
An aesthetic argument may succeed by altering the recipient’s aesthetic
response. It may lead to stalemate, when the argument has not been
invalidated, but genuine reconsideration does not occur (e.g., when the
recipient cannot acquire necessary fluency of knowledge, as in the case
of allusion). Finally, an aesthetic argument may fail. This occurs when,
because of some invalidity in the argument, the recipient reasonably
concludes that no reconsideration is needed or when the reconsideration
occurs, but produces no alteration in the recipient’s response, even if the
argument is not invalid.
More exactly, a positive aesthetic argument – that is, an argument that

asserts the existence of problems or qualities – may fail for four reasons.
First, it may not bear on a property of the target or its bearing may be too
weakly supported. For example, Jones might argue that a particular line
in a poem involves an allusion, but it may then turn out that the work
supposedly alluded to was in fact published after the poem, not before;
thus there could not be an allusion. This is a case where we may refer to
an aesthetic argument as false rather than simply failed. (More complex
cases of the same sort occur with more or less irresolvable interpretive
disputes, though these might also be considered stalemates.)
The second way in which a positive aesthetic argument may fail is if
it bears on the target, but it does so in an aesthetically irrelevant way.
Having nudity or being directed by one’s offspring may well be properties
of the target. To assert that they are qualities is not misguided owing to
interpretive mistakes (“No, you’re wrong about that. There’s no nudity
in that film”). It is misguided because they are aesthetically irrelevant.
(We will consider just what sorts of property are aesthetically relevant in
the following sections.)
The third way in which a positive aesthetic argument may fail is if the
problem or quality does not enter into processing at all. When this occurs
contingently, owing to limited capacities or lack of effort on the part of
the recipient, I have referred to the result as a stalemate. However, it
may also happen that the properties at issue are actually not available for
ordinary, human encoding.2 For example, Lerdahl has argued that some
patterns in serial music are beyond human processing capacities. We
may self-consciously isolate certain patterns when faced with a written
score. However, we cannot experience those patterns (see also London on
the accessibility of metric features in listeners’ perception [22, 27–30]).
In consequence, the patterns presumably cannot enter into aesthetic
response.3 We probably would not want to refer to an argument bearing
2 An intermediate case may be found in patterns that stretch across intervals that we
would not be able to process spontaneously, but that we may be able to process when
alerted to their presence. For example, Delabastita rightly objects to analyses that ignore
“limits that our memory span imposes on long-distance . . . punning” (161). We can
in principle be made aware of possible puns separated by many pages. But the sort of
processing required (e.g., a degree of self-consciousness about the pun) may inhibit its
effects. For example, it may be difficult for readers to be amused by such a pun.
3 Jérôme Ducros may seem to suggest a related point in his indication that atonal compo-
sitions do not establish expectations, such that an atonal sequence in effect allows any
outcome. (See Ducros’s lecture at the Collège de France on 20 December 2012, http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yot1zZAUOZ4 [accessed 25 January 2014]). However, if
he intends to indicate that there is no significant pattern isolation by recipients of atonal
music, he seems to be mistaken. An atonal sequence may not have any clearly “wrong”
outcome (in the way that a standard tonal piece has outcomes that we interpret as
on these sorts of pattern as false. But we probably would count such

an argument as inconsequential for aesthetics understood responsively.
If aesthetic value were simply an objective property, then unencodable
features (features that cannot enter into cognitive or affective processing)
might bear on aesthetic argument. However, if aesthetic value is respon-
sive (thus experience dependent), then such features cannot have a place
in such argument.4
The first three ways in which a positive aesthetic argument may fail
are a matter of invalidity. The final way concerns even valid arguments.
These fail if they genuinely enter into processing in a reconsideration
of the work but produce no change or a different effect from what the
argument anticipated. For example, suppose Smith plays a rāga for Jones,
who has no knowledge of Indian classical music. Jones hears the piece
as a series of meandering, almost random notes. Smith then explains
the rhythmic structure of the work. Jones then encodes the structure.
But, instead of finding innovation within an expectancy structure, he
now finds the piece dully repetitive. This is a difference in outcome.
The argument anticipated appreciation, and the reconsideration led to
boredom. There may also be limited failure when the argument leads
to alteration in the anticipated direction, but in lesser degree. This is
probably the most common case with aesthetic argumentation. Smith is
enthusiastic about a particular rāga performance; Jones is bored. Smith
explains aspects of the music to him. Jones listens again, incorporating
the new sensitivities, but the result is still boredom, if less of it.
Thus a positive aesthetic argument may fail through falsity (or perhaps
interpretive opacity), irrelevance, inconsequentiality, or ineffectiveness.
Negative or debunking aesthetic arguments – which seek to derive the
evaluator’s response from obstacles or enjoyment features – may fail for
mistakes on the part of the performer). But that does not exclude the experience of
either expectations or patterns. For example, Edgard Varèse’s exquisite, “non-tonal”
(Marvin 73) Density 21.5 – “a bulwark of New Music,” in Fabbriciani’s words – may
not create strictly violable expectations in the sense intended by Ducros, but it clearly
develops into isolable patterns. (For a valuable analysis of some of these patterns, see
Marvin 73–78.) Readers interested in listening to the piece may find a performance at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCFk0f8szes (accessed 25 January 2014).
4 Again, some atonal compositions would provide fitting examples. As the preceding note
indicates, I am not claiming here that no structures are experientially isolable in atonal
music. Nonetheless, many “objective” patterns may not bear on our experience, or even
the experience of experts. As Snyder points out, experimental research indicates that
even “musicians familiar . . . with atonal idioms . . . had great difficulty identifying
varied repetitions of twelve-tone series, especially in an actual musical context” (112). If
a variation is not discernible even by experts, then it cannot reasonably be invoked as a
quality. If it can be discerned by some super-experts, but not other experts, then it may
be rationally invoked, but will not prove effective for aesthetic argument, except in the
group of super-experts.
parallel reasons, at least in three of the four cases. First, they will fail if the
causal attribution is false (i.e., if the evaluator’s response was not due to
the obstacles or enjoyment features at issue). For example, it could hap-
pen that my wife’s explanation of my youthful aesthetic experience does
not adequately fit the films in question and is, therefore, probably mis-
taken. Second, debunking arguments will fail if the putative obstacles or
enjoyment features may be rationally construed as problems or qualities.
This is, in effect, a case of aesthetic relevance (rather than irrelevance).
For example, a critic might claim that an evaluator underestimates a
work because of that work’s historically determined patriarchal attitudes,
which are (in this critic’s view) a mere obstacle, not a problem. But
the patriarchal ideology of a work may inhibit, say, attachment system
activation (e.g., in making a heroine’s romantic preferences unsympa-
thetic), thus arguably constituting a problem. Finally, such arguments
may foster reconsideration, but produce no change in response. (Incon-
sequentiality does not seem to have a parallel here distinct from simple
falsity.)
Of course, this analysis leaves aside the key issue of just what defines
truth in aesthetic argument and, even more important, what constitutes
relevance. As already indicated, the answer lies in the definition of aes-
thetic experience, thus the components isolated in previous chapters.
In the remainder of this chapter, we consider this topic and associated
concerns in greater detail.
Before going on, however, there is an important practical qualifica-
tion to all this. In the preceding cases, I have tacitly assumed that the
critic begins with greater sensitivity to the target than the evaluator. For
instance, the preceding rāga example presupposes that Smith is more cog-
nizant of the properties of the rāga performance than Jones is, that she
(Smith) is an “expert” – a sensitive critic or “sahr.daya,” as the Sanskrit
aesthetic theorists put it – whereas Jones is a novice. Crucially, how-
ever, not all cases are so straightforward. Most obviously, many aesthetic
arguments take place between two experts or two novices. Moreover,
even the case of a sahr.daya and a novice may not be so simple. Specif-
ically, it is important to distinguish between aesthetic sensitivity and
articulateness. I may be more articulate about Hindustānı̄ music than
Jones. But, even given his limited exposure, he may be more aestheti-
cally sensitive to such music. In other words, he may be encoding and
processing properties to which I am deaf, even though he is unable to
spell out precisely what those properties are. This suggests a particularly
significant way in which failure through ineffectiveness may work its way
out. In this case, the properties isolated by the aesthetic argument have
already been included by the recipient, but he or she had been unable to
articulate them. For example, Jones may have sensed the cyclical nature
of the rāga’s rhythmic expectancy structure, though he had never heard
the word “tāla” (rhythmic cycle). Thus the reconsideration might not
change his response, because there is no significant processing change,
just a change in articulateness about the processing. I suspect that this is
not a rare occurrence. Moreover, in these circumstances, it seems likely
that cultural authorities will often in effect bully sensitive novices into
acquiescing in their explicit judgments. Of course, this likelihood should
not be overestimated. The opposite may happen as well, and a novice
with little prior sensitivity to the art in question may more firmly assert
his or her view against the suggestions of an expert, unfairly dismissing
the latter as an elitist. The point is that it is important to recognize that the
social and psychological dynamics of such disagreements are not simply
a matter of rational aesthetic argument or straightforward differences in
expertise.
Justification and aesthetic argument (I): obstacles and

enjoyment features
Again, the preceding comments on aesthetic argument passed rather
quickly over the sources of justification. To identify and invoke problems
and qualities, it is necessary to understand why it is rational to invoke
some properties of a work in normative arguments, and why it is not ratio-
nal to invoke other properties. Again, aesthetic argument is not binding;
it does not prove a particular aesthetic response to be right or wrong.
However, it can be reasonable or not. To offer reasonable aesthetic argu-
ments, we need to know what makes such arguments reasonable to begin
with. Thus far we have isolated types of argument, formally distinguish-
ing their normative status (specifically, their types of failure). However,
we have not systematically treated the substance of the norms defining
that status.
It seems clear that any criteria for aesthetic response must derive from
the nature of aesthetic response. If the preceding account is correct,
this means that the normative force of positive aesthetic argument (con-
cerning qualities or problems) should derive from the nature of relevant
sorts of information processing (unanticipated pattern isolation, pro-
totype approximation, and exemplar assimilation) and emotion system
engagement (particularly reward and attachment system involvement).
Similarly, we would understand obstacles and enjoyment features in rela-
tion to these components of aesthetic response, but as lacking some
crucial element or violating associated principles. In this and the fol-
lowing sections, we consider these topics, beginning with obstacles and
enjoyment features, then turning to problems and qualities. There are

many ways in which a response may violate norms implicit in the consti-
tution of aesthetic response. We cannot consider all of them here. How-
ever, it is possible to set out some representative examples that illustrate
the nature and scope of such violations.
We may begin with obstacles. Identifying types of obstacle is impor-
tant because each type of obstacle points toward a type of aesthetic argu-
ment – specifically, an argument that endeavors to remove the obstacle.
Information processing could produce obstacles for pattern recognition,
prototype approximation, or exemplar assimilation, and it could do so at
any stage of processing. (For simplicity of exposition, I focus on pattern
recognition in this section, deferring the examination of prototypes and
exemplars to the discussion of problems and qualities.) Specifically, pat-
tern recognition begins with encoding features of the target and proceeds
by generating rules that define patterns in the target. Obstacles may arise
when the recipient is unable to encode important features (an “input”
problem) or is unable to generate an accurate rule (an “output” prob-
lem). In parallel with these points, Isenberg observed that a critic “guides
us in the discrimination of details” (thus encoding) and “the grouping of
discrete objects into patterns” (thus rule isolation; 137).
Inability to encode important features is perhaps the most common
obstacle facing novices approaching a work of art. Such encoding is
linked with familiarity and expertise. As Solso notes, referring to visual
art, “[T]echnical knowledge significantly enhances what is seen and how
the material is remembered” (145). As to music, Tervaniemi explains
that “melodic and harmonic violations are more readily processed by
musicians” (222; differences of this sort may reflect problems encoding
features of the violation, problems isolating the violated rule, or both).
Encoding differences also arise owing to differences in familiarity that
fall short of expertise. A simple case may be found in musical traditions
that are foreign to the listener. For example, listeners unfamiliar with
Hindustānı̄ classical music may hear only vague hints of tonal qualities in
unfamiliar scales. Many Hindustānı̄ scales have European parallels and
are likely to convey some sense of tension and tonal resolution. Thus
novices are unlikely to hear a rāga simply as noise. However, they are
also unlikely to fully appreciate the complex structure. This may result
from a number of factors that bear on encoding. Important elements
include the absence of a background principle or prototype to provide
an expectancy structure, such as that relating to the coincidence of the
resolving tone with the first beat of the rhythmic cycle. They also include
misdirected attention. As noted in Chapter 1, it sometimes happens that
the solo instrumentalist gives the floor to the drummer for a time. In
that case, the instrumentalist will provide the expectancy structure by

repeating some simple motif, while the drummer improvises. At this
time, the listener needs to shift his or her attentional orientation from the
instrumentalist to the drummer, exchanging the foreground and back-
ground. A third sort of missed encoding may occur when a particular
aspect of the target is not overtly present. This occurs in artistic and
cultural allusion, among other things. In all these cases, aesthetic argu-
mentation would involve redirecting the recipient in such a way as to
foster the relevant encoding.
Isolating a rule, though sometimes difficult in practice, is fairly straight-
forward in principle.5 For example, in a musical performance of Rāga
Lalit, we would hear the scale (beginning with the resolving tone, roughly,
F, G , A, B, C, D , E). While exploring the scale, the performer might
play a series of ascending triples – C, D , E; D , E, F; E, F, G , and
so on. The rule is, roughly, “Beginning with the resolving tone or with
sa, play three consecutive, ascending, scalar tones; repeat this, raising the
initial tone one scalar tone with each iteration.” (Sa – in this case, C – is
the standard initial tone for scales even when it is not the resolving tone.)
Suppose a particular listener did not implicitly derive this rule for this
sequence. Then he or she might have the sense that the piece is chaotic.
An aesthetic argument opposing that obstacle could point out this sim-
ple pattern or rule. Listeners should be able to hear this sequence with
minimal instruction.
Similar points apply to literature. For example, a reader might be con-
fused by some event or some sequence in James Joyce’s Ulysses. In that
novel, it often happens that the narration shifts between third-person
and interior monologue, commonly that of Stephen Dedalus or Leopold
Bloom. Interior monologue sections are sometimes highly elliptical and
opaque. But they often manifest a simple pattern. For example, both
Stephen and Bloom have a limited number of concerns that underlie
many of their thoughts and actions in the course of the day. They also
have typical ways of responding to those concerns. Stephen’s main, recur-
ring concern is the death of his mother (as the anniversary of that death is
approaching). Bloom’s main, recurring concern is the adultery of his wife
(which he knows is likely to occur on that day itself). Their typical ways of
dealing with these aversive preoccupations make use of standard psycho-
logical processes – mood congruent processing or brooding, in Stephen’s
5 This is not to say that it is cognitively simple. There is a great deal to be said about
the non-conscious cognitive operations that produce rules. For example, Solso notes
a number of features – proximity, similarity, continuation, and so forth – that provide
partial guidelines for perceptual pattern isolation (see 87–99). This level of processing
analysis is extremely important, but goes beyond the scope of the present book.
case, and mood repair or self-distraction in Bloom’s. Many seemingly

anomalous passages in the book make sense once one recognizes this
pattern.
Obstacles may bear not only on information, but also on emotion.
As the examples of Stephen and Bloom indicate, even some affective
obstacles result from information processing problems. Both Stephen’s
and Bloom’s main preoccupations in the course of the novel concern
attachment relations. The reader’s empathic response to many passages
in the work is likely to be blunted insofar as he or she does not simu-
late the characters’ emotional concerns – and that non-simulation may
result from processing difficulties. To put the point simply, one cannot
identify with Stephen’s grief in a given (elliptical) passage if one does not
understand that the passage bears on his mother’s death.
On the other hand, cases of empathy limitation are not confined to an
inability to comprehend a character’s motivations. We may be perfectly
capable of giving a correct answer to a question about a character’s feel-
ings while still not experiencing empathy with him or her. In some cases,
this is due to problems with the literary work. But in some cases it results
from lack of empathic effort on the part of the reader – or from external
factors such as habituation to a particular work. For example, Shake-
speare’s most famous works are so familiar to even many non-expert
readers that it is sometimes difficult to overcome the habituation caused
by overexposure and to experience the humanity of the characters. Few
readers or audience members are likely to miss the point that Hamlet
is suffering grief over the death of his father. However, few are likely
to engage in the effortful simulation necessary to genuinely empathize
with this grief. Aesthetic argument in this context might involve simply
an encouragement to pause and imagine subjectively the state of mind
that would lead someone to a line such as, “Seems, madam? Nay, it is.
I know not ‘seems’” (Hamlet I.ii.81). Its subtle combination of angry
resentment and deep sorrow is, for me, piercing. Specifically, it stresses
the internality of Hamlet’s grief, the force of a sorrow that would not
allow him to dissemble cheer. At the same time, it reveals his under-
standing of his mother: she grieves so little that any expression of sorrow
would be mere seeming. Indeed, it suggests something even worse –
Gertrude so little regrets her husband’s passing that she does not even
seem to mourn. This shows a lack of respect for the dead man, which
wounds Hamlet. It also means that there is no one with whom Ham-
let can share his grief, as Gertrude would be the obvious candidate
for such sharing. All these points could be part of an aesthetic argu-
ment that urged an indifferent reader to return to the play with altered
sensitivities.
Other affective obstacles would include the usual personal biases, such
as rivalry with the author or an excessive sensitivity to some aversive
emotions. It is easy enough to argue against obstacles of the former sort,
and the validity of such arguments is generally recognized. Obstacles of
the latter sort usually cannot affect the individual concerned, except at
a cognitive level. For example, I find it difficult to watch films in which
characters do embarrassing things. Someone might respond to my nega-
tive evaluation of a film by saying that I am too squeamish to appreciate
the work. I might agree that his or her assessment is probably correct.
However, it is unlikely that this agreement will have much of an effect
on my aesthetic response when seeing the movie the next time. Here,
the function of aesthetic argument bears mostly on third parties. For
example, my wife and I often agree about films. However, she is not as
squeamish as I am about on-screen embarrassment. A critic might rea-
sonably contend that my negative evaluation should not bias my wife’s
response, since my reaction was distorted by excessive sensitivity to aver-
sive self-exposure.
More importantly, affective obstacles arise not only from individual
relations or propensities, but from identity group definition as well. Iden-
tity group divisions create many affective and cognitive biases, including
at least some aesthetic biases (see, for example, Yoerg 58 on biases regard-
ing appearances; see also Duckitt 68–69 on biases regarding evaluative
traits and activities). Group bias is difficult to critique effectively since
such a critique commonly amounts to a stigmatizing accusation in indi-
vidual cases. Thus the person being criticized is likely to respond by
defending himself or herself, rather than trying to reconsider the work
in question. For example, suppose Jones does not much care for Mrs.
Dalloway. If it turns out that he has similar problems with a range of
works by women authors, we might suspect a group bias on his part.
However, facing him with this diagnosis is likely to be hurtful, and he is
likely to respond with self-defense. However, if he does recognize this as a
problem, he may undertake a process of modulating his biased approach,
making greater effort at isolating patterns, engaging in emotionally rele-
vant simulation, and so forth.
Beyond such individual applications, group bias suggests another func-
tion for aesthetic argument. Such argument may bear not only on the
reconsideration of individual response, but on canonization, which is to
say, the selection of works to which we grant a prima facie presumption of
aesthetic accomplishment. Again, identity group bias presents obstacles
for aesthetic response. Insofar as an artistic canon has been defined by
members of a particular identity group (e.g., European men), we would
expect that canon to be partially vitiated by such bias. In consequence, we
have reason to suspect that the exclusion of works by members of other

identity groups (e.g., Africans or women) results from affective obstacles
experienced by the evaluators rather than affective problems with the
works themselves. In short, this sort of argument may have limited value
for individual response (owing to the likelihood of defensive responses –
and the bullying misuse of such arguments by self-righteous critics). But
it has considerable value for institutional issues.
Turning to enjoyment features, we might first remark that the debunk-
ing of enjoyment features is often less important than the differentiation of
obstacles from problems. This is because it seems generally more impor-
tant to avoid rejecting works of value than to avoid cherishing works that
are sometimes appreciated for the wrong reasons. In other words, aes-
thetic arguments against enjoyment features are arguments against the
evaluator’s admiration of a work. In contrast, aesthetic arguments against
obstacles are arguments supporting the value of works repudiated by the
recipient. In general, it seems that celebrating some works for bad rea-
sons is less worrisome than denigrating some works for bad reasons. For
example, Jones may dislike a work by Shakespeare because of unhappy
associations from a high school literature class. In contrast, he may favor
a work by his daughter. Leaving aside extreme cases – where Jones is,
say, making decisions about a major literary anthology – it seems unim-
portant to disabuse Jones of positive illusions regarding his daughter, as
opposed to fostering in him an appreciation of a work that he associates
with dissatisfactions in secondary school.
Of course, individually idiosyncratic preferences (e.g., liking one’s
daughter) are usually not the most important issue here. The case of
in-group/out-group divisions is perhaps the most crucial concern, espe-
cially when related to institutional issues. We have a more clearly
illegitimate enjoyment feature when that feature is based on in-group
definition, thus when one’s enjoyment of a work is a function of group
pride (as opposed to a merely personal affiliation). For example, it is quite
possible – indeed, I would say almost certain – that the apparent appre-
ciation that many Irish readers have for Joyce is a function of national
identification rather than anything that derives from the work itself or
the usual components of aesthetic response. On the other hand, this case
points to another drawback of debunking enjoyment features. The irrel-
evance of an enjoyment feature simply does not entail that the target is
aesthetically problematic. For example, the irrelevance of Irish national
pride to Joyce’s Ulysses does not mean that Ulysses lacks aesthetic merit.
Thus arguing against in-group bias often has no consequences for the
aesthetic value of a given target. The obvious exception to this is when
the in-group pride is linked with out-group denigration. For instance, a
work that provokes male in-group identification becomes seriously flawed

when it involves misogyny as well. But that leads us from debunking
enjoyment features to isolating problems.
Some affectively based enjoyment features are more complex, diffi-
cult to identify and probably more controversial. For example, I would
separate wonder at skill from aesthetic response. Skill is undoubtedly
something to be admired. However, it is distinct from the components of
aesthetic response, although the feeling of wonder at skill seems readily
conflated with our delight at unexpected patterning. The two are easily
confused because the creation of complex, unexpected patterning often
requires skill (as well as creativity). But, I believe, skill itself does not
contribute to aesthetic response (beyond serving as a source for some
unexpected patterning). A simple but unexpected pattern may be highly
aesthetically pleasing, without requiring anything we would ordinarily
think of as skill, as in some musical minimalism. In contrast, skill may be
deployed to entirely unaesthetic feats, such as inscribing the Bible on a
very small surface. Thus I would say it is reasonable to argue that some-
one’s apparent aesthetic response is biased by wonder at skill. This seems
to be often the case with the enjoyment of special-effects blockbusters.
Openmouthed awe at computer graphics may be a perfectly appropriate
response. Maybe it is even a more enjoyable or socially consequential
experience than the experience of personal beauty or sublimity. But it is,
nonetheless, different.
A perhaps even more controversial case concerns what is called “senti-
mentality.” Personally, I believe that many putatively sentimental works
are highly aesthetically accomplished and deeply affecting. It seems that
the criticism of sentimentality is often bound up with gender biases (see,
for example, Tompkins on the critical opposition of “light ‘feminine’
novels vs. tough-minded intellectual treatises; domestic ‘chattiness’ vs.
serious thinking; and summarily, the ‘damned mob of scribbling women’
vs. a few giant intellects” [125]).6 However, it does seem to be the case
that some works manipulate attachment feelings in particular, yielding
powerful emotional responses that are aesthetically problematic. Thus
there seems to be a difference between a pseudo-sublime Hallmark
card commercial treating Father’s Day and a genuinely aesthetically
affecting work that treats father–child attachment such as the Sanskrit
Abhijñānaśākuntalam or King Lear. The Hallmark card commercial may
6 Moreover, the term “sentimental” is often used vaguely or ambiguously. When writers
make the definition more precise, they frequently take up a different sense of “sentiment”
than the one that names an aesthetic fault; for example, in moral philosophy and moral
psychology, a sentiment is often simply an emotion or some subset of emotions or
emotional tendencies, such as compassion (see, for example, Nichols and Solomon).
produce a more intense attachment-based response in a viewer. But its

sentimentality, I would argue, makes this intensified attachment orien-
tation into an enjoyment feature (in some cases, even a problem), rather
than a quality.
This difference may at first appear to be a matter of predictability, of a
routinized representation that makes the sentimental work clichéd. But
this does not seem to produce the same response as habituation usually
does – boredom and lack of interest. Rather, the clichés tend to produce
an intensified and even painful sense of attachment longing.
Alternatively, one might imagine that the problem with the Hallmark
commercial is the purpose being served by the emotional arousal. It
all leads toward selling some product. But there are sentimental films
in which idealized parents confront demonized children – or where the
parents are demonized and the children are idealized, or where both are
idealized. These do not sell products. Thus the problem cannot simply
be commercialism. On the other hand, such works do often seem to
“sell” an ideology. For example, in recent Indian cinema, the sentimental
treatment of parents frequently operates to support family hierarchies and
a narrow vision of Hindu tradition. In these respects, the problems with
sentimentalism often involve an ethical or political component. That may
be germane, because ethics is not entirely separate from aesthetics. For
example, moral disgust should inhibit our attachment or reward response
to a work (cf. Silvia 269 on responses of disgust to works of art).
But this too does not resolve the issue. After all, a sentimental work
might serve some beneficial political purpose, without thereby overcom-
ing its sentimentality. For example, sentimental television programs may
cultivate profound attachment feelings for aged and debilitated parents,
thus urging adult children to be sensitive to the needs of their elderly,
failing mothers and fathers. This is not at all morally disgusting. But such
a work may still be sentimental – in contrast with, say, King Lear, which
in part treats just these concerns, without sentimentalism.
The center of sentimentalism seems, rather, to reside in the nature of
attachment system activations. Specifically, I would suggest that the key
difference is that sentimental works activate feelings of guilt and pride
along with the feelings of attachment and that, in each case – including
attachment – these feelings are not aesthetically oriented, because of
their target. Specifically, many works recruit empathic guilt and/or pride,
oriented toward the work. For example, King Lear undoubtedly does
this for many readers or viewers. In contrast, sentimental works acti-
vate these feelings in non-empathic ways, thus as feelings of one’s own
guilt and pride in relation to one’s own attachment objects. Crucially,
they foster false idealization either of one’s attachment objects or of
oneself, or both. Somewhat oversimplifying, we might say that, senti-

mental works may provoke readers to think, “Oh, I need to be a better
mom,” momentarily idealizing their children; alternatively, sentimen-
tal works may provoke readers to think, “Thank God I’m not like that
heartless mother,” momentarily idealizing themselves. The latter clearly
operates as an enjoyment feature (making one feel like a great parent
is not an aesthetic quality of a work). But the former does so as well,
because it idealizes one’s attachment objects and, in addition, probably
fosters a sense of self-satisfaction that one has realized one’s sinfulness.
Thus to object that a work is sentimental is to object that the recipient’s
positive response to the work is a function of his or her non-empathic,
attachment-based idealizations, thus enjoyment features.
One interesting twist on sentimentalism may be found in postmod-
ern novels that systematically alienate the reader from attachment.
Rather than idealizing any attachment figure, thereby (perhaps) foster-
ing idealization-based guilt and shame or pride, a work such as Samuel
Beckett’s Molloy systematically demystifies attachment. Specifically, the
first half of Molloy is a parent–child separation narrative. However, the
mother and child can barely communicate with one another (owing to
the mother’s degeneration with age), and clearly did not understand
each other very well before that. Moreover, the narrative does not pass
over the sometimes disgust-provoking physical aspects of the relations
between mother and child – as in Molloy’s reflections, alluding in part
to his birth, that he “did more than rub up against” his mother (53).
This section also treats other bonding relations, including friendship and
romantic love. Specifically, Molloy feels he experienced sexual love with
Edith, but he is uncertain of just how their intercourse proceeded. Thus
he frets, “[I]s it true love, in the rectum?” (53). The second half of the
novel focuses on a father–child relation, which is also demystified.
Works of this sort may be excellent cases of art and may provoke
much delight (Molloy is extremely funny). But they tend not to provoke
experiences of beauty or sublimity.7 In aesthetics, a work such as Molloy
has what is sometimes called an “anti-aesthetic” function. In light of
the preceding analysis, however, it seems more apt to refer to this as a
function of criticizing pseudo-aesthetics. More exactly, a work such as
Molloy certainly involves unexpected pattern definition as well as reward
activation. However, such a work is likely to be anti-prototypical and to
7 On the other hand, it depends on just how one interprets the work. Joshua Landy has
recently read Beckett’s novel in terms of “Finding the Self to Lose the Self” (130; this is
one of his section titles). As this suggests, Landy’s account places Beckett’s novel in the
realm of the sublime, although he does not phrase the point that way.
limit or contradict attachment system involvement. In this sense, it is

partially aesthetic and partially critical of aesthetic components that may
foster sentimentality.
Finally, some enjoyment features undoubtedly result from information
processing. For example, there is a puzzle-like quality to some sorts of
literary works, such as mysteries. In watching TV mysteries, my mother
will often announce as early as possible who she thinks is the culprit. She
greatly enjoys discerning the criminal pattern accurately before anyone
else. There is nothing at all wrong with this. Indeed, puzzle solving is
aesthetically relevant as it is a form of pattern isolation.8 However, it
seems perfectly reasonable to say that she overvalues particular works
because they contribute to her (justified but aesthetically irrelevant) pride
in cognitive agility.
Justification and aesthetic argument (II): problems and

qualities in information processing
Many points that we might make about problems and qualities derive in a
simple and straightforward way from the critique of obstacles and enjoy-
ment features. However, many points remain as well. Again, we cannot
cover these exhaustively. However, we can isolate some of the main types
and give illustrative examples. We first consider pattern isolation, then
turn to prototypes. I treat exemplars only briefly, because their place in
aesthetic argument appears to be fairly limited.
Information-processing problems deriving from pattern isolation
would seem to be of three main sorts. First, there may be no pattern or a
pattern that is crucially flawed. Second, there is a (non-flawed) pattern;
however, it is habitual or otherwise predictable. Third, there is a pattern,
but it is not discernible, either for encoding or rule-derivation reasons.
In each of these cases, the point of aesthetic argument would be that the
reader or viewer of the work should reconsider his or her positive response
to that work in light of the contention about pattern violation, predictabil-
ity, or non-discernibility. I consider these problems in reverse order,
since the most complex issue concerns the most fundamental topic –
the presence or violation of a pattern.
Non-discernibility means that, for some reason, individual recipients
could not extract a particular pattern from a given work. An example of
this, already introduced, is Fred Lerdahl’s argument that certain sorts of
serial composition certainly do manifest rule-governed patterns. How-
ever, the complexity of those patterns is well beyond the capacities of
8 Cf. Rolls’s connection between aesthetic pleasure and problem solving.

listeners. Non-discernibility is an argument that should really have no

effect on aesthetic response. If it is true that a pattern is not discernible,
then the experience of such a pattern should not have had any aesthetic
impact on the listener to begin with. The function of such an argument
is therefore more limited. It indicates the invalidity of a prior aesthetic
argument that a given work is aesthetically valuable due to the presence
of a particular pattern. There is no reason for a reader or listener to
reconsider his or her response to a work if the pattern in the work is not
something that he or she will be able to experience. After all, it would
only be the experience of such a pattern that would alter his or her actual
aesthetic response to the work.
Of course, it may always turn out that patterns are discernible even
though they seemed not to be. For example, it could turn out that people
are not able to distinguish a given pattern self-consciously. But they
might still exhibit neurological or physiological responses that suggest
emotional or other sensitivity to the pattern. Thus one should not take
arguments against discernibility as irreversible. But that is a general point,
applicable to all aesthetic arguments.
It might seem that the argument from habituation or predictability has
the same status as that from pattern indiscernibility if the habituating
repetition occurs within a single work. In other words, if such a pattern
were habitual or predictable, then it would not be effective anyway and
thus would be unaffected by aesthetic argument. However, predictability
is often supported by an argument based on encoding. One may simply
not have attended to certain features of the work. But, had one done
so, the pattern would have been evident and, by the argument, overly
repetitive. For example, Agnès Varda’s Vagabond repeatedly uses lateral
dolly shots that continue well past the object of narrative interest in the
shot. Thus she might begin by tracking the main character, dollying left
as the character walks left. However, at a certain point, the character may
stop, turning a corner or getting into a car, while the camera continues to
dolly after the character’s disappearance from the screen. A viewer who
is not trained in film may not encode such repetitive stylistic features.
As it happens, I have mixed feelings about these shots. Initially, they are
unexpected and engaging. Later, they become predictable and somewhat
irritating, as they do not seem to have any relation to any further pattern
(e.g., to the creation of a sense of space in the film).9 In any case, it
9 In an interview on the DVD of the film, the director points out that there is a further
pattern. Specifically, each of these dolly shots ends with an image that is in some way
recapitulated at the beginning of the next dolly shot. The problem is that there is con-
siderable time between the dolly shots, so that I suspect readers cannot really hold in
mind the final image of one dolly shot for comparison with the opening image of the
seems to me quite reasonable to argue that the unmodified use of this

technique is a problem with the film as it becomes predictable. Viewers
who are not usually sensitive to stylistic features in cinema should be
able to reconsider the work with this in mind. Of course, this is a minor
problem and should not undermine a positive response to the rest of the
film. But that is true generally. Most aesthetic arguments have limited
scope.
In addition to predictability within a work, there is external habitua-
tion, repetitiveness across works. Arguments regarding external habitua-
tion often rely on expertise in a tradition. For example, someone who is
new to Hindustānı̄ music may be entranced by a very simple improvisa-
tion. Someone who has not read much Indian literature may be fascinated
a particular rewriting of the Rāmāyan.a – for example, the Doordarshan
Indian televised version from 1987 to 1988. However, someone with
greater expertise in the tradition may reasonably argue that the work in
question is in fact very ordinary, that familiarity with the tradition would
lead one to find the musical improvisation routine, the rewriting com-
monplace. To take the latter case, someone who encounters a rewriting
of the Rāmāyan.a will probably respond primarily to elements of the story
that are common to all versions. It is reasonable to urge the person in
question to revisit the revised Rāmāyan.a after familiarizing himself or
herself with other versions.
Finally, there is the issue of whether there is a pattern at all or whether
the pattern is violated. The former is the more straightforward. It would,
of course, rarely make much sense to claim that there is no pattern what-
soever in a given work of art. The argument regarding the absence of
a pattern generally bears on prior arguments that there is a particular
pattern. Perhaps surprisingly, it is fairly common for readers to be mis-
taken about the presence of patterns in a work. For example, a reader
might believe the events of a novel manifest a certain symmetry around
a midpoint or that the characters systematically represent different social
positions. That sense of a pattern may enhance his or her enjoyment of
the work. But a critic might argue that the work does not actually have
the pattern in question. For example, I might find intensified enjoyment
in Hamlet when I feel that Hamlet’s actions all manifest an underly-
ing grief over attachment losses – predominantly that of his father, but
subsequent dolly shot (this is, of course, an argument from [relative] indiscernibility).
Perhaps more important, the connections are so loose that it is difficult to see them as
having any significance anyway – or even as forming a genuine (rule-defining) pattern.
For example, one shot ends with wooden crates and the next begins with a tree. I sup-
pose the connection here is that wood comes from trees, but that seems too general to
constitute a pattern.
secondarily that of Ophelia. However, a critic might reasonably point out

that this does not explain his violence in killing Polonius or his cruelty in
arranging for the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
This leaves pattern violation. Pattern violation is complicated because
some pattern violations are simply variations, thus means of producing
novelty within an encompassing structure. There are cases where pattern
violation is so extreme that one may question whether or not there is
a pattern at all. The point bears on atonal music and even more on
music that includes traditionally non-musical sounds (such as noises
from the concert hall in Cage’s 4’33’’). Violations are generally clearer
and more readily isolated in representational arts, such as literature,
because patterns in representational arts are often a matter of logical or
empirical consistency.10
For example, one sort of pattern in a mystery involves beginning with
some situation (e.g., a murder) that must be investigated and understood.
Commonly murder mysteries, though interesting and “rewarding” (in
the sense of activating endogenous reward) are neither beautiful nor sub-
lime. Nonetheless, they may be either, and their reliance on unanticipated
pattern recognition is connected with such responses. Suppose there is
logical inconsistency in the story between the initial presentation of the
murder and the final presentation, when the murder is explained. David
Bordwell discusses the 1945 film Mildred Pierce in these terms. Specifi-
cally, Bordwell writes that there are “some significant disparities” in these
two presentations. The precise nature of the murder and the murderer’s
escape as initially presented are not clearly consistent with the way they
are presented at the end of the film. Moreover, they are not inconsistent
in trivial details (e.g., in “continuity” matters, such as how the actors’
hair is combed), but in key features of the story pattern, in precisely
what makes the story cohere. Bordwell defends the film, arguing that no
one is likely to notice the discrepancies. Indeed, he almost makes the
inconsistencies into a virtue, asserting that “the filmmakers are exploit-
ing the viewer’s inability to recall certain details” (Poetics 147). But, by
the present analysis, that disables the objection only if the discrepancies
are somehow not open to encoding or processing in reception. In this
case, however, the inconsistencies are open to encoding and processing,
at least after they have been pointed out.
There are further problems with the film as well. Mildred tries to frame
an innocent man for the murder, while concealing the real murderer from
the police. She seems fairly clearly an accessory to the crime. But she
is simply released by the police. This is not a logical, but an empirical
10 Thus they go beyond Walton’s “contra-standard” properties (see “Categories”).

inconsistency. From the beginning, the patterning of the film has relied
on an assumed continuity between the storyworld and the real world. For
example, we can only understand what is going on with the police in the
film if we understand the way the police operate in the United States. As
Leech and Short point out, “[R]eaders will assume isomorphism between
the [fictional and real worlds] unless given indications to the contrary”
(102). That assumed continuity – the “principle of minimal departure”
(see Marie-Laure Ryan), according to which readers assume the fictional
storyworld is maximally continuous with the real world – is necessary
even to make sense of the most basic motives and causal connections in
the film. (If we relied solely on internal evidence from the film, we would
not even be able to make presumptions about laws regarding murder.)
Thus we have both logical and empirical violations of apparent patterns
in the film. Moreover, violations of both types are relevant to aesthetic
response. The unexpectedness and causal rigor of the murder pattern
presuppose the consistency of the opening and conclusion of the film.
Our feelings of empathic attachment for Mildred might be disturbed
if the pattern of justice had been followed through and we had been
reminded of her scurrilous behavior in framing an innocent man. I have
mixed feelings about the film and did from the beginning. Some aspects
struck me as aesthetically pleasing, others not. But the key point is that
an awareness of the pattern violations reduced my aesthetic response to
the work as a whole.
Similar issues may arise in viewing paintings. Mather notes that “the
viewer does not retain a single visual impression of the whole scene.”
In consequence, he or she does “not have the means by which to detect
global inconsistencies.” However, these may “become apparent upon
careful, serial inspection of small parts of the scene” (79). Mather in
effect agrees with Bordwell, stating, “The artist, therefore, can afford to
ignore certain rules about shading and depth” (79). But here too the test
is the degree to which discrepancies, once identified, affect the recipient’s
response.
One way of stating these problems is to note that logical and empirical
inconsistencies make it impossible to simulate the story in a way that
maintains all the evidence from the work. The conflict between Oth-
ello’s loving “too well” and murdering his wife is an inconsistency of
the same general sort. Here too we are not dealing with a trivial incon-
sistency since both parts of the contradiction enter into the tragedy.
Specifically, Desdemona’s murder produces the tragic outcome. At the
same time, his loving “too well” should operate to enhance our empathic
attachment feelings. Once one becomes aware of the profound egotism
of Othello’s final speech, one might more fully understand the murder.
But that awareness should inhibit our empathic response to his putative
attachment bond with Desdemona.
Despite these points, inconsistency – and the consequent block on
simulation – do not always constitute an aesthetic problem. Specifically,
an apparent problem at one level may turn out to be neutral or even a
quality at another level, thus not a problem at all. For example, a story
discrepancy may suggest unreliable narration or metaphor. However, in
each case, this will be a quality only insofar as it contributes to another
pattern or in some other way furthers aesthetic experience. For example,
discrepancies in Mildred Pierce might have contributed to the characteri-
zation of some narrator, thus providing a pattern at the “discourse” level.
(The story level is the level of what happens; the discourse level is the level
of how the story is presented – most important, who narrates it, to whom,
and with what constraints.) There may also be thematic justifications for
inconsistencies. For instance, a science fiction work might address some
paradox of action or time through logical or empirical contradictions.
In sum, information processing with respect to non-habitual patterns
provides the basis for aesthetic argument of several sorts. Such argument
may focus on habituation, claiming that the pattern at issue is internally
predictable or externally routine, given the larger tradition. Alternatively,
it may focus on the pattern isolation, maintaining that the pattern is
indiscernible, owing to human cognitive constraints, or that there is no
pattern. In the latter case, the argument might involve a claim that logical
or empirical inconsistency disallows full and consistent simulation. I have
considered only problems here as it should be clear that the same general
points apply to qualities, with straightforward changes. For example,
if someone objects that a work is chaotic, a rational response is to show
unexpected patterning. If someone objects to inconsistency in a particular
pattern, a rational aesthetic argument would dispute the inconsistency or
maintain that it leads to an unexpected pattern at another level (e.g., in
narrator reliability).
Having considered information-processing problems deriving from
pattern isolation, we may now turn to problems and qualities bearing
on prototypes. These may concern the target and its degree of approxi-
mation to the prototype or they may focus on the nature of the prototype
itself. Degree of approximation is sometimes a simple matter of encoding,
particularly encoding of details. For example, in judging facial beauty,
viewers may simply not notice certain features of the target – say, the line
formed by the teeth or curve of the eyebrows. Returning to Tanuja and
Miley Cyrus, one might reasonably point to the very straight line formed
by Cyrus’s teeth and the uneven (but still symmetrical) line formed by
Tanuja’s teeth. Perhaps the former is closer to most people’s prototype (it
is almost certainly closer to the prestige standard). If so, then pointing it

out is a reasonable aesthetic argument. But here the non-definitive qual-
ity of aesthetic argument is particularly evident, since a given observer’s
prototype may actually be more similar to Tanuja than to Cyrus on this
score. For example, I did not self-consciously notice the difference in
teeth when first looking at photos of these two women. However, my
attention being drawn to the difference, I find Tanuja’s teeth far prettier
than Miley Cyrus’s. This seems related to a category-based contrast in
my mind between teeth and dentures, with the latter being artificially uni-
form. Thus Tanuja more closely approximates my personal prototype –
which, of course, means that I could reasonably point to this property in
an aesthetic argument favoring her beauty over Cyrus’s.
Degree of approximation may also be a matter of interpreting the
target – thus construing features in particular ways, not merely attending
to or encoding features. Someone finds a work displeasing and we argue
that it actually approximates a prototype, even though it requires some
interpretation to see this. For example, someone might be frustrated
with part of the fourth movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 in G
major (1787). In this listener’s experience, the first part of the movement
does not, at first, adequately restate the theme, as is prototypical in
the rondo form Haydn is using. In response, we might point out that
there is an initial “false restatement” that is set up to mislead listener
expectations, because the actual restatement of the theme follows
after further non-thematic material.11 In other words, the listener
miscategorized part of the contrast material as “thematic restatement.”
Haydn’s elicitation of such miscategorization is part of the novelty of the
work. Thus what appeared to be a problem was in fact an obstacle. That
is, it was not a significant, thus ugly departure from the prototype. It
was only a surprising variation on an associated pattern, a variation that
in other respects remained prototypical. Indeed, given its novelty, it may
even be reasonably counted as a quality.
Perhaps more interesting cases concern the ways in which contrast
affects one’s sense of prototype approximation. For example, connois-
seurs of Indian classical music find it displeasing when a performance
deviates so much from the standard forms of one rāga that it begins
to resemble another rāga from the same general category. Of course,
that deviation could be part of an innovative pattern formation. Thus,
as usual, an aesthetic argument against such deviation cannot be defini-
tive. However, such an argument is reasonable by the principles we have
isolated in earlier chapters. In this case, we have a categorization that
11 I draw this point from Greenberg.

involves a prototype. The prototype has differential characteristics. We

would expect a rāga performance to be less pleasing to the degree that it
incorporates differentiating, prototypical characteristics of a contrasting
rāga. We would expect this as a musical parallel to the way that (for most
responders) a male face becomes less pleasing as it incorporates pro-
totypically differentiating characteristics of female faces (e.g., enhanced
luminance contrast). Thus one rational form of argument in such cases
would involve pointing to the presence or absence of contrastively distin-
guishing features in a target.
Reference to contrast effects leads us to arguments based on the
prototype itself. There are two obvious ways in which one might
reasonably dispute a prototype. The first is by arguing that the prototype
is inaccurate or excessively biased. The other is by invoking a category
or comparison set different from that tacitly operating in the recipient’s
assessment. As to the former, an aesthetic argument might maintain, for
example, that someone’s prototype for a given target has been formed by
insufficient exposure to a range of instances of the category. This applies
in an obvious way to human beauty. If mass media overrepresent blonde,
slender, teenage women, then our prototype for women will be lighter,
thinner, and younger than a prototype derived from a more representa-
tive selection of the population. This is, I believe, a reasonable aesthetic
argument. However, it is very unlikely to have any impact on a recipient’s
aesthetic response since there is no clear way of taking this into account
in one’s response. One might of course stop looking at mass media
and make a point of seeing more real people – but that seems a rather
extreme measure, and a rather long-term one. The general point is likely
to have more impact with respect to art. Suppose a critic and a recipient
disagree in their response to a performance of rāga Lalit. The critic
might argue that increased exposure to Hindustānı̄ rāga performances
in general, or performances of rāga Lalit in particular, will alter the
recipient’s preferences. Moreover, this is the sort of practice the recipient
can readily undertake. This is often spoken of in terms of “cultivating
taste.”12 Such “cultivation,” when reasonably defended, is in significant
part a matter of expanding the basis of one’s prototypes (as well as devel-
oping increased encoding sensitivities, gaining greater fluency in rule
abstraction, and so on13 ).
12 This phrase obviously uses the word “taste” here in a way that suggests a norm, as
opposed to my earlier, neutral usage when I wrote that some of my dislike of Othello is
merely a matter of taste. This dual usage is common in aesthetics. For an informative
overview of the notion of taste in aesthetic theory, see Korsmeyer (“Taste”).
13 It also includes renewed consideration of individual works with “focused . . . attention”
on esteemed properties of those works, as Goldie maintains (109).
Again, the second way in which there may be an information-

processing problem regarding prototypes concerns the target’s catego-
rization and comparison set. In Chapter 2, we discussed differences in
categorization – “a painting” versus “an early mannerist work,” or “a
duck” versus “a swan.” It seems clear that one form of reasonable aes-
thetic argument involves suggesting a different categorization from the
one employed by one’s interlocutor (“No, that’s not a duck. It’s a swan”).
Categorization provides a prototypical organization that not only defines
beauty directly in many cases, but that may enable pattern recognition
or surprise as well. Sometimes the difference in categorization is simply
a matter of asking someone to reconsider the work in light of another
familiar category, as in “The Ugly Duckling.” For example, many years
ago, I saw Vibes, a film by my old high school friend Ken Kwapis. I found
the film to be a very funny comedy, but I read a review criticizing it as a
failed action-adventure film. (I have not been able to find that review.) I
felt at the time that the reviewer completely miscategorized the film, and
that his or her response was therefore misguided. Although not precisely
a case of beauty or sublimity, the example still illustrates the general
point.
Alternative categorizations of “comedy” versus “action-adventure
film” are fairly simple and broadly accessible. In other cases, suggesting
a different categorization may involve urging one’s interlocutor to learn a
new type, often a new genre. Suppose Smith takes a piece of music to be
simply “Indian.” Smith had enjoyed some Indian devotional songs and
expected to like what he heard at the classical concert as well. However,
Jones explains that a popular bhajan or devotional song is a very different
category of music from a Hindustānı̄ khayāl rāga. That in effect directs
Smith to learn about the latter, developing relevant prototypes (as well
as cultivating encoding sensitivities, and so on).
To a certain extent, these points about alternative categorizations are
self-evident. Here, again, more interesting cases come from contrast sets –
the categories against which we define the target. Some striking instances
of this come from human beauty. Sheila Jeffreys has discussed some of
the extreme aesthetic norms that some people impose on women – for
example, complete absence of body hair, including in pubic regions (78–
86). I suspect that this is less widespread than Jeffreys suggests. More
importantly, Jeffreys’s cases concern sexual arousal more than beauty
(as noted in the introduction). The two are related; for example, both
appear to be connected with prototype approximation and to involve
contrast effects. However, what is sexually arousing is not necessarily
experienced as beautiful, and what is beautiful is most often not experi-
enced as sexually arousing. Thus there are some difficulties with Jeffreys’s
use of the word “beauty” (which does not affect her political arguments;
it simply qualifies the relevance of her analyses for the present study).
Nonetheless, Jeffreys’s analyses are suggestive regarding the operation
of prototypes. It does seem that common prototypes of female beauty
are disproportionately hairless. At least some of these properties may in
part be explained by the nature of the primary axis of human aesthetic
contrast being man–girl, rather than man–woman. I take it that the for-
mer contrast is dominant in the United States and many other parts of
the world today. However, it is not universal, cross-culturally or even for
individuals in cultures where it is dominant. The key point about these
comparison sets is that, if one’s primary contrast set is man–woman, the
female prototype will still be less hirsute but probably not in pubic areas.
Complete bodily depilation arguably results from the man–girl contrast.
Other prototypical properties seem to be connected with this compari-
son set as well, such as the preternatural thinness connected with female
beauty. The man–woman contrast would presumably involve a more
robust physique. Thus it seems reasonable to invoke alternative contrast
sets in aesthetic argument.
The general point applies equally to art, if usually without the same
social and political consequences. One might reasonably argue that, say,
Hindustānı̄ dhrupad music should have as its appropriate contrast cate-
gory Hindustānı̄ khayāl music, rather than, for instance, Western classical
music. Similarly, one might maintain that a particular work of mod-
ernist literature should be understood as modernist in opposition to
Romantic, rather than as opposed to traditional literature more broadly
or as opposed to postmodernism. To some extent, we see a prototype-
defining contrast in the common emphasis on postcolonial Europhone
literature as “writing back” to the literatures of colonial cultures (see
Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin). This division serves, among other things,
to establish a prototype of Anglophone postcolonial literature as con-
trasting with the literature of England. However, we might reasonably
invoke and contrast Anglophone with indigenous-language literatures
(e.g., Hindi or Urdu literature in India). This might alter our prototypes
and our aesthetic responses to the works that fall under the relevant
categories.
In sum, rational aesthetic argument bearing on prototypes and prob-
lems or qualities may concern a number of different aspects of prototype-
based aesthetic response. First, it may bear on the degree to which the
target (e.g., a work of art) approximates the prototype. This is com-
monly a matter of encoding or interpreting properties of the target, some-
times with particular stress on distinctive contrasts as defined by related
prototypes (e.g., those of two similar rāgas). Second, it may concern the
nature of the prototype itself. An initial issue here is categorization. One
may reasonably dispute the category that defines the relevant prototype.
When the category itself is agreed on, then one may object to an oppo-
nent’s prototype formation. Such an objection has two common forms.
First, the problem may arise from a biased sample of instances; second,
it may result from a misguided choice of a contrasting category.
Because of their frequent idiosyncrasy, exemplars often enter into
negative (debunking) arguments. Given the preceding, recipient-relative
account of beauty, however, their role in debunking is necessarily lim-
ited. If beauty is understood as an objective property, then idiosyn-
crasy may count as a fault in a recipient’s response. For an objective
account of beauty, it would be rational to dismiss my appreciation of
Tanuja by saying that she simply resembles my wife. In a responsive
account of beauty, however, this is not a rational objection. As long
as memories of my wife enter into my aesthetic response to the tar-
get (here, Tanuja), then those memories are partially constitutive of my
personal sense of beauty; they are not something external and irrele-
vant to beauty, but definitive of it. On the other hand, exemplars may
enter, in a more limited way, as a response to arguments. Suppose I am
asserting that you too should respond to Tanuja as more beautiful than
Miley Cyrus. You could reasonably say that there is no need for you to
reconsider the two, because I am so clearly relying on an idiosyncratic
exemplar.
More significantly, exemplars may enter into rational aesthetic argu-
ment treating qualities or problems when we are speaking of the relation
between a target work and some precursor. In cases of that sort, one’s
interlocutor may have missed the link entirely or misunderstood it. Con-
sider, for example, The Banquet, Xiaogang Feng’s film based in part on
Hamlet. The film has intrinsic aesthetic interest, particularly in its careful
use of color, camera movement, editing, and other features of formal
cinematic patterning. It is somewhat more problematic in its story logic.
However, some of the narrative patterning rests on its relation to Shake-
speare’s play. It would be perfectly reasonable to argue that someone
missed part of the work’s aesthetic quality if he or she failed to respond
to this allusive modeling. A related point may be made regarding inade-
quate knowledge about relevant exemplars. For example, someone with
little knowledge about Marilyn Monroe’s life and status would not be able
to appreciate some qualities of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych. Thus an
invocation of such (exemplar-based) knowledge would be perfectly ratio-
nal in aesthetic argument.
Justification and aesthetic argument (III): problems and

qualities in emotion
As it turns out, there is relatively little to say about problems and qualities
in emotion, because we have already touched on many points in relation
with obstacles and enjoyment features as well as problems and qualities
in information processing. The affirmation of an emotional quality in a
work is often bound up with criticizing a recipient’s negative response
to the work. That negative response may take the form of insufficient
interest and engagement, thus lack of reward system involvement, or it
may involve being left “cold,” being unmoved, thus (at least in some
cases) lack of attachment system activation. Rational arguments against
such responses are of two sorts – those that focus on the target (e.g., the
novel) and those that focus on the recipient of the target (e.g., the reader
of a novel). In each case, the argument is in part a matter of indicating
that the recipient’s response refers to an obstacle, not a problem.
A focus on the target is likely to emphasize features relevant to infor-
mation processing, such as patterns and their deviation from expecta-
tion. The assumption of such arguments is that the emotion will follow,
given appropriate sensitivity to eliciting conditions for that emotion. For
instance, sensitivity to novelty within an expectancy structure will give
rise to interest. Target-focused arguments often pay particular attention
to aspects of a work that recipients are likely to ignore. For example,
someone may fail to appreciate a modernist novel (such as Mrs. Dal-
loway) because he or she is primarily paying attention to the story, when
the greatest aesthetic qualities of the work lie in the complex patterns of
narration or style. A great deal of the “cultivation of taste” with respect
to modernism involves developing one’s sensitivity to non-story aspects
of a work. On the other hand, it is sometimes the case that an aes-
thetic argument focuses on story elements or other aspects of a work that
would ordinarily be focal for a reader. In these cases, the argument likely
concerns nuances of the story that the reader may not have sufficiently
encoded or adequately interpreted, nuances with particular relevance to
emotion. This is, in effect, what I did in Chapter 5 when I responded
to my own dislike of the opening of act V, scene ii, of Othello. In ana-
lyzing the scene more fully, I showed that not only were my inferences
misguided, but my own initial emotional response was blunted by my
insensitivity to the suggestions of Othello’s actions and speech.
This insensitivity leads us to criticisms that focus on the recipient
rather than the target as such. These are of two sorts. In some cases, an
aesthetic argument may criticize the recipient for insensitivity, seeking
to discount his or her view; in other cases, one may try to convince the
recipient of one’s own view. The former sorts of argument do not serve
to support the beauty of the target. However, they do serve to disable
criticisms from the naysaying recipient. For example, my wife is keenly
sensitive to grand natural beauty, such as towering mountains, while I
am largely indifferent to such vistas. This is perhaps because she grew
up in Kashmir and thus experienced grand natural beauty in a criti-
cal period, whereas I grew up in the suburbs of Saint Louis, Missouri,
and was sensitized only to the small natural beauties of, for example,
gardens. In any case, suppose we look out on a grand mountainscape
and I proclaim that I am unmoved. My wife can quite reasonably set
this aside as a consequential aesthetic claim by simply pointing out
that I am insensitive to majestic natural beauty. We may make simi-
lar sorts of arguments regarding literary genres or musical periods. For
example, perhaps in keeping with my insensitivity to majestic nature,
I am largely indifferent to Romantic works in their various modes –
literary, musical, and so on. If I do not care for a Romantic nature poem,
an enthusiast may reasonably object that my sensibilities regarding nature
poetry are rudimentary.
Attempts to sensitize a recipient, to alter his or her emotional response,
largely focus on features of the target, as already noted. In some cases,
they will focus on the comparison set or categorization of the target, as
when one urges that the novelty of a particular work can be appreciated
only in the context of understanding its precursors. However, aesthetic
argument may also focus on corrigible aspects of response. Probably
the most common form of such argument involves viewing the recipi-
ent as having insufficient empathy. For example, one might respond to
my final dissatisfaction with Othello by maintaining that my response to
Othello’s ambivalence is inadequately compassionate. Of course, stated
as such, this does not yet constitute an argument. It is little more than
a contradiction. The burden of such an argument would be discharged
through guided, empathic simulation of Othello’s emotional response. In
other words, it would involve a careful explication of how someone with
Othello’s background would feel in the circumstances in which he finds
himself. Indeed, in earlier work, I undertook that in exploring Othello’s
emotions as a response to the pervasive racism or out-grouping of Vene-
tian society. If successful, an explication of this sort will foster empathic
response.
As the case of Othello and racism reminds us, the absence of empathic
response may derive from out-grouping, in which the reader places a
character, narrator, or author in an opposed identity category. As we have
already noted, placing someone in such a category tends to inhibit empa-
thy (whereas placing someone in one’s own identity category enables or
enhances empathy; see Gazzaniga 164; see also Keestra 237 and cita-
tions). Indeed, out-grouping may incline one to respond to the other
person’s emotions in an opposed rather than parallel way (see Hain and
colleagues 155, and Klimecki and Singer 542). As discussed earlier, sim-
ply noting the possibility of out-grouping is likely to provoke a defensive
reaction on the part of a recipient. But guided empathy may still be
effective, perhaps especially insofar as it stresses attachment bonds, with
their inhibitory effects on disgust and antipathy, and their individuating
tendency. (Individuation is important in overcoming stereotype-based
processing [see Holland and colleagues 219, 221].)
Again, aesthetic arguments affirming emotional qualities tend to
involve criticisms of negative responses to a target. Similarly, aesthetic
arguments claiming affective problems largely respond to positive eval-
uations of targets. They to some extent employ the same techniques as
arguments claiming affective qualities. For instance, they may focus on
the recipient, criticizing his or her positive response on the basis of, say,
insufficient familiarity with the comparison set. Such an argument might
indicate that the recipient’s interest in or engagement with a work is
largely a response to features that are simply commonplace for the genre
(e.g., rewritings of the Rāmāyan.a, to refer to an earlier example).
Affective problem arguments might also focus on textual features,
pointing out contradictions or other aspects of the work that should
generate processing anomalies and associated emotional frustrations. An
example of this sort is, once again, the argument of Chapter 5 that Oth-
ello cannot have loved “too well” (V.ii.340) and also murdered his wife.
Again, this is an emotional problem as well as an information-processing
problem, because our response to Othello’s fate as tragic relies on an
empathic sharing of Othello’s grief over a lost attachment bond, thus on
a sense that he did love very well.
As all this indicates, in the isolation of qualities or problems, textual
and responsive issues are not entirely segregated. Indeed, any given argu-
ment is likely to rely to some extent on both. The difference is primarily
a matter of emphasis. One case where the two interact with perhaps
special consequence is in ethical criticisms. In many ways, ethical objec-
tions are distinct from aesthetic argument. For example, a work may
have laudable ethical aims or even actual effects while being aesthetically
problematic. However, as we have already noted, some parts of ethical
analysis bear on aesthetic arguments regarding emotion. This is part of
a broader sense, stressed by the Sanskrit aestheticians, that some emo-
tions are incompatible with others – in contemporary terms, that some
emotion systems inhibit other emotion systems. Prominently, a feeling of
disgust might inhibit the tender, approach-related feelings of attachment.
Thus it is rational to object that a work (or part of a work) cannot be

beautiful (or sublime) because of its presentation of disgust-provoking
elements, including features that elicit specifically moral disgust. For
example, even someone sympathetic with Othello could rationally argue
against experiencing Desdemona’s murder as sublime, since it is morally
repulsive. Similarly, someone who considers suicide morally repugnant
could rationally make the same claim about Othello’s death. In short, eth-
ical arguments often indicate not only that the work should be rejected
intellectually. They also suggest that a work should provoke a sort of
moral revulsion that inhibits one’s positive emotional response. In that
way, ethical-aesthetic argument, as we might call it, aims significantly at
the emotional sensibility of the reader.
Having pointed out the relation between ethical argument and the iso-
lation of aesthetic problems, it is important to note that ethical-aesthetic
evaluations need not be negative. Ethical analysis of a work may have
cognitive consequences in enabling the reader or viewer to recognize pat-
terns in properties that he or she may have failed to encode or isolate
previously; it may lead him or her to categorize actions or sequences dif-
ferently, fostering a new sense of prototype approximation; it may allow
for the fuller activation of reward seeking (e.g., by intensifying one’s
empathic preferences); it may more extensively engage the attachment
system through humanizing a character and easing the activation of emo-
tional memories. In short, though ethical evaluation does not necessarily
enter into aesthetic argument, it may enter and it may be highly conse-
quential with respect to both information processing and emotion, and
regarding both problems and qualities.
In sum, a great deal of emotion-related aesthetic argument bears on
the target (e.g., the literary work). In connection with this, the usual
sorts of analysis recur, with particular attention to the emotion-eliciting
properties of the features at issue. Target-oriented affective arguments,
particularly those concerned with qualities, may focus on non-habitual or
innovative aspects of the target, unnoticed patterns, or prototype approx-
imation, stressing their relation to interest, reward, or attachment. Alter-
natively, they may isolate properties or even patterns that foster anti-
aesthetic emotions (as when one identifies racism in a work as a source
of moral disgust).
Other emotion-based arguments are directed primarily at the recipi-
ent’s properties rather than at the target (e.g., at the reader rather than
the novel). These include some of the usual information-processing con-
cerns, such as an overly limited comparison set or biased prototype, with
stress on the emotional consequences of such limitations and biases.
For example, an overly limited comparison set may facilitate a mistaken
sense of novelty, thus fostering unwarranted interest or reward system

involvement. Alternatively, many recipient-oriented arguments address
the sensitivity of the recipient. There are two main types of such argu-
ment – those that bear on incorrigible insensitivity and those that bear on
corrigible insensitivity. The former are commonly arguments that seek
simply to disable an objection (e.g., by noting an evaluator’s general dis-
preference for nature poetry). The latter, in contrast, involve an attempt
to foster the appropriate sort of sensitivity in the (previously insensitive)
recipient, often through cultivation of empathy.
Again, the point of aesthetic argument as understood here is not to
establish a claim and thus “triumph” in debate. The point is to encour-
age one’s interlocutors to reconsider the work at issue, ideally “winning
them over,” not “winning over them.” Even when it is accepted (thus
“wins”), aesthetic argument fails in its purpose if it does not foster a
return to and reconsideration of the disputed work. In short, success-
ful aesthetic argument should not so much end discussion as invigorate
and enrich aesthetic experience. The purpose of the present chapter has
been to analyze some of the ways such (experience-enriching) argument
can proceed rationally, basing that analysis on the preceding account of
aesthetic pleasure, which is to say, personal beauty and sublimity.
7 Art and beauty
Though this is a book on personal beauty and sublimity, not on art as

such, the topics are clearly related. Indeed, the main concern of the
preceding pages has been with aesthetic experience of art, not with, say,
the aesthetic experience of nature. As such, it is important to give at least
some attention to the nature of art. This final chapter, then, considers
the interrelation between beauty and sublimity, on the one hand, and art,
on the other.
Specifically, there is a common tendency to see art as a function of
beauty and/or sublimity, thus aesthetic pleasure, either personal or public.
This is not to say that aestheticians would self-consciously identify art
with works that yield such pleasure. If asked, contemporary aestheticians
would almost to person deny such an identification. Despite this, the
close interrelation of aesthetic pleasure and art is commonly presupposed
by ordinary people and by a minority of aestheticians (see chapter 4 of
Carroll’s Philosophy on “Aesthetic theories of art”). It is also accepted by
such recent artists as Agnes Martin, who commented, “When I think of
art I think of beauty” (qtd. in Barrett 136). In fact, I believe that this
identification makes a great deal of sense. In the following pages, part
of my account of art relies on the sorts of aesthetic criteria set out in
Chapter 6. But those criteria bear on art in only one sense of the word.
Before turning to the relevance of aesthetic criteria, then, we need to
distinguish at least three senses of the word “art,” two of which have
little to do with aesthetic response.1
1 Here as elsewhere I am not by any means trying to determine some putatively true
definition for “art.” I am trying to isolate a way of organizing the world that has descriptive
and explanatory value. As with other terms, other delimitations are possible. As Stecker
puts it, “[T]here can be several . . . useful definitions of art” (153). In connection with
this, Gaut (“‘Art’ as a Cluster Concept”) argues that art is a concept with a complex and
variable meaning. That is true, but that variability is precisely why we cannot rely on the
ordinary concept for precise descriptions and explanations. Put differently, my account
is consistent with that of James Anderson in not being a means of simply identifying
artworks. But it is also not an attempt to extract “what a work of art is . . . essentially” (68,
215
Three meanings of “art”

The first and, in many ways, basic sense of “art” is, roughly, the following:
A work of art is any artifact that has other works classed as “art” as its
primary comparison set. (I use “artifact” in the broad sense of “fashioned
objects of sharable attention,” including objects composed of words or
actions.2 ) More exactly, artifacts may be understood and evaluated in
various ways. Those different ways of understanding and evaluating an
artifact involve sets of other works that fall into the same general class.
We evaluate a particular piece of furniture and understand what to do
with it by classifying it as, say, a dining table and comparing it with other
dining tables. The same point holds for works of art. We understand
and evaluate Duchamp’s Fountain by putting it in the context of works
previously classified as art, rather than artifacts classified as urinals. This
classification is usually that of the maker or the recipient or both. Thus I
might take something initially made to be a dining table and use it as a
writing desk. In that case, one could understand and evaluate the object
in either way, basing one’s evaluation on the comparison set defined by
the manufacturer or the recipient (i.e., me). Similarly, someone might
snap a tourist photo on a visit to India and I might class the resulting
photograph as art. In that case, the photographer might have initially
seen other tourist photos (hers and those of friends) as its comparison
set, while I place it in the context of works by Henri Cartier-Bresson and
Raghu Rai.
For various reasons, we commonly view the placement of a work in a
comparison set of artworks as contingent on a combination of productive
intent and reception, often reception by experts. In cases of conflict, we
give greater weight to experts. Note that the experts in question include
not only critics but also other artists (a point noted by other writers
[see, for example, Stecker 147]). Critics define art explicitly, through
“consecration,” as Bourdieu has it (The Field 124), through reviews or
analyses that praise the work or through prizes (see English). Artists
may do this as well. However, artists more consequentially incorporate
works into the relevant comparison set, and integrate their own work into
that comparison set, through their art. Influence and modeling – both
positive and negative – serve to place the new work and the precursor in
italics in the original), because there are presumably many different things that art can
be. My aim is, then, not “metaphysical” (68), but cognitive, in the sense given earlier.
2 Works of art form a subset of artifacts, even in cases where the “artifactual” quality
is merely the result of extracting something from its environment and labeling it for
presentation in a museum. (Dickie rightly notes that it is often “not . . . so easy to tell
that a given work of art is an artifact” [The Art Circle 110].)
Art and beauty 217
the same comparison set. The influence of Paradise Lost on the English
Romantics served to link Romantic poetry with that canonical paradigm
of English literary art; at the same time, it reinforced the location of
Milton’s poem in the artistic comparison set defined by the canon. The
same point holds for artifacts produced in other traditions. Critics may
canonize ritual masks, and artists (such as Picasso) may be influenced by
them. Thus the masks enter into the comparison set of art, independent
of the initial aims of the creators.
Location in a comparison set of relevant artworks (e.g., paintings or
poems) is probably the basic definition of art. We commonly consider a
work to be art if and only if it satisfies this definition. That is one reason
why we consider Duchamp’s Fountain to be a work of art. But, despite
Woolf’s urging, we usually do not consider a hat to be a work of art or a
party to be an artistic event.
Readers familiar with recent philosophy of art will recognize a relation
between my account here and several prominent theories of art – the insti-
tutional theory (elaborated by Dickie; see his Art), the historical theory
(developed by Levinson [“Defining”]), and the narrative theory (articu-
lated by Carroll; for a lucid overview of these theories, see chapter 5 of
Carroll’s Philosophy). I do not wish to refer to my account as a “compar-
ison set theory,” however. “Theories” of art try to capture the intuitive
“data” of how we use the word “art.” My discussion of comparison sets
does seem to capture a great deal of what we generally mean when we
refer to something as a work of art. But I am not convinced that our ordi-
nary language usage of the term “art” is entirely theoretically consistent
or that it is important to align a definition of art with common intuitions
even if those intuitions are consistent. In other words, a definition of
art is not best conceived of as a theory, at least not in any strict sense;
there will necessarily be some component of mere stipulation in any such
definition. To some degree, one has to say, “I am using the word ‘art’ in
this way. It is broadly consistent with common usage, but since it tries
to make ‘art’ into a technical term, it will necessarily deviate from that
much less systematic ordinary usage.” That is why I refer to this as a
“definition,” or sometimes more neutrally as an “account,” but not as a
“theory.”
One advantage of this definition, however, is that it arguably identifies
what all three preceding “theories” (those of Dickie, Levinson, and Car-
roll) have in common. All in effect place a work in a comparison set of
previously established artworks. They differ primarily in how the work
comes to be located in that comparison set. In my account, the means of
“canonization” simply reflect different canons. If I consider a particular
work in the comparison set of artworks, then that work is (operating as)
art for me, whether or not it does so in the international art world. For
example, if my wife takes a photograph that I place in the context of
Cartier-Bresson and Rai, then I am considering it as art, even though
the photograph has never been seen by a curator or art critic. Of course,
this has the consequence that something cannot be said to “really” be or
“really” not be art. But that seems to me fine. One museum buys a can
of an artist’s feces (see Dutton on the Tate Gallery and Piero Manzoni’s
1961 Merda d’artista), so the work is art for that museum; I admire my
wife’s photo, so the work is art for me. We do not need to decide whether
or not something is art “in reality.” Indeed, this is an actual advantage
of the comparison-set account, because it is not clear that (in reality) it
makes any sense to speak of a work as really being or really not being art.
Note that this does not at all mean that, by this definition, anything
at all is art if someone likes it. It constrains what counts as art, but it
does so by reference to individual evaluation. For example, Carey argues
that Danto’s art-world account of art runs aground on the problem of
different preferences. Drawing on an example from Danto, Carey treats
the difference between two paintings, one by a child for his father, the
other a physically identical work by Picasso (19–20). Carey seems to
me to confuse the issue somewhat by not distinguishing between art
status and aesthetic response. The father might find the child’s painting
aesthetically pleasing but not respond to it as art. On the other hand,
Carey has a valid point in suggesting that the father might indeed find
the child’s work to be art. The present account accommodates the father’s
view. However, it would be vacuous to say that the father finds it to be art
without giving any distinctive meaning to the category of “art” beyond an
indefinite sense of praise. The present definition indicates that – as with
my wife’s photograph – the child’s painting is art for the father insofar as
he considers it in relation to other works of art (not simply if he likes or
even admires it).
On the other hand, there is an obvious problem with this as a definition
of art. It tells us when a particular, new (or newly discovered) work might
be included in the class of works of art. But it tells us nothing about that
class. In practice, that may not be much of a problem. The class of
works of art is largely established historically. Indeed, for that reason,
I will sometimes refer to this first definition as an historical account.
Even in periods of putatively radical canon revision, it does not seem that
there is fundamental alteration in the comparison set. Thus, at any given
moment, we may expect there to be an already established comparison
set for art.
But “we already have a bunch of stuff we call ‘art’” is hardly a philo-
sophically satisfying principle. It seems to make the establishment of a
Art and beauty 219
comparison set entirely historically contingent. In other words, it seems

to delimit the comparison set simply by the usage of the word “art,”
without any further criterion for the application of the term. The result
of this is that the entire category appears merely arbitrary (or circular,
as for example, Stecker notes 148). There is nothing that links works of
art together beyond being thought of as a particular comparison set. At
one level, this is perfectly reasonable. It makes sense to say that the only
thing linking Fountain with Polykleitos’s Spear Bearer is that they share a
historically defined comparison set. Moreover, that is important and one
of the reasons that this definition is fundamental. However, we still need
a way of distinguishing this comparison set from others.3
Starting in the following section, we consider a second account of art,
one that is philosophical rather than historical. The historical account
treats a contingent configuration of what are counted as works of art. The
philosophical account, in contrast, presents some criterion that serves to
justify a distinction between art and non-art. The philosophically defined
works must take the historical works as their comparison set (i.e., simply
to be art, they must be part of that comparison set, by our own basic
definition). But that does not mean that the sets of works delimited by
the philosophical and historical accounts need to be identical. Rather,
the historical set of works should include the philosophically justified
works as a key subset. In other words, the justification provided by the
philosophical account should apply to an adequate number of the works
accepted as art. An adequate number would be any number that serves
to define what we might think of as centrally definitive cases of art. Put
simply, Duchamp’s Fountain is art, but its status as art relies on there
being works such as Matisse’s The Plumed Hat. More precisely, the fol-
lowing analysis justifies or motivates the category of art primarily by
3 One way of thinking about the problem is posed by Sartre. He envisions someone
creating a putatively initial work of art. He or she “had to start from zero,” living at
a time with “neither taste nor dilettantes nor criticism” (Essays 82). Even if he or she
did not conceive of the work as “art,” someone later must have done so, also “starting
from zero.” Other authors have framed the issue in similar terms, most notably Davies
(“First Art”), who stresses the centrality of aesthetic properties for isolating “first art.” In
connection with this, and in anticipation of the following argument, it is worth pointing
to Currie’s argument that the first appearance of art came “quite suddenly” in the
development of tools that were “worked on to a degree out of proportion to any likely
use” (11). In Curry’s account, the origins of art lie in the production of beauty, in
this case characterized by “a high degree of symmetry” (10, in keeping with prototype
approximation, although Currie gives a very different analysis). I should note, however,
that my account is not an attempt to isolate an initial moment of art. Rather, my account
is, again, intended to isolate ways of defining “art” that have descriptive and explanatory
value. For my purposes, the point about the “first art” problem is simply that it illustrates
why a comparison-set account of art cannot operate on its own; it must make reference
to some other criterion.
reference to aesthetic pleasure.4 In this view, works without an aesthetic

function, such as Fountain, are part of the comparison set of art but
they are not principally definitive of that set. (This is in keeping with
the criticism of “‘Institutional’ theories of art . . . for taking as central
examples of art works that are more appropriately understood as periph-
eral or exceptional examples” [Korsmeyer, “Art” 151].5 ) Rather, by this
account, works of art would be – as a rough, partial first approximation –
artifacts that elicit aesthetic pleasure (of beauty or sublimity) along with any
other works placed consistently in this comparison set.6 (“Consistently” here
is meant simply to eliminate cases where a work is considered as a work
of art only briefly, as in an argumentative example [“Let’s for a moment
consider my elbow as a work of art”].) Suppose, in contrast, that the
historical comparison set of art had only a random distribution of works
provoking aesthetic pleasure – thus no more such works than any other
comparison set (e.g., “dining tables”). In that case, the historically and
philosophically defined sets of artworks would be related only orthogo-
nally and we would have to say that the relation between the two does
not go beyond the accidental coincidence of the name “art.”
Again, we consider the philosophical or aesthetic sense of art in the
following sections. However, the preceding remarks do suggest a couple
of important features of an artwork that do not follow from our analysis
of aesthetic response. It is worth noting those features here. The ongo-
ing function of works of art as part of a comparison set suggests that
these are works we revisit as part of ongoing comparisons. The impor-
tance of revisiting suggests a “metacriterion” for art – that rereading,
reviewing, or rehearing the work will not diminish its value. Indeed, a
work is generally considered more paradigmatically artistic to the extent
that revisitings enhance our sense of that work’s value. Conversely, one
property of artifacts (e.g., literary works) that are not art is that they
4 In Davies’s terms, the following discussion will articulate a “hybrid” account of art, com-
bining “functional and procedural” criteria. Davies explains that, by functional criteria,
“something is an art work only if it succeeds in achieving the objective for which we have
art.” He explains that “a common line suggests that its function is to provide a pleasur-
able aesthetic experience.” In contrast, “proceduralists hold that something becomes an
art work only if it is made according to the appropriate process” (“Definitions” 229–
230). However, my (partial) proceduralism does not require an appropriate process of
making, but simply an appropriate process of response (in relation to a comparison set).
5 Indeed, as Korsmeyer points out, if a work of “anti-art,” such as Fountain, “were clearly
and unambiguously art it would lose its ‘anti’ character” (“Art” 148).
6 This approach may recall Wollheim’s suggestion “that we should, first, pick out cer-
tain objects as original or primary works of art; and that we should then set up some
rules which, successively applied to the original works, will give us . . . all subsequent or
derivative works of art” (143). Here, the rule is just, “placed consistently in the same
comparison set.”
Art and beauty 221
are ephemeral. This is not true in the banal sense that such works are
forgotten (a great work of art may be forgotten), but in the more robust
sense that they do not repay study after the first viewing. The point has
a number of implications, as we will see in the following. One is worth
noting right away. Even among works fostering aesthetic pleasure, not all
are equally definitive of art. Works that benefit from reconsideration are
more central to the category than those that do not.
The integration of a work into a comparison set suggests a second
metacriterion as well, thus a second principle of definitional significance.
This is the importance of introducing new techniques or refining avail-
able techniques for the production of new works. One of the central ways
in which works are historically integrated into a comparison set of art
is through such techniques. The development and refinement of interior
monologue and stream of consciousness in the modernist novel and inno-
vations surrounding perspective in Renaissance paintings are examples of
this sort. On the other hand, it seems clear that not all innovations render
a work more artistic. For example, we do not generally consider purely
technological innovations in film to contribute to the work’s character
as art. The first film to introduce a new film stock may be important
in the history of cinema, but it is not necessarily a better candidate for
classification as art. Generally, it seems that innovations should be used
in ways that serve the artistic purposes of the work in order to contribute
to the work’s status as art – which, again, leads us to the issue of just
what those purposes are and, thus, the aesthetic definition of art.
Before discussing the aesthetic account of art, however, we need to set
aside one further use of the word “art.” This is the sense in which “art”
refers to a particular genre within a medium. The point is most obvious
with film. As, for example, Bordwell has discussed, the art film has a
set of conventions (see chapter 5 of Poetics). Indeed, those conventions
may become clichés and they may be used well or badly, producing or
not producing aesthetic pleasure. Thus I may take a particular “art film”
not to be art at all, at least not in the aesthetic or philosophical sense.
Similarly, I might consider a particular Western to be a work of art. But
that does not mean that it falls into the genre of the “art film.” The genre
is not so straightforward in the case of literature, painting, or music. But
it seems clear that there are literary works written for and marketed to, for
example, an academic audience and works that are written for and aimed
at other readerships. In all these cases, the “art” genre works present
themselves as candidates for inclusion in the historical comparison set of
artworks. However, they are by no means guaranteed inclusion in that
historical set. Conversely, not all works included in the historical set are
instances of the art genre. Finally, works in the art genre are by no means
necessarily art in the aesthetic sense, nor are works of art in the aesthetic
sense necessarily instances of the art genre.
Art, propaganda, and entertainment

In ordinary usage, art is a scalar category. Some works are very good
cases of art – Mrs. Dalloway would be an exemplary case in literature. At
least some critics would judge, say, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake
as somewhat less paradigmatically art. Many would probably categorize
Agatha Christie’s At Bertram’s Hotel as falling outside the scope of art
or as marginal to the category. (I am not endorsing these judgments,
merely suggesting that they illustrate a tendency for us to view art as
having degrees.) We have already noted that one criterion for something
counting as art is that it be considered in relation to the comparison set
of artworks. This is scalar in the sense that some works are more centrally
integrated into the comparison set. The other criteria we have already
introduced are scalar as well. One concerns the degree to which a work
benefits or suffers from rereading. A work is more paradigmatically art
to the extent that it benefits from being revisited. The other concerns
innovation, which may be of greater or lesser degree or extent of impact.
Moreover, these metacriteria themselves interact in scalar ways in that
works that satisfy both are more paradigmatically art than works that
satisfy only one or the other.
Clearly, these criteria are, however, insufficient to define art philosoph-
ically. Again, the historical criterion risks arbitrariness. The revisitation
and innovation criteria apply only to some other source of value. In other
words, they do not tell us what value should be increased on revisitation
or enhanced by the novel technique. Christians my revisit the Bible to
become closer to God. But we would probably not consider such revis-
iting as a reason to count the Bible as more centrally a work of art. In
order to consider specifically artistic value, we need to look at the pur-
poses of art. In literary and aesthetic theories from a range of traditions,
there are two main purposes commonly associated with art – to teach
and to delight. Perhaps the best known instance of this is Horace, who
urged that poetry should be both “sweet” and “useful” (75). We find the
same general point in a number of writers, cross-culturally. For example,
as Ingalls notes, “delight and instruction” figure in Sanskrit poetic the-
ory (37; on the appearance of parallel ethical and aesthetic concerns in
Chinese and Arabic traditions, see Shih and Kemal, respectively).
Unfortunately, this division on its own does not help us a great deal.
The point becomes clear when we consider what might contrast with art
in the philosophical sense (as opposed to the historical and genre senses).
Art and beauty 223
At least in the modern West, the most common opposite of art would
probably be entertainment.7 The art–entertainment contrast is indeed
crucial. But it is not simple. Specifically, art and entertainment share
the two Horatian purposes. One might at first think that entertainment
has only the purpose of being delightful. But popular entertainment
is arguably more ethically oriented than paradigmatic art. Thus it is
often much easier to tell the ethical or political aim of a Hollywood film
than an art film. For example, Mildred Pierce would seem to suggest the
importance of remaining loyal to one’s husband even in difficult times.
It may also suggest that women should be given opportunities in the
world of commerce, because in many cases a wife may be more likely
to succeed than her husband. But just what is the moral suggestion of
Godard’s In Praise of Love or Woe Is Me? I am not claiming that these films
lack moral or political purposes. But those purposes are far less clear than
the implications of Mildred Pierce. Note also that the art–entertainment
division cannot be reduced to the nature of the work’s ethics or politics.
If the preceding comments are correct, then Mildred Pierce is not simply
conforming to patriarchal ideology. In other words, entertainment need
not be conservative. Similarly, art need not be progressive, as we see from
such cases as Ezra Pound’s Cantos.
This is not to say that there are no differences in tendency. One dif-
ference follows from the rereading criterion. Repeated examination is
unlikely to enrich our moral contemplation of a work if that work has a
simple moral point. Thus we are more likely to consider Godard’s films
art to the extent that we find them morally complex (though this should
be actual moral complexity, not obscurity or confusion). Of course, the
same point holds for Mildred Pierce. We are more likely to consider it art
to the extent that it is not simply a vehicle for patriarchal ideology or,
for that matter, liberal feminism, or simple advocacy of familial loyalty.
Indeed, this suggests that the crucial differentiation on ethical grounds is
not art versus entertainment, but art versus propaganda.
In short, the rereading metacriterion, applied to the Horatian divi-
sion, suggests that one more specific (scalar) criterion for art is moral
(or political) complexity. That criterion applies most obviously to the
7 Another important opposition is art–kitsch. I will not cover this alternative for reasons of
space. In brief, I would distinguish kitsch as involving pseudo-emotion, the idea that one
is experiencing an emotion when one is not. For example, by this definition, a great deal
of mass-produced religious art is kitsch, since it allows people to think they are feeling
spiritual reverence when they are not, in fact, doing so. However, it also indicates that,
for a given person, a plastic crucifix may not be kitsch at all, and for another person,
Mantegna’s Crucifixion may be kitsch – if the first person feels genuine reverence before
the plastic crucifix whereas the latter feels only self-satisfaction before the painting.
difference between art and propaganda. To some extent, art and enter-
tainment too diverge in terms of such complexity. But we might see the
main axis of differentiation more in terms of the other Horatian purpose –
delight. In other words, art and entertainment seem to be distinguished
more fundamentally by their relation to feeling than to teaching. Again,
a division in terms of the nature of delight will not encompass everything
that counts as art. The fundamental categorization of art remains that
of integration into a comparison set. However, that comparison set itself
involves a number of works that might be seen as defining or justifying
the category initially. To some extent, that “core categorization” might
be viewed as a function of thematic complexity, as just discussed. How-
ever, it appears to involve emotional consequence much more fully. For
one thing, the political purposes of artworks often become irrelevant in
the course of time. As Cory Charpentier pointed out to me, most of us
do not read Dante today for his account of then-contemporary politics.
Non-Hindus do not typically appreciate Hindu temples for devotional
reasons; non-Christians count Raphael as art even while rejecting his
spiritual commitments (cf. Carroll, Philosophy 113). Of course, in many
of these cases, we may still remain sensible of broader ethical or politi-
cal considerations. Nonetheless, it seems that core cases of art provide
delight even when they do not provide ethical edification. Moreover,
even complex ethical presentations seem unlikely to be categorized as
art if they do not involve delight. A work that develops complex ethical
reflections, but does not produce aesthetic pleasure may be considered
philosophy rather than art.
To illustrate these points it is worth considering works that were not
produced with the intent of being integrated into the comparison set
of art but that are widely accepted as art. The Lascaux cave paintings,
for example, were clearly not part of the art network when they were
discovered. Moreover, their political and ethical purposes, if any, are
unknown. However, they produced in viewers a sort of delight that made
it appropriate to classify them as art.
To recapitulate, there are, again, two primary ways in which a work
might count as art. One (the “historical” or “procedural” way) is by inte-
gration into the comparison set. The other (“philosophical” or “func-
tional” way) is by reference to its satisfaction of the ethico-political and
emotional purposes of art. Both are scalar. In the philosophical case, the
degree of centrality of an artwork is in part a function of moral complex-
ity, though the satisfaction of emotional purposes appears to be more
important. The philosophical definition governs the core cases and also
the introduction of works that were not created with the art comparison
set in mind. Thus a work such as Fountain can enter into the comparison
Art and beauty 225
set of art precisely because, at some remove, it responds to works that

satisfy the ethical and, more crucially, emotional purposes of art. This
suggests that works satisfying both the comparison set and art purposes
criteria are likely to be judged as more paradigmatic works of art than
objects that satisfy only one of the criteria. This is, indeed, what we seem
to find.
This still leaves us with the issue of just what constitutes the emotional
difference between art and entertainment – or, more broadly, the respon-
sive (thus cognitive and affective) difference, since “delight” in a work
of art is not simply emotional, but compounded of feeling and thought.
The most obviously distinctive quality of art, and the one most widely
recognized, is its character of provoking aesthetic pleasure, either beauty
or sublimity. The analyses of the preceding chapters suggest how we
might differentiate aesthetic response proper from non-aesthetic forms
of delight.
Before going on to develop this distinction, however, it is important
to note that, in distinguishing art from entertainment, we do not need
to oppose the two. In any given case, the categories may both apply –
that is, a work may be both art and entertainment – although there are
reasons why this is not often the case. Indeed, a key feature of what we
might call “aesthetic art” (as opposed to “comparison set art”) is that it
produces enjoyment, technically reward system involvement. That is also
a key feature of entertainment, perhaps the key feature of entertainment.
We might even go so far as to see art as a subset of entertainment. (Even
Bertolt Brecht, proponent of the “alienation effect” and didactic the-
ater, insisted that “good theater” is always “entertaining” [or “amusing”;
987].) For clarity of exposition, however, I will use “entertainment” to
mean “non-art entertainment” unless otherwise specified.
Finally, it is important to point out that nothing in the following dis-
cussion presupposes that the canons of aesthetic art and “mere enter-
tainment” are clearly established. The following analysis should apply
broadly to what is generally considered art versus entertainment (other-
wise the meaning of the terms would seem to be lost). But these clas-
sifications are open to dispute in every individual case. In keeping with
this, and with the general approach of this and Chapter 6, these analyses
should contribute to rational argument, but, again, not proof. Thus the
distinction here is not an attempt to find a criterion that justifies pre-
existing categorizations. This is crucial to avoiding the usual criticisms
of apparently related distinctions, such as “high” versus “popular” art.
As Novitz points out, works of “high” and “popular” art are “capable
of being meritorious or banal . . . simple and complex,” and so on (738).
(In addition, “entertainment” and “popular art” are different categories
as well. A work of art need not be unpopular and works of entertainment

often fail in the marketplace.)
Art and aesthetic argument

Drawing on our analysis of aesthetic argument, we might first note that
an artifact is more likely to be considered a work of art to the degree that it
has numerous qualities in the technical sense presented above. These are
not virtues of any sort but features that conduce toward an experience
of non-habitual patterning, prototype approximation, and attachment
system activation, as well as reward engagement. The fundamental def-
inition of art as integrated into a comparison set and the metacriteria
of enhancement through rereading and technical innovation have conse-
quences here. Specifically, all three indicate that the most apt evaluator
of a work in terms of its qualities is someone who is familiar with the
comparison set, has examined the work beyond a first reading, and is
able to evaluate the technical innovations of the work. This is, roughly,
what we mean by an expert, a sahr.daya in the Sanskrit aesthetic tradition.
Again, this is not to say that the “expert” is simply correct. For example,
an expert is also likely to be someone with a vested interest in canon
formation (e.g., if his or her academic position presupposes the value of
a certain author). The point is simply that, in cases of disagreement, it
is reasonable to invoke one’s extensive familiarity with the comparison
set or one’s detailed exploration of the work in question. These operate
as (rational) appeals to the addressee that he or she should acquire the
relevant expertise and examine the work in greater detail, not that he or
she should simply abandon his or her response.
These points have some practical consequences for the classification
of art. Most obviously, they will tend to drive up the value of com-
plexity for pattern recognition as experts are more likely to habituate to
simple patterns through breadth of familiarity with the comparison set
and depth of examination of the particular work. They will also tend to
increase the value of more specific sub-prototypes as experts, so to speak,
micro-categorize. For instance, an expert is likely to respond to Nandalal
Bose’s Sati (1907)8 not simply as a painting (nor even merely as an Indian
painting), but as a representative work of the Bengal “New School” of
“Indian-style” art, specifically from its “first phase” (see Guha-Thakurta
286). In both cases (i.e., increasing complexity and the proliferation of
sub-prototypes), such preferences increase the difficulty of works, partic-
ularly for non-experts, who are therefore likely to experience many works
8 The image can be found on the Internet by searching for Nandalal Bose Sati.
Art and beauty 227
of art as inaccessible and unenjoyable. Put differently, difficulties tend

to be enhanced for art (as opposed to entertainment), but experts (e.g.,
professors in relevant disciplines or later artists) are likely to discount
these difficulties as obstacles (or even understand them as qualities), not
problems.
The existence of problems is somewhat more complicated than might
at first appear. Our consideration of the problems in Mildred Pierce might
seem to suggest that works are more likely to count as entertainment
if they include problems (e.g., pattern-disrupting story inconsistencies)
that a viewer is unlikely to notice initially (since re-viewing is a crite-
rion for art). Conversely, one might expect art to have fewer problems
that one is likely to notice only after prolonged or repeated examination.
This is probably true of classical art. But it is not necessarily the case
in postmodern – or even modernist, or even Romantic – art. In each of
these cases, an author or other artist may incorporate blatant contradic-
tions or incompatibilities in subject matter or manner of presentation.
The most consistent way of treating such contradictions is straightfor-
ward. It involves taking a problem at the level of, say, story or narration
and integrating it into a pattern at another level. As noted in Chapter 6,
many works present problems with plot in order to establish a pattern
in narration (e.g., regarding the narrator’s psychological state). Others
present problems of both plot and narration in order to establish a the-
matic pattern (e.g., suggesting that perfect narrative consistency misleads
us into seeing the world as more uniform and rule-governed than it is).
Of course, if a difficulty may be resolved at another level, then it turns
out (by definition) to be an obstacle, not a problem after all. Thus it
does seem reasonable to say that an absence of problems tends to be
characteristic of art, as long as one recognizes that apparent problems
may be introduced at one level in order to generate a more complex
non-habitual pattern at another level. Indeed, the complex resolution of
apparent problems counts toward categorizing an artifact as art.
On the other hand, we need always to keep in mind that the prior
categorization of a work as art – a categorization underwritten by (puta-
tive) experts – increases our inclination to find resolutions or even simply
to assume that they exist, in keeping with confirmatory bias, as the dis-
cussion of Othello in Chapter 5 suggests. Conversely, it is important to
recognize that there are many forms of expertise. In other words, it is
important that we not simply assume a work is appealing only to non-
experts. In comparison with a general listener, someone with expertise
in rap music operates with much more specific prototypes, finer grained
principles of encoding, more numerous and complex sensitivities to pat-
terns. In this respect, a particular rap tune may have many more features
of art and fewer features of entertainment than it is commonly credited

with having.
In contrast with art, entertainment involves a high degree of enjoyment
features (i.e., it is reasonable to invoke density of enjoyment features in
characterizing something as entertainment). Thus properties that involve
sexual titillation or in-group pride may reasonably be cited as reason to
class a work as entertainment. Again, enjoyment features may include
qualities, but they are not confined to qualities. Moreover, as already
noted, the intensity of enjoyment may be achieved by introduction of
unnoticed problems, particularly problems that would not be noticed
on a first viewing or, if the work is revisited, would require scrutiny to
discern. Many entertainment films are designed to be viewed many times.
But the viewing conditions – for example, on romantic evenings – may not
be such as to foster the sort of plenary attention required to recognize
and be affected by problems. Put differently, works of entertainment
may presuppose that the implied reader or implied viewer either is not an
expert or is attending to the work in ways that do not rely on expertise. In
short, entertainment is likely to avoid obstacles, but not to avoid problems
except insofar as they would be obtrusive.
The point about repeated viewing suggests two complications here.
First, it may be the case that certain works commonly classed as enter-
tainment do in fact merit consideration as art. For example, perhaps the
repeated reviewings of Titanic suggest that there is more to the work than a
dismissive critic (seeing the film only once) might imagine. Second, there
seems to be a difference in the temporal scope of revisiting. One might
play a popular song constantly for a few weeks, then never listen to it
again. This seems to be different from the relistening that occurs with, for
example, a classical rāga or a Bach concerto. Thus the difference may not
simply be one of revisiting, but of revisiting over extended periods of time.
The preceding points bear primarily on the information processing
elements of aesthetic response. There seems to be a common view that
emotional intensity is a function of entertainment rather than of art. In
the case of attachment especially, I suspect that this is in part ideological.
Specifically, in a patriarchal society emotionality in general, and attach-
ment vulnerability in particular, are considered unmasculine, and thus
inferior. This is part of the reason that “sentimentalism,” very broadly
construed, has been so denigrated in much Western aesthetics (as indi-
cated in Tompkins’s discussion [see 125]). Such an ideological criterion
has no force in an aesthetic analysis; it is discredited insofar as it arises
for political, not aesthetic reasons.
On the other hand, there does seem to be some aesthetic point to a
criticism of sentimentalism when this is not simply a criticism of emotion
and attachment. Many of us at least feel that there is a difference between
Art and beauty 229
a Noh play such as Kagekiyo, dealing with parent–child separation, and

a Hallmark card commercial. In Chapter 6, I analyzed the difference in
terms of targets and idealization. Here, I would like to consider a different
account, not an alternative, but an addition – catharsis. Sometimes, the
difference we are considering is spoken of in terms of catharsis. The idea
here is that the Hallmark card commercial and the Noh play both excite
certain feelings, but only the latter “resolves” those feelings. That has a
certain intuitive plausibility, but it is difficult to say just what “resolution”
means in this context.
Martha Nussbaum has advocated interpreting “catharsis” to mean
“clarification.” In that case, the cathartic work is one that leads us to
enhanced self-understanding, or enhanced understanding “concerning
experiences of the pitiable or fearful kind” (Fragility 391) in the case of
Aristotelian tragedy. This does not seem right, at least not if the Hall-
mark card commercial is not cathartic and works of art are. I have a
pretty good idea of both the situation depicted and the nature of my pity
when watching the Hallmark card commercial. I am much more likely
to find such issues unclear in treating at least some works of art – even
King Lear and Kagekiyo. On the other hand, there does intuitively seem
to be some progress toward understanding emotional complexity in King
Lear and Kagekiyo, but not the Hallmark commercial. In this way, Nuss-
baum’s view appears to isolate a relevant consideration, at least in some
cases. Moreover, the point is consistent with the preceding emphases on
complexity and non-habitual pattern isolation.
One potentially valuable aspect to the emphasis on catharsis is that it
turns our attention away from the moment-by-moment emotional expe-
rience of the work to our overall, retrospective response. We may distin-
guish at least three temporal spans in response to a literary work – first,
the moment-by-moment or ongoing response; second, the immediate
impact of the conclusion (perhaps simply the culminating moment of
the moment-by-moment response); and third, the retrospective response
to the work as we consider it from a greater temporal distance. The
moment-by-moment response involves such feelings as thrills at spectac-
ular events. The immediate impact of the resolution is our feeling just
when the curtain drops or we close the book – the relief that the lovers
are united, the grief at the hero’s death. The retrospective response is
more extended and complex; moreover, it changes in the course of time.
It is, so to speak, the “aftertaste” of the work, our feelings about the
work as we mull it over and discuss it, sharing our response with others.9
9 Billy Clark makes a similar point in treating a Chekhov story “often described as a
masterpiece,” but “often striking readers as fairly trivial on first reading.” He argues that
“the nature of inferences made after reading makes it easy for readers to continue thinking
The idea of catharsis may draw our attention particularly to the third
type of response. A “cathartic” work may be understood, at least in part,
as a work that yields an emotionally satisfying retrospective experience.
In connection with Nussbaum’s view, the retrospective consideration of
the work is where we are most likely to achieve an understanding of
the events in the work and of our own emotional response. As such, that
contemplation has the sort of “clarifying” function treated by Nussbaum.
It is almost certainly the case that judgments of a work’s status as art
draw particularly on the retrospective feelings of readers or viewers, par-
ticularly the retrospective feelings of experts. This fits with several of the
preceding points. First, it is likely that retrospective consideration will be
less emotionally intense; thus there will be the greater “distance” that we
commonly associate with works of art. Note that this does not mean our
moment-by-moment or conclusion response to such works is more dis-
tant. It simply means that the less emotionally intense and more reflective
part of our response tends to have greater significance for classification
of a work as art. Moreover, this fits well with the common idea that
some entertainment “exploits” our emotions (as opposed to producing
catharsis). At least in part, we consider a work emotionally exploitative
if it produces moment-by-moment emotional intensity that is excessive
relative to what the work is representing, an excess that we recognize ret-
rospectively. Again, the Hallmark commercial may make one feel deeply
guilty about the terrible loneliness of one’s father, all alone, bereft of his
beloved child on Father’s Day. But in fact the father in the commercial is
a bit too self-pitying and one’s own father is probably not nearly so bereft
as the commercial may lead one to imagine. Our understanding of these
facts, and thus of the commercial’s emotionally exploitative character, is a
function of retrospective consideration. (I should note that retrospective
response may begin during one’s experience of the work itself; it is not
necessarily confined to the period after the ending of the work.) More-
over, retrospection is closely bound up with the rereading of works. Our
retrospective contemplation of works may or may not lead to rereading.
But it is connected with the possibility of rereading, of checking one’s
arguments and analyses.
Despite the preceding points, there are problems with relying too heav-
ily on retrospective response. The primary difficulty is that retrospective
response is subject to various forms of distortion. Two seem particularly
about the story and deriving inferential conclusions, and that this partly accounts for how
the story comes to be valued by readers and critics” (171). Along the same lines, one
of the characters in Cao Xueqin’s renowned eighteenth-century novel comments that
poetry “often says things which at first seem illogical,” but that change “when you stop
to think about them,” specifically “when you close the book and start thinking” (459).
Art and beauty 231
important. First, we misremember works. Our retrospective response

is not precisely to the work itself, but to our memory of the work. Of
course, our ongoing response to a work is our response to our encoding
and simulation of the work, not the work itself. However, in retrospect
our misunderstandings of the work may increase.
A second problem with giving particular weight to retrospection con-
cerns influence. Retrospective response may be less malleable to the
manipulations of the work itself (e.g., the guilt-inducing photos of the
pathetically lonely father in the Hallmark advertisement). However, it is
likely to be more malleable to the manipulations of institutional author-
ities as well as various forms of self-interest. For example, in the insti-
tutional context of American universities today, there is considerable
motivation to value works that enhance the likelihood one will publish.
This often means conforming works to prevalent theoretical ideas. Thus
a work is very likely to be valued if it appears to be self-deconstructing,
if it may be argued to “interrogate the binary” (as a graduate student
at my university recently enthused), if it is “transgressive.” Certainly,
some connections of this sort can lead to an enhanced appreciation of
the work, a transformation of one’s earlier, ongoing response, as previ-
ously random or banal features now coalesce into a novel pattern. But
often these judgments are a matter of self-deception and bad faith, a
substitution of enthusiasm about possible professional success for actual
aesthetic response.
Of course, one might reasonably argue that, for example, a work
may lead us to question gender norms (perhaps this is “the binary”
to which my graduate student referred) and therefore merit further study
and examination. That is undoubtedly true. Indeed, challenging gender
norms involves the sort of moral complexity that is contributory to our
sense of what constitutes art. The problem is not with valuing genuine
ideological critique or other kinds of theoretically guided analysis. The
problem, rather, is that pseudo-theoretical vagueness and concerns about
self-advancement might more readily distort our retrospective response
to a work than our ongoing response, which is presumably caught up
in the events and characters depicted in the work. As such, it does not
seem reasonable to accord retrospective response definitive superiority
over ongoing response. In other words, the retrospective assessment that
a work is transgressive and interrogates the binary (and provides a great
opportunity for a professional article) is not necessarily a stronger argu-
ment for a work’s status as art than that it engages strong attachment
feelings in its ongoing development. Perhaps most plausibly, one might
argue that retrospective response does have greater prima facie force, but
that it is always open to dispute on the grounds that it is not a response
to the work at all but a response to a distortion of the work or that the
criteria at issue (“interrogating the binary”) are perniciously vague or
otherwise problematic. Thus we might accept a qualified version of the
view that retrospection is more important than ongoing experience for
any given cycle of aesthetic response. For example, retrospection after a
first reading may be more consequential than the ongoing experience of
first reading, but not necessarily more consequential than the ongoing
experience of a second reading.
Our consideration of the Hallmark card commercial suggests a further
criterion for classifying a work as art as well. Again, reconsideration of
the commercial may lead us to reflect that the father in the advertise-
ment is too self-pitying and that one’s own father is neither so lonely
nor so univocally devoted to his son. For example, it seems unlikely that
the father in the Hallmark commercial will begin taunting his son with
denunciations of the Affordable Care Act or that his mother will criticize
the son’s Father’s Day present. In other words, the Hallmark commer-
cial engages in idealization, as discussed in Chapter 6. A key part of
that idealization – and one directly relevant here – is a sort of radical,
emotional simplification. The commercial vastly reduces ambivalence,
perhaps most importantly, the ambivalence of attachment relations. Like
cognitive pattern complexity, emotional complexity (or ambivalence) is a
property that contributes to classifying a work as art. Excessive emotional
simplicity is one ground on which a work might reasonably be criticized
as sentimental.
This emotional simplification is often related to cognitive and thematic
simplification, as in works of propaganda. Reducing ethical-political com-
plexity is likely to reduce emotional ambivalence. The pseudo-sublime
appeal to war that drew Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway may be a case of this
sort.
The common association of sentimentality and melodrama with
attachment fits here as well. The problem is not that attachment per
se is sentimental or melodramatic. It is, rather, that sentimentality and
melodrama tend to rid emotions of ambivalence and that this strategy
may be particularly common with attachment feelings. We see this in
a striking way with the Hallmark commercial and the Noh play. In the
latter, there is considerable emotional conflict in all the characters, about
both the parent–child separation and the subsequent (failed) reunion.
This contrasts starkly with the Hallmark commercial. This may also help
to account for the common view that works of art involve less intense
emotion. Personally, my emotions in response to Kagekiyo (or King Lear)
are not necessarily less intense than those evoked by the Hallmark com-
mercial. However, it may be the case that no single emotion with a single
Art and beauty 233
target is as intense in the play as in the commercial. For example, in seeing

the Hallmark commercial, I might have a searing response of unalloyed
compassion and guilt over the pathetic state of the abandoned father – or,
rather, over the (imagined) pathetic state of my own father, momentarily
idealized. However, in reading Kagekiyo, my compassion for the father
is never isolated from my compassion for the daughter, my blame of the
father for abandoning the girl, or my qualification of that blame for its
distance in the past.
One sort of ambivalence seems to be particularly important for some
forms of art. That is the recognition that there is often something ludi-
crous and aggrandizing in our egocentric emotions, perhaps particularly
emotions of attachment. In other words, in some cases, works of art
depict the absurdity of attachment feelings. This may be done in such
a way as to preserve (or even intensify) the attachment arousal or to
qualify that arousal. We find examples of the former in such works as
Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.”
This poem sets out to parody the idealization that is a consequence of
attachment feelings. However, it ends by reaffirming those attachment
feelings and the subjective idealization that goes along with them. The
point of the poem is that the speaker feels that the beloved is ideal, even
though he knows perfectly well that she is not. The effect of the poem is
to produce an ironic complexity by contrasting information processing
(which recognizes the beloved’s faults) with emotional response (which
idealizes the beloved). The consequence is that (at least for me) the emo-
tional impact is far stronger than that of any simply idealizing works.
By acknowledging the complexity, Shakespeare intensifies the activation
of emotional memories and thus of the attachment system, even while
also provoking mirth, localized disgust (at the reeking breath), and other
feelings.
A slightly different, more modernist irony may be found in Edith Whar-
ton’s The Age of Innocence. In this case, the irony serves to restrain the
attachment system activation, in order to maintain a degree of emotional
uncertainty and a greater equivalence of the various (ambivalent) emo-
tions. As discussed in Chapter 4, Newland Archer finds what he believes
to be Countess Olenska’s parasol. There is a touching sequence in which
he imagines the woman whom he has lost and touches his lips to the
handle that she must have touched recently. At the culmination of this
scene, he hears someone approach and anticipates Ellen. But it turns out
to be “the youngest and largest of the Blenker girls, blonde and blowsy,
in bedraggled muslin.” She, not Ellen, is the proprietress of the parasol.
Newland’s feelings are real, and the reader is likely to share them. But the
irony serves to remind us that they are based on fantasy, that they are not
the sign of some transcendental intimacy with the beloved, an intimacy

that reaches beyond the contingencies of the material world and social
life; they are, rather, largely false imaginings. This scene is then complexly
or ambivalently beautiful or sublime (the nature of Newland’s misunder-
standing makes it ambiguous between the beauty of imagined union and
the sublimity of stoical isolation). But it is also comic in Archer’s silly, if
very relatable willfulness and self-deception. We considered a case of still
fuller, postmodernist irony – Beckett’s Molloy – in Chapter 6.
Our analysis thus far indicates that classification of a work as art is sup-
ported by the presence of qualities contributing to non-habitual pattern
isolation, prototype approximation, attachment system activation, and/or
reward engagement. In keeping with this, difficulties are rendered irrele-
vant insofar as they are not problems (in the technical sense of difficulties
that do not allow resolution in pattern isolation, etc.). The qualities are
experienced in the context of the comparison set of other artworks and
they are enhanced or at least undiminished by reexperience of the work,
even over a long period. The patterns are more complex and the pro-
totypes more specific than in works of entertainment. The emotional
qualities place greater stress on retrospective emotions than is commonly
the case with works of entertainment and they involve greater emotional
complexity or ambivalence, prominently in attachment relations.
Conversely, classification of a work as entertainment is supported by
the presence of enjoyment features, whether or not these are qualities in
the technical sense. In keeping with this, problems are irrelevant if they
are not obstacles (i.e., if they are not experienced as difficulties). Reex-
perience of the work is largely irrelevant to the operation of enjoyment
features. Insofar as reexperience is relevant, it tends to occur without
exclusively focused attention and to be confined to a relatively short
term. The comparison set of works of art has little or no bearing on
response as well. (Some other comparison set may be germane, but that
comparison set may enhance non-aesthetic features of the work, such as
wonder at technological achievements.) The patterns at issue tend to be
simpler and the prototypes more general than for works of art. The emo-
tional qualities place greater stress on ongoing and conclusion emotions
than on retrospective response. Finally, they tend to involve greater emo-
tional simplification, thus less ambivalence, prominently in attachment
relations.
Again, it is important to stress that these descriptions are not intended
to capture the difference between works that are currently labeled “art”
and works that are currently labeled “entertainment.” Rather, these fea-
tures are intended to be criteria that may rationally invoked in discus-
sions about whether or not a work belongs in the category of “art.” This
Art and beauty 235
difference has two consequences. First, in any given case, it could turn
out that a work that is securely categorized as art fails to satisfy the rel-
evant criteria. Thus it may be art as defined historically, but not art as
defined aesthetically. Conversely, a work that is commonly categorized
as entertainment may satisfy the criteria for art. Second, as repeatedly
emphasized, individual response is not disproven by any of these cri-
teria. The criteria simply provide reason to reconsider one’s individual
response.
Before turning to an exemplification of the points we have been
addressing, we need to briefly consider one final set of concerns that
bear on the difference between art and entertainment. This too is the
result of the reexamination of works. On first reading a narrative, we
are likely to pay particular attention to inferring the story from the plot.
(The story is the “actual” occurrences of the narrative. The plot is the
way in which those occurrences are presented – for example, if the story
is recounted in chronological order or with flashbacks.) Thus, in a first
reading, our information processing is likely to bear on plot and story
patterns or prototypes (e.g., relating to story genre, such as romantic
tragi-comedy) and our emotional engagement is likely to be a function
of the events and actions of the work and our suspense or other emotions
bearing on the order of those events in the plot. Similarly, one’s first look
at a painting is likely to focus on the subject and the story or related
aspects of what is depicted in the work. However, there are many other
aspects of a work. In the case of narrative, for example, there is narration
(who is speaking to whom about the story events), verbal style, and even
aspects of plot or story, such as characterization, that are of less focal
significance in a reader’s initial attention to a work. Our cognitive and
emotional response to entertainment tends to dwell on features of initial
interest – thus the story and plot of narrative, the subject of painting or
sculpture, the melody of the music (rather than, say, harmony, thematic
contrast, or the handling of transitions). Such response is, of course,
important in the case of art as well. However, the isolation of patterns,
prototype approximation, and the activation of attachment and reward
feelings bear also on stylistic and other features that tend to become more
important on return to a work. In classifying a work as art, these are no
less important – indeed, they are often more important – than central
story and plot features.10 Thus, in arguing for, say, a literary work’s status
10 Indeed, in a reaction against the common focus on subject matter, artists have often gone
to the opposite extreme of rejecting its significance. Matisse once characterized “subject
matter” as “unimportant” (qtd. in Mather 9). I suspect that this is part of the reason that
some painters, such as Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, take up unappealing subjects –
neither beautiful nor sublime. This does not mean their works are not beautiful or, more
as art, it is reasonable to invoke word choice or sentence structure, the

development of a narrator’s voice or perspective, depth of psychological
insight into a character, and other features that might be ignored in an
initial focus on story information.
Arthur Miller’s The Price

Just after drafting the preceding treatment of art and entertainment, I
read Arthur Miller’s defense of his play After the Fall. Miller was crit-
icized for various aspects of the work. The particulars of his response
are not important here. What is important is that he makes some general
comments about the difference between art and “entertainment.” Part of
this difference involves abjuring simple “comfort” (“With Respect” 740).
This comfort, conveyed (in Miller’s view) by entertainment, involves the
rejection of emotional and moral complexity. He explains that it is “reas-
suring to see the world in terms of totally innocent victims and totally
evil instigators of . . . monstrous violence.” Miller characterizes the sim-
plified view as “sentimentalized” (742). As I hope is clear, his comments
converge with the analysis presented in the preceding pages.
In keeping with this congruence, and with Miller’s artistic stature, it
makes sense to take one of his plays as an illustration of art. Whereas
After the Fall has many fine moments and is certainly a worthwhile play,
it still seems to me a problematic work, thus not an ideal instance. The
Price is a work from the same period of Miller’s career and deals with
some of the same human problems, but with perhaps greater artistic
consistency. It has the additional advantage that it is easy to see how the
work could have been written in an emotionally and thematically sim-
plified manner, thus making it either sentimental entertainment or pro-
paganda. In addition, some criticisms directed against Miller arguably
derive from Miller’s refusal of simplification. For example, Bigsby sees
previous works by Miller as problematic in part because they do not
“reconcile man’s freedom to act with the determining factors of his own
nature” (19), and Willett objects that Miller fails to recognize the exis-
tence of “opportunities for mutuality and community” (310). But to
often, sublime (see, for example, Morel and Piguet). But their subject matter generally
seems closer to “anti-aesthetic” than to “aesthetic.” Wendy Steiner points out that
“Modernists vilified aesthetic pleasure” (Venus xix; I would qualify this as “often” or
perhaps even “sometimes”). Although Steiner analyzes it differently, this seems to be
primarily a matter of rejecting the beauty of the topic or subject matter. In literature,
for example, one might think of the way that, in Ulysses, James Joyce presents often
disgusting subject matter. But at the same time, Joyce engages in virtuoso aesthetic
performances in verbal style. This is part of the reason that Steiner can also affirm that
“Modern artworks” have “often been profoundly beautiful” (xv).
Art and beauty 237
provide such reconciliation or recognition might well involve simplifying

the works and sentimentalizing them. (I am obviously demurring from
Bigsby’s suggestion that such a reconciliation occurs in The Price.)
The play begins with Victor Franz, a police officer, looking over fur-
niture and other things left in a room. He puts a comic record on the
gramophone. Eventually, a woman enters. The audience should quickly
infer that this is Victor’s wife, Esther. They begin with some tension
over Esther’s drinking. On first seeing the play, audience members may
be unsure about whether this is a serious problem. The course of the
play suggests a degree of weakness on Esther’s part, but not anything
like alcoholism. This is a minor point but one worth noting. Esther is
neither a purified character nor a degraded one. One might reasonably
feel ambivalence regarding both her drinking and Victor’s (constrained)
disapproval. The play could easily have moved in the direction of melo-
drama, developing her drinking problem; alternatively, it could have pre-
sented Victor as overly censorious and controlling. It does neither. This
is not to say that the work would not have been art had it gone in one
of these directions. For example, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey
into Night is certainly a work of dramatic art. It develops the mother’s
addiction thoroughly, but with its own, different ambivalence.
Again, this is not clear on a first viewing of the play. However, it
becomes more evident on the rereading that is again characteristic of
art. When we see or read the play a second time, we can recognize
Esther’s weakness for drink as part of a moderate tendency toward self-
indulgence. This is broadly opposed to Victor’s tendency toward self-
sacrifice due to wounded pride, a form of self-sacrifice that is designed
to demonstrate one’s own worth and to render one superior to other
people – particularly those people who have been unappreciative. We
will find this prominently in Victor’s relation with his brother, Walter.
Victor’s response to Esther’s drinking combines genuine concern for
her well-being with a sort of puritanism that goes along with the self-
denial of wounded pride. An important point in all this is that, in both
cases, Miller’s characterization is complex. However, in both cases it
also points toward a characterization pattern, a relatively consistent but
not habitual or easily anticipated consistency of just the sort required
by aesthetic enjoyment. Indeed, this characterization pattern is crucial
to the aesthetics of the play. Moreover, it is in keeping with the work’s
status as art, because it concerns patterning beyond the event sequences
of story and plot.
Early in the dialogue, Victor mentions his brother, Walter. We do not
learn much about Walter at this moment. Even from the first introduc-
tion, however, it seems clear that there is some degree of tension between
the siblings. This may begin to suggest a background prototype of fra-

ternal conflict. It is difficult to say just how people generally understand
this prototype (or prototypes, since there are probably several). But the
case of Cain and Abel is perhaps the most prominent exemplar in the
Judeo-Christian tradition, and it is likely to figure on its own or in its
effects on the formation of a relevant prototype. The crucial thing about
this exemplar or its associated prototype is that it is conducive to simpli-
fication and sentimentalism. At least as commonly understood, Abel is
the good brother and Cain is the bad brother and their conflict is Cain’s
fault. This division lends itself to melodramatic entertainment or senti-
mentalism and we may anticipate melodramatic developments from early
in the play, particularly after we learn the nature of the conflict between
the brothers. The boys’ father, Mr. Franz, had lost all his wealth in the
Great Depression. Victor left school to work to support him. In contrast,
Walter became a successful physician, making a great deal of money but
sending home a mere five dollars each month (247) for the upkeep of Mr.
Franz. The result is that Victor, once a promising student, is struggling
financially as a police officer while Walter is wealthy. This almost appears
to be an expanded Hallmark card commercial. We have the wretched
father, a dutiful son, and a neglectful son.
Crucially for our purposes the story is inseparable from attachment
bonds and thus attachment system activation. The narration in effect
focalizes Victor. In other words, the events presented on stage always
include Victor. Other characters enter or leave, but we never follow them
to other rooms or outside the apartment. That focalization on Victor
stresses his attachment relations particularly. From early in the play, the
audience is likely to have the sense that Victor felt a deep bond with his
father and with Walter. However, he feels betrayed by his brother, both
directly and on behalf of their father. Audience members are likely to
share his sense of betrayal empathically, just as Victor shares his father’s
feelings.
A work of sentiment and melodrama would have continued in this
direction, keeping the emotional division simple. We have almost no
ambivalence before Walter enters. Skeptical audience members may be
inclined to withhold final judgment before hearing Walter’s side of the
story. However, even their initial response is likely to be one of tentative
compassion for Victor. This would not necessarily have made a bad play.
However, it would have made a play that was less paradigmatically a work
of art.
The situation in which Victor and Esther find themselves is the fol-
lowing. Although Mr. Franz died sixteen years earlier, Victor is only now
disposing of the goods in his father’s apartment, forced by the imminent
Art and beauty 239
demolition of the building. The pile of furniture and other items will
provide prompts for reminiscence in the course of the play. This facili-
tates the use of narrated flashbacks, thus some achrony in the narrative
presentation. In themselves, flashbacks are common enough in all forms
of literature that they do not really count in favor of classifying The Price
as art. However, we will see that there are complications in the way flash-
backs work in the play. We might expect any given flashback to recount all
relevant information from the period at issue. For example, when Victor
and Esther discuss Mr. Franz’s financial losses and the reaction of the
children, we might expect to be given the full story. However, as it hap-
pens, subsequent flashbacks provide us with further information that is
crucial to our understanding of those events. Thus the temporal structure
of the work’s emplotment is complex in a way that may count toward its
classification as art. (Some popular genres, such as murder mysteries, use
this sort of complex reconfiguration of past events as well. Nonetheless,
it still seems that such narrational complexity may reasonably be invoked
when arguing that a given work is art.)
The complications do not arise without preparation. They are part
of a larger pattern, introduced early on, a pattern in which apparently
well-established facts are qualified or undermined, creating or enhancing
ambivalence. For example, Victor complains that Walter has not called
in sixteen years, but Esther replies that Victor has not called either (197;
in fact, it turns out that this is not literally true [241] – a further com-
plication – but the basic point holds reasonably well). More significantly,
Victor sometimes seems to idealize his father and indeed himself (for
devotion to his father) – an idealization that we might have mistakenly
attributed to Miller. However, Victor also questions his attitudes and
actions, commenting (with reference to his father): “What was he? A
busted businessman like thousands of others, and I acted like some kind
of a mountain crashed” (199). Thus, from relatively early in the play,
there are hints that the apparent idealizations and demonizations are not
the sentimental melodrama of Hallmark, but something more difficult
and ambivalent.
Before this is developed, however, Mr. Solomon arrives to appraise
and purchase Mr. Franz’s estate. Mr. Solomon is Jewish and speaks
with “a Russian-Yiddish accent” (203). He does his best to convince
Victor that he is buying the goods at the best possible price, clearly
engaging in a range of strategies to make the best deal for himself. Here,
too, we have emotional and thematic complexity. Solomon recalls the
stereotype of the Jewish merchant, a stereotype being a form of prototype.
Miller was himself Jewish and dealt with anti-Semitism in some of his
plays, including Incident at Vichy, which immediately preceded The Price.
There are two obvious ways in which this apparent Jewish stereotype
could be developed thematically. One would confirm the stereotype, thus
making Solomon a cheat. The other would idealize Solomon, making
him entirely unselfish, perhaps – like his namesake, King Solomon – a
source of wisdom, who in this case could reconcile the estranged brothers.
Either would conduce toward sentimentalism or melodrama through
emotional simplification. Miller does neither. Rather, he makes Solomon
a businessman who is, of course, trying to do well for himself in the
deal, but who also has human sympathy and even wisdom (related to his
extensive human experience over nearly ninety years [210]). In short, he
is a complex character, self-interested, but with compassion and goodwill,
the self-interest qualified by the compassion and vice versa.
Miller makes this into an aesthetically pleasing portrait by connecting
Solomon not only with a characterization pattern but also with attach-
ment feelings. Indeed, perhaps the most aesthetically affecting moment
in the play comes when Solomon explains, “I had a daughter, should rest
in peace, she took her own life. That’s nearly fifty years. And every night
I lay down to sleep, she’s sitting there. I see her clear like I see you. But
if it was a miracle and she came to life, what would I say to her?” (265).
The attachment loss is palpable. But so is the sense that it is pointless
to idealize the object of that loss; it is misguided and sentimental. That
realization is part of the calculating self-interest and self-reflection that
characterize Solomon and that stand in a sort of dynamic equilibrium
with his feelings of attachment – first, the direct feelings of attachment
that bear on his daughter, but also the empathic feelings of attachment
that draw his compassion for Victor.
Note that this portrait is not thematically simple either. Miller does
not suggest that Jewish merchants, accused of selfishness, were actually
saints. Rather, they were partially guilty of selfishness – but only in the
same way that everyone else is partially guilty. Though a straightfor-
ward and ultimately uncontroversial point, it lends a certain ambiguity
to Solomon’s position and a certain ambivalence to audience reception.
Victor and Solomon agree on a price and, just as Solomon is paying,
Walter enters. At least for me, Walter initially seems to confirm the pro-
totype of the selfish brother. He appears friendly and self-confident. But,
in the context of what we have heard from Victor and Esther, such a
cheerful appearance is damning. If he had any sensitivity, one is inclined
to think, he would enter sheepishly, with awareness of his faults. Even
his apparently generous refusal of his half of the proceeds can appear
patronizing. “I wouldn’t think of it, kid,” he says when asked about his
half of the inheritance, explaining, “I came by to say hello, that’s all”
(229). Audience members seem likely to take this in one of two ways.
Art and beauty 241
The first possibility is that he is lying. Perhaps he has in mind some other
way of squeezing money out of the situation. This would be in keeping
with our understanding of him as motivated by greed. The second possi-
bility is that he is telling the truth. In that case, he is almost pathologically
insensitive to his brother’s feelings. We seem to get some support for the
former view when, almost immediately following this, Walter suggests
that the amount being paid by Solomon is only about one-third of the
furniture’s value. Subsequently, he goes further and in effect suggests a
tax scam. Solomon would appraise the furniture at an exorbitant rate;
Walter would give it away to charity, taking a large deduction; then the
brothers would split the proceeds. Esther is interested, but Victor hesi-
tates. Audience members familiar with Miller’s work might think that this
involves modeling on the exemplar of the Fall, a case of Satan, played by
Walter, seducing Eve, played by Esther, and tempting Adam, played by
Victor. Victor is also playing a sort of self-sacrificing, Jesus-like character,
having given his life for his father. In this context, his hesitation suggests
his moral purity.
But soon after this we learn that Victor is hesitating only because
he wants to have things out with Walter. Moreover, even before the
conflict develops, Walter volunteers to give the entire amount to Victor,
everything he would save on his taxes. This makes it at least possible that
Walter does have some sensitivity to Victor, some empathy, and that he
made the offer of splitting the tax savings precisely in order not to appear
patronizing. From here on, complications accumulate.
As a result of some comments by Victor, Walter explains that he had
a nervous collapse that kept him “out of commission for nearly three
years” (241). If Walter’s actions have, in the past, been driven entirely
by avarice, this collapse shows at least some human weakness. Three
years of debilitating psychiatric depression hardly constitute success in
pursuing one’s self-interest. More precisely, this illness suggests emo-
tional complexity on Walter’s part. He was not simply a machine for
maximizing gains, but a feeling person who lacked something – indeed,
lacked more than Victor does. He goes on to explain himself: “You start
out wanting to be the best, and there’s no question that you do need a
certain fanaticism” (241–242). This requires “eliminat[ing] everything
extraneous . . . including people” (242).
This regretful monomania would be better than the pure, insensitive
selfishness that was suggested by the opening of the play. But it would
still be quite simple. Walter goes on to say that, underlying his desire to
“[s]hame the competition,” there was a “terror” of “it ever happening
to me . . . as it happened to him” (243), meaning their father. Walter has
been no less traumatized by the father’s losses than has Victor. They
are both particularly wounded by their mother’s reaction. When her

husband was at his lowest point and desperately needed her support, she
responded by vomiting all over him (260). That seems to have been what
finally caused the father’s desolation, his utter shame – so great that he
could not bring himself to be seen in public (“The man was ashamed to
go into the street!” [254; see also 258]). By the end of the play, we can see
the characterization pattern for Walter: He is striving desperately never
to need anyone else. He is not simply striving to succeed, but to be proof
against attachment vulnerabilities – for it was the mother’s response even
more than the financial loss that ruined their father. This explains the
failure of his marriage and his indifference to any future relationship.
Or, rather, this explains his behavior in part. His near phobia of attach-
ment dependency was intensified by Mr. Franz’s treatment of Victor.
Victor left college to support his father. Initially, we understand that Vic-
tor needed only five hundred dollars to complete his education (250),
but they did not have the money – and Walter would not give it. In short,
Victor was the self-sacrificing son for his victimized father. But, in one of
the key moments when the past is complicated, Walter explains that Mr.
Franz still had thousands of dollars. He could easily have supported the
completion of Victor’s education. Far from being a pure victim, Mr. Franz
was as self-interested and calculating as anyone else. That self-interested
calculation may have been understandable, given his traumatic losses.
But it is far from wholly forgivable, given its impact on his son’s life.
In any case, Walter saw the same pattern of attachment betrayal in his
mother and his father – “When he [Mr. Franz] needed her [his wife],
she vomited. And when you [Victor] needed him, he laughed” (261).
Walter’s response was to do everything in his power to avoid attachment
dependency.
This characterization pattern also helps to explain Walter’s concluding
rage. Walter has opened up the possibility of Victor working for him. The
offer is slight (after so many years) and subordinating, but it is also, in
however limited a way, a gesture of reconciliation and a risk. Walter is,
ever so slightly, opening himself to attachment vulnerability. But Victor
rejects the offer, explaining, “I don’t trust you” (263). Thus Victor says
to Walter that he expects, precisely, attachment betrayal. “Humiliated”
(263), Walter responds to this and subsequent statements by Esther,
asserting that he will not be “ashamed” (264), then bizarrely throwing
one of their mother’s gowns at Victor and crying out before he leaves.
The action is so apparently anomalous and so ridiculous that I am not
sure it really succeeds dramatically. But, at least on reflection, it fits
Walter’s characterization pattern perfectly. The dress recalls the mother’s
desire for wealth, a desire that underlay her emotional betrayal of her
Art and beauty 243
husband at the loss of wealth. In throwing the dress at Victor, Walter is

expressing his rejection of the familial bonds it represents and rage at his
own momentary attachment vulnerability – vulnerability met by what he
must view as humiliating rejection, a form of betrayal, precisely what he
had feared.
The father’s devastation and the mother’s reaction help to account for
Victor’s characterization pattern as well. He too was traumatized by the
attachment violation. But his further sense of betrayal came not from his
knowledge of the father’s hidden wealth. It came, rather, from his belief
that his wealthy brother would not give him the almost trivial sum needed
for his education. Like Walter, then, Victor experienced two attachment
violations. However, unlike Walter, he did not have the option of making
himself immune to treachery, since he was the victim in one of the two
cases. Walter saw his father and brother betrayed; Victor saw his father
and himself betrayed. His response, therefore, was different. Instead of
rejecting the dependency, he accepted the loss and sought to display it as
a shame-inducing sacrifice. Walter stresses that this was a choice. Even
if unaware of Mr. Franz’s hidden funds, he could well have sold a luxury
item, such as the harp (257). Though Walter has his own complex motives
for making the assertion, he is at least partially correct when he claims
that Victor has set out “to destroy me with this saintly self-sacrifice”
(263). It is only partially correct because the attachment feelings and
vulnerabilities were real. Victor’s claim about loving his father is not false,
simply partial – and idealizing in its partiality, its removal of ambivalence
and its reduction of the ambiguity of his situation.
Related to this, the themes of the play are complex. Miller does not opt
for a simple celebration of self-sacrifice and familial loyalty, or indepen-
dent self-reliance. The play acknowledges the value of both – and their
at least partial incompatibility. It also does not present the motives for
any given act as purely moral. There is egocentrism, greed and vanity,
as well as attachment and empathy underlying the behaviors of all the
characters – including behaviors rationalized as purely moral.
Finally, as should be all too clear, the entire story rests on the simulta-
neous longing for understanding and the painful isolation of every con-
sciousness from each other. This includes the consciousnesses of those
who are bonded with one another by attachment – Victor, Walter, their
father, and their mother. Their alienation from one another is not simply
a matter of secrecy. It is existential, not merely practical.
Again, it would have been easy for Miller to sentimentalize, to present
Walter as merely greedy or to portray the brothers’ estrangement as
the result of a simple misunderstanding whose resolution leads to their
happy reconciliation. He could at least have made Victor a purer savior,
untainted by vengeful impulses of inducing shame. Parallel points apply

to Esther and Solomon (as already noted). In short, there are obvious
ways in which he could have made the play more entertainment and less
art. But he made the character patterns richer and more nuanced, com-
plicated the themes, and enhanced the viewer’s emotional ambivalence.
He also suggested prototypes and exemplars – such as the story of the
Fall – only to question their standard configurations of story sequences
(e.g., sin and redemption) and character types (e.g., seducer and savior),
using them to highlight non-habitual patterns in his own emplotment
and characterization.
There are, of course, many ways in which a work may involve nuanced
patterning, subtleties of prototype or exemplar activation, thematic con-
flicts or ambiguities, and emotional ambivalence. The Price presents one
configuration of such nuances, subtleties, ambiguities, and ambivalences.
As such, its analysis illustrates how one might argue for the classification
of a work as art. I hope that this analysis also suggests how such a clas-
sification may guide us toward recognizing subtleties in a work that we
might otherwise have passed over. It should thereby enhance our iso-
lation of unexpected patterns, our response to prototype and exemplar
relations, and our (complex) feelings of reward and attachment; it should
also highlight the relation of attachment to the unspeakable otherness of
one consciousness to another. In short, I hope this analysis not only con-
veys a sense of the work as art but also furthers our experience of the
work’s beauty and sublimity.
Afterword
A brief recapitulation, with a coda on anti-aesthetic art
Recapitulation: the aesthetic

The preceding chapters have covered a range of theoretical topics and
artistic examples. At the center of these analyses and interpretations
has been the multicomponent account of personal beauty or aesthetic
response. This account posits that (recipient-relative) aesthetic response
results from specific forms of information processing and emotion acti-
vation. The information-processing contribution is a function of cate-
gorization processes. There appear to be three sorts of categorization
process–exemplar or instance based, prototype based, and rule (or pat-
tern) based. Each form of categorization involves degrees of aptness or
“fit” between a target (e.g., a particular object or event) and the category.
Thus a given target may bear greater or lesser resemblance to an exem-
plar; it may more or less approximate a prototype; and, finally, it may
more or less conform to an isolable rule. The first principle of personal
beauty by the present account is that the target more closely approaches
the ideally apt case of its categorization type. For example, when dealing
with a prototype-based category, the most beautiful target will be the
target that most closely approximates the recipient’s prototype for that
category.
In treating these information processing factors, I made a number
of related points. For example, we considered the nature of proto-
types as rough averages weighted by contrast with some opposing cat-
egory. We also considered how subcategorization might affect aesthetic
response. Subcategorization allows the multiplication of prototypes, pre-
sumably extending the range of targets that might be seen as approx-
imating a prototype. For example, on first encountering visible ethnic
differences, people appear to judge the unfamiliar group ugly, due to
their non-prototypical features, such as a different skin color. How-
ever, these new instances will soon begin to affect recipients’ general
prototypes and to foster the development of sub-prototypes. We also
explored how the individual nature of prototypes and sub-prototypes
245
246 Afterword
entails that aesthetic pleasure is necessarily to some degree idiosyn-

cratic.
Drawing first on pattern-based categorization, with its tacit isolation
of rules, we considered the nature of expectation and the importance of a
combination of expectancy confirmation and non-anomalous expectancy
violation, which is to say the violation of expectation that is nonetheless
recognizable as patterned or rule-governed. This led me to stress the
non-habitual character of the pattern isolation. This non-habitual quality
bears on the other forms of category fit as well. Exemplar similarity and
prototype approximation must be non-habitual to have aesthetic effects
as well.
Habituation has its effects through emotion systems, or rather through
the proto-emotion system of interest. Interest, with associated atten-
tional orientation, is a necessary condition for aesthetic enjoyment. Much
research also points to the importance of both the liking and wanting
components of endogenous reward. The liking component bears on our
positive pleasure in beauty or sublimity. The wanting component – or
SEEKING system, in Panksepp’s terminology – engages our commit-
ment to pursue a trajectory of thought or action. This is what sustains
our involvement with a work (e.g., in following a character in pursuit of
a goal or a melodic and harmonic sequence leading to resolution).
Interest and endogenous reward are widely recognized as key aspects of
aesthetic response. The difficulty is that they are key aspects of just about
any immersive activity, including such non-aesthetic pursuits as follow-
ing the directions to assemble a piece of furniture. Of course, many such
activities do not involve the same information-processing elements as
aesthetic response. But their affective quality seems different as well. In
connection with this, the preceding chapters have stressed attachment
system activation as a singularly important component of aesthetic feel-
ing. Indeed, it seems that intense attachment system activation may lead
us to experience a target as beautiful even in the absence of category
fitness (e.g., prototype approximation) – as in the proverbial case of “a
face that only a mother could love,” and that we might reasonably alter
to “a face that only a mother could find beautiful.”
By this account, the intensity and paradigmatic quality of a particu-
lar aesthetic response varies with the number of components involved
and the degree to which they are engaged. Thus a mathematical dis-
covery might produce a certain sort of aesthetic response due to its
non-habitual rule isolation combined with endogenous reward (or
SEEKING) involvement. However, it might lack the attachment com-
ponent and thus be a less paradigmatic case of aesthetic experience. (On
the other hand, I would not be surprised to find that mathematicians do
Afterword 247
have some attachment system involvement in the aesthetic enjoyment of

mathematics, perhaps in the way that attachment system arousal is linked
with music.)
In proposing this account of personal beauty, I was not attempting
to isolate a “true meaning” for the word “beautiful.” Thus it was not a
traditional philosophical examination of a “What is x?” question – in this
case, “What is beauty?” It was, rather, an attempt to take our ordinary
concept of beauty and, so to speak, realign it with a more descriptively
coherent and explanatorily tractable set of experiences. In this way, it
was an ordinary scientific activity. When we examine the molecular com-
position of gold, we do not try to find a chemical composition that fits
everything people call “gold” and nothing they do not call “gold.” Rather,
we take the ordinary usage as a baseline to give a rough approximation
for the set of objects we will consider. But, given that basis, we freely
exclude objects that are called “gold” but have a distinct molecular com-
position and freely include objects that are not called “gold” but have
the same molecular composition. This is what I have tried to do with
“beauty.”
I followed the same general principle in addressing sublimity. The word
“sublime” is used in many different senses. For the most part, these come
down to the addition of something to beauty. In some cases, the addition
is a matter of information processing, such as Kantian ideas of free will
or infinitude. In other cases, the addition is a matter of emotion – often
fear, moral esteem, or awe (again, drawing on Kant, as well as Burke).
These are all perfectly reasonable concepts. Indeed, the addition of awe
to aesthetic pleasure does seem to isolate a particularly important variant
in our experience of beauty. In Burke, Kant, and others, these accounts
are theoretically motivated in the sense that they mark rigorously defined
descriptive differences with clear explanatory consequences, given the
mental architectures presupposed by these accounts. For example, in
Kant, the sublimity-defining ideas of reason are distinguished from the
categories of the understanding that enter into beauty. But the preceding
analysis gives no special status to, say, aesthetic pleasure mingled with
fear system activation. This is because fear is not a “core” component of
aesthetic response, by the account I have developed. Fear or any other
emotion will inflect an aesthetic experience. But the key issue is how the
aesthetically definitive components may vary. Inspired by suggestions in
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, I proposed that this fundamental division
in aesthetic response is a fundamental division in attachment relations,
that of security and insecurity. More precisely, I argued that sublimity is
linked with attachment insecurity in a broad sense, ranging from actual
attachment loss to the insecurity that derives from the inaccessibility of
248 Afterword
one consciousness to another. This relates to the more standard treatment

of sublimity and fear, but links sublimity with a particular sort of fear –
that related to the core aesthetic component of attachment.
I subsequently distinguished subvarieties of sublimity – the stoical and
the ecstatic. There were parallel theoretical reasons for this division. First,
it would seem that the pain of attachment insecurity requires some com-
pensatory reward to yield aesthetic pleasure. We find this most obviously
in the wonder one feels at a person who overcomes grief and thus stands
as a paradigm of stoicism. This has the further advantage of connecting
my account of sublimity with a common stress on wonder or awe. There
seem to be two ways in which attachment insecurity can end – in the
annihilation of the other person (as just noted) or in the loss of one-
self. The latter dispels the existential loneliness of consciousness through
union. This ecstatic union is, however, also a form of loss. That loss
differentiates it from the sense of intimate sharing that we often expe-
rience as beautiful (rather than sublime). Such union is also commonly
connected with a sense of both wonder or awe, as well as religious mysti-
cism, providing significant points of contact with earlier accounts of the
sublime.
This fundamental analysis led to many other arguments and conclu-
sions. Some are developed at length. For example, the personal nature
of aesthetic response suggests a problem for an artist. The artist needs to
provide enough specification in the work to orient the recipient toward the
desired aesthetic response. However, he/she also needs to leave enough
indeterminacy in the work to accommodate the recipient’s idiosyncrasies.
Chapter 3 was devoted to just how this might occur.
Other implications were touched on only in passing. For example, the
scope of the book does not allow me to address evolutionary issues in any
detail. However, the account of beauty given here suggests that most evo-
lutionary accounts of beauty are too specific and disjointed – explaining,
say, facial beauty and landscape beauty separately, while saying noth-
ing about mathematical beauty. Moreover, they may not be address-
ing beauty as such, but rather a complex of aesthetic and non-aesthetic
(e.g., sexual) responses. Most importantly, they fail to specify how the
proposed evolutionary explanation coheres with an algorithmic explana-
tion of the operation of aesthetic response. The present account requires
only the evolution of the components and their coordination into aes-
thetic response. This is straightforward. The evolutionary advantage of
preferring prototype-approximating targets, for example, is obvious as
non-prototypical instances of targets, whether fruits or faces, are more
likely to be diseased. The evolutionary advantage of enjoying rule isola-
tion is clear also (cf. Vuust and Kringelbach 256 and 266). If anything, the
Afterword 249
adaptive function of preferring attachment objects is even more self-

evident. Thus the preceding analysis points toward a parsimonious evo-
lutionary account of aesthetic response.
There is no need to recapitulate all the points set forth and supported
in the preceding chapters – for instance, how the present account allows
but also qualifies rational debate on aesthetic issues. Rather, in these
concluding pages, I would like to return briefly to a central topic of
Chapter 7, the relation of beauty and art. One obvious objection to the
preceding analysis is that it is better at explaining what might loosely be
called “traditional” art than it is at explaining postmodern art, at least
in some of its varieties. In the remainder of this chapter, I would like to
consider the degree to which this is or is not true.
Coda: the anti-aesthetic

Chapter 7 accounts for works of (broadly) anti-aesthetic art procedurally,
by noting that they may have previously established artworks as their
primary comparison set. That is an entirely open criterion and some
readers may object to it on those grounds. Such a criterion, it may be
objected, in effect allows anything to be an artwork, without giving a
special place to or making sense out of works such as Fountain.
I should begin by noting that, from my point of view, there is no par-
ticular problem with not giving a special place to Fountain – or, rather,
with not giving a, so to speak, absolute place to it. Specifically, both my
criteria for art make art recipient-relative, just like beauty. Thus there is
“public art” – what people generally believe is widely accepted as art –
and “personal art,” what constitutes an individual’s comparison set.
Again, I might look at my wife’s photographs primarily in relation to
the comparison set of art, not primarily in relation to the comparison
set of tourist photos. In consequence, they are art for me. Fountain does
have a special status in my account in that it is widely included in indi-
viduals’ comparison set for personal art (much more widely than my
wife’s photographs). Moreover, it is commonly accepted as falling into
the category of public art. (Of course, in both cases, we need to qualify
even these claims by noting that the claims are restricted to a certain
set of recipients; most people in the world probably have never heard
of Fountain.) It is not, however, universal in its placement in personal
art. Here, as with beauty, one can rationally argue that Fountain should
be considered primarily in relation to the comparison set of artworks.
However, if someone does not do so, we cannot say he or she is wrong
(unless we are talking about public art, in which case the person would
just be empirically mistaken for a particular public).
250 Afterword
Thus the promiscuity, so to speak, of my historical criterion for art

does not seem to be a real problem. Moreover, it is worth pointing out
something that has no doubt struck almost every reader of contemporary
aesthetic theory – works such as Fountain figure much too prominently in
the description and explanation of art. This is a problem both for propor-
tionality and for historical understanding. As to proportionality, it should
be clear that the overwhelming majority of artworks throughout history
are not anti-aesthetic. Anti-aesthetic works constitute only a miniscule
fraction of all artworks. But aesthetic theories treat them almost as if
the proportions were reversed. As to historical understanding, it is far
from clear just what contemporary works will continue to be revered in
the future. Thus it is difficult to say whether we should take them to be
enduring or ephemeral. It seems obvious that we need an account of art
that ultimately explains both. But we need to know which is which in
order to give appropriate explanations. For historical reasons, it probably
is the case that Fountain will be remembered. But it also seems unlikely
that it will have a central place in the comparison set of artworks.
However, despite these points, it is reasonable to ask that an account
of art have something to say about the nature of anti-aesthetic art. Per-
haps surprisingly, it seems that our second criterion for art – the aesthetic
criterion defining the paradigmatic cases of art – can give us a greater
understanding of the nature of some modern and contemporary devel-
opments in art. Specifically, the preceding analysis of beauty suggests a
way of organizing and understanding what might otherwise seem merely
anomalous forms of art, including specifically anti-aesthetic forms. In
other words, far from being challenged by anti-aesthetic art, the pre-
ceding account of beauty is actually reinforced by them because it helps
systematically describe and explain developments that might otherwise
seem merely random.
More precisely, the preceding analysis distinguishes art from beauty,
but it also connects them. At some remove and in some manner, each
work of art bears on works of beauty and sublimity, since these define
the paradigmatic works of art. The analysis of beauty, in turn, enables us
to comprehend some of the main ways in which artworks – particularly
modern artworks – may bear on beauty without seeking to be beautiful
(or sublime). It thereby suggests some of the ways in which we might
organize part of the field of modern and contemporary art. Much mod-
ern and contemporary art severely qualifies, repudiates – or, in some
cases, enhances to an extreme – individual aspects of beauty. In other
cases, modern and contemporary art treats the components of beauty
in radically novel ways. We can recognize a pattern in such qualifica-
tions, innovations, and so on, once we connect them with the preceding
Afterword 251
analyses. As Barrett observes, “Many Postmodernist works of art are

intentionally made to trouble any received notions of beauty, the single
most important criterion for many works of art designated as ‘great’
in the history of art” (216). Understanding the components of aes-
thetic response allows us to better understand how this “troubling”
operates.
The first important distinction here is that between public and per-
sonal art. Dickie’s institutional account of art, Bourdieu’s treatment of
consecration, and related discussions present plausible analyses of the
procedures that define not art generally, but what I have referred to
as “public art.” One of the main types of anti-aesthetic art constitutes
a challenge to these institutional or consecrational processes, in effect
exposing their absurdity and pretense. Works of this sort take up and
repudiate that specific aspect of art – its public, canonical status. The
work in effect exposes this status as a form of mystification – or, rather,
would expose that status if the forces of mystification were not so strong
as to incorporate parodic urinals and, so to speak, “even shit from a
canonized artist” into the canon. Obviously, this is where I would place
Fountain or Manzoni’s cans of his own feces.1
Turning from procedural to functional criteria, we need to recall the
main purposes of art, which is to say, teaching and enjoyment. The former
has generally been viewed as ethical – sometimes ethical with a religious
orientation, sometimes ethical with a political orientation. Moreover, it
has commonly been combined with aesthetic appeal. Some modern and
contemporary art leaves aside the aesthetic appeal entirely and shifts the
teaching from ethics to philosophy or a related abstract and theoretical
system of thought, if often with some ancillary ethical or political points.
The most obvious case of this is conceptual art. Conceptual art need not
have any relation to aesthetic pleasure. It is often understood (rightly,
I think) as a sort of intervention into an ongoing theoretical discourse
concerning broad philosophical, social, linguistic, or other issues. These
discourses are likely to have some ethical implications. But they are often
different from traditional ethical implications that are likely to be more
intuitively comprehensible, less reliant on prior familiarity with relevant
theories. Thus Carey quotes an exhibition catalogue asserting that a
“stack of plastic recycling boxes ‘explores the idea of the self-organizing
city’” (257). This in effect links the work with a discourse on the general
1 For a broader, sociocultural interpretation of Fountain, see Lyas 106–107. Although

very different, the two interpretations are not necessarily incompatible. Lyas’s account
could be seen as providing a possible sociocultural rationale for the comment on art
consecration.
252 Afterword
theory of self-organizing systems and, along with this, the application of

that theory in urban studies.
Of course, one hardly needs the preceding chapters on beauty and art
to see that conceptual art is highly thematically oriented or that it is often
non-aesthetic. Even the repudiation of public beauty is only minimally
reliant on the preceding analyses. The significant connections come with
the components of aesthetic response itself. We may consider these in
turn.
Again, the information-processing component involves prototype
approximation, exemplar similarity, and pattern recognition. Each of
these has been repudiated, enhanced, or both in some type of modern or
contemporary art. The most obvious repudiation of prototype approxi-
mation comes in what we might call “ugly subject art,” work that presents
the recipient with highly non-prototypical instances of its subject matter.2
In visual art, we find cases of this ranging from Picasso to Lucian Freud
and Francis Bacon. There is an element of this in Joyce’s representation
of, for example, Leopold Bloom’s response to sexual elicitors – not simply
breasts, for example, but soiled toilet paper. Such art is not necessarily
ugly itself. It may turn our attention to patterned features of style, nar-
ration and point of view, or other aesthetic features, such as individual
mimesis in the case of portraits. This is not by any means wholly new
in the history of art. Many artists have depicted ugly subjects. However,
it does seem unlikely that they have done this so systematically as some
modern and contemporary artists.
Turning to individual mimeticism – aesthetic response based on
individual- or exemplar-defined categorizations – we find both intensifi-
cation and repudiation. The entire development of abstract art repudi-
ates mimetic principles. Here, too, the innovation is not unprecedented in
anything except its scope. Music is largely not representational and deco-
rative visual arts are not representative. The innovation here is extending
the non-mimetic quality to full canvases and sculptures. Often this non-
mimetic change has the same aesthetic consequences as anti-prototype
innovations – the shift of the aesthetic quality to stylistic and other
patterns.
Mimeticism is also enhanced in some modern and contemporary
art. The most obvious case of this is photographic realism, which
extends mimeticism in obvious ways. A more theoretically consequential
form of the enhancement of mimeticism involves the reproduction of
2 As should be clear, I am referring to a much more limited set of works than is sometimes
gathered under the rubric of “ugly art,” much of which I do not consider ugly at all. For
a discussion of “ugly art” in a more common usage, see Fenner.
Afterword 253
exemplars, perhaps most famously in Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe

representations.3 This is a clear case of basing the artwork on the simi-
larity to an exemplar – and, indeed, an exemplar of beauty. A different
case of this same general type may be found in Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. This
repeats an exemplary instance of commercial design.4 As pointed out on
the website of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Andy Warhol’s Brillo
Boxes are . . . copies of commercial packaging” – specifically, “Screen-
print and ink on wood” – and they “fulfill the idea that art should imitate
life.”5 It is important to observe that both the Marilyn Monroes and
Brillo Boxes do not simply intensify the mimetic component of aesthetic
pleasure. They also repudiate or radically alter the non-habitual prop-
erty. The image of Marilyn Monroe was repeated to the point where
it might have become habitual, except for the limited variations on the
image. Brillo boxes are ubiquitous and routine. Note that, given this
account, Warhol’s Brillo Boxes has a very different artistic function from
Duchamp’s Fountain, though the two might initially seem very similar (cf.
Veldeman). Brillo Boxes does not seem to be repudiating or challenging
public art – or, at least, it is not only doing that. Rather, it is challenging
habituation and intensifying mimesis.6
The intensification of mimesis and the challenging of habituation seem
to occur together with some frequency. They are perhaps most fully
engaged in what is probably the most widely cited postmodern musical
composition – John Cage’s 4’33”, a period of “silence” where the per-
former plays nothing. It may seem odd to count this as mimetic, but
Cage actually turns the ambient sounds of the room into the musical
content of the piece. As Kania points out, “[T]here is general agreement
among musicologists and other theorists that the content of the piece is
not the silence of the performer, but the ambient sounds in the perfor-
mance environment” (345). This challenges habituation in that it draws
these sounds out of the ignored background and encourages us to hear
them – arguably to hear them as music.7 In this way, one might say that
3 See the 1962 Marilyn Diptych (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/warhol-marilyn-

diptych-t03093).
4 The point is consistent with Wartenberg’s interpretation of Warhol’s work in relation to
commercial art and Veldeman’s compelling analysis of Warhol’s Brillo box and Marilyn
Monroe representations.
5 See http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/89204.html (accessed 27
September 2014).
6 Stallabrass gives a similar interpretation to Guillaume Bijl’s Shopping exhibition, where
“a gallery was turned over to” a “branch of the supermarket Tesco” with “the implied
expectation that [viewers] should look at the commercial display of tinned goods as
connoisseurs” (56–57).
7 The piece’s status as music has been discussed by a number of critics and theorists
(see, for example, Campbell and Kania). The point here is not that the piece somehow
254 Afterword
Cage and perhaps Warhol are not so much challenging the component
of non-habituation as they are challenging the listener to respond with
less of a sense of habituation. One might infer a similar strain in the
1951 white paintings of Robert Rauschenberg, “which were intended to
catch the accidental lights and shadows of their exhibition environment”
(Cottington 33); at the very least, these too embody some challenge to
habituation.
In effect, what Cage is doing – and what Warhol and Rauschenberg
may be doing in part – is challenging the recipient to find beauty in what
is ordinarily habitual. In terms of the present account, that beauty is
likely to be a function of pattern isolation. Of course, pattern isolation is
another feature that has been radically revised, challenged, or rejected in
some modern and contemporary work. Cage’s own method of composi-
tion by chance is a repudiation of self-conscious patterning. On the other
hand, part of the suggestiveness of Cage’s work is that patterns may arise
through random processes. Other apparently unpatterned works may be
found in some pieces by Joel Shapiro (not of course those that recall
human or animal forms) or in installations that at least appear to con-
sist in scattered and disorganized debris, as in some of Robert Morris’s
work.8
A related non-traditional technique involves the shift of patterning
from familiar to unfamiliar properties. We find something of this sort in,
for example, abstract expressionism, where the patterns we seek to dis-
cern are removed from figural representation – or largely but not entirely
removed, as in Joan Mitchell’s “Grand Vallée” paintings. Even more strik-
ing instances of this sort occur in music. Avant-garde composer Karlheinz
Stockhausen stressed several features of “unity” – thus, patterning – in
electronic music. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, these include the tra-
ditional features of harmony and melody, meter and rhythm. But they
also include “the composition and de-composition of timbres” and “the
ordered relationships between sound and noise” (214). In short, Stock-
hausen was altering what the recipient needed to encode or cognitively
process in isolating patterns.
We have already touched briefly on emotion, or proto-emotion, by
reference to habituation. One thing that some avant-garde work seeks to
objectively qualifies as music, but that it encourages the recipient to attend to it with
the same attitude. Cage may not have put the point this way (see Kania 348 on Cage’s
suggestions about sound and music). Specifically, he may have disagreed with the priv-
ileging of music that this implies. However, the key point here is the continuity of the
two, whether we call sound a form of music or music a form of sound.
8 See http://www.pacegallery.com/artists/434/joel-shapiro and http://www.castelligallery
.com/artists/Morris/Morris.html, respectively.
Afterword 255
do is to encourage the recipient to exercise more autonomy in attentional

orientation. Rather than being captivated by the novelty of the work, he
or she is in effect asked to find the novelty – particularly, novel patterns –
for himself or herself. Another case of this sort may be found in musical
minimalism, such as work by Steve Reich, which may unfold through a
series of small changes.
In connection with such challenges to interest and attentional ori-
entation, art may also challenge or even repudiate the wanting part of
endogenous reward, thus SEEKING (in Panksepp’s system). SEEKING
is, again, what drives us to pursue an action or thought. Some avant-garde
works make no effort to provoke that sort of energetic engagement. Many
recipients feel that this is the case with musical minimalism. Personally,
I do not share that sense. However, “boring art” would seem to be an
apt characterization of Andy Warhol’s eight-hour-long film of the Empire
State Building. There are elements of this in some far less extreme works.
(On the idea of boring art and its place in art history and criticism,
see Colpitt.) In at least some cases, this repudiation of reward system
involvement is driven by the opposition between art and entertainment,
since one characteristic of entertainment is its intensification of reward
involvement. This is related to the likely purposes of “boring” art – to
redirect the recipient’s attention and to encourage him or her to drive his
or her own attention. As Lind points out, “[I]t is possible to be fascinated
with very little when one’s practical interest is not champing at the bit
to finish the thing and move on” (197; although see also Matravers’s
response to this; “champing at the bit to finish the thing” is an apt char-
acterization of an aroused SEEKING system).
Finally, there is attachment. Limitations on attachment in art have a
long history. They are related to the history of repudiating “sentimen-
tality,” since attachment has often been tacitly associated with senti-
mentality. Thus modern and contemporary repudiations of attachment
do not deviate entirely from earlier tendencies. Of course, this is not
really different from the other components, because there are precedents
for those as well. Nonetheless, there seems to be greater continuity in
the treatment of this component. The clearest case where modern or
contemporary work results from a repudiation of attachment is to be
found in the various forms of “alienation” that derive from the epic
theater of Bertolt Brecht. Although the alienation effect is general and
not aimed at attachment feelings in particular, its perhaps most obvious
target is attachment – at least as this is commonly understood as con-
tributing crucially to sentimentality. The widespread irony of modern
and contemporary art (see, for example, Barrett 215) is a weaker form
of the alienation effect. We find this even in Mrs. Dalloway, where the
256 Afterword
attachment of Septimus and Evans or Peter and Clarissa is often punc-

tuated by moments of irony.
In sum, various tendencies in modern and contemporary art appear to
be illuminated by relating those tendencies to the preceding analysis of
beauty – from the difference between public and personal to the isolation
of specific information processing and emotional components of beauty.
The resulting descriptive and explanatory patterns would seem to add
further support to the analysis. In other words, much modern and con-
temporary art might at first appear to pose problems for the preceding
account of beauty or of art. However, quite to the contrary, the specific
properties of such art suggest further reasons why the preceding accounts
of beauty and art are quite plausible.
Of course, many questions – both theoretical and empirical – remain
open. For example, the discussion of absence or ellipsis in Chapter 3
made (I believe) some headway in isolating what is required for success-
ful art. But the account presented there requires further specification
and rigorous elaboration in terms of algorithmic processes. Those pro-
cesses are presumably specified in their details only at the individual level.
However, it should be possible to define broad patterns more fully, since
aesthetic responses to art are (again) not wholly idiosyncratic, converg-
ing, as they do, on at least some targets. More generally, for each topic
addressed in the course of the book – ranging from the precise operation
of ancillary emotions to the impact of public and personal beauty on one
another – there are behavioral, experiential, neural, and other questions
that I have not even touched on.
Indeed, one could go so far as to say that the preceding hypotheses
about beauty and those about art raise as many questions as they (begin
to) answer. That, however, is all to the good. As Imre Lakatos and others
have indicated, the goal of any actual scientific theory is not to settle
all the questions in a particular field – an impossible task at any rate. It
is, rather, to advance an ongoing research program that, even if it does
(tentatively) settle some questions, points us toward others that are no
less interesting, complex, and consequential.
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Aldama, Frederick. Your Brain on Latino Comics. Austin: University of Texas
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Index
A Room of One’s Own (Woolf ), 34 qualities and enjoyment features,

Abhijñānaśākuntalam (Kālidāsa), 141, 196 183–190, 195
absence response-related admonition in, 186
aesthetics of, 82 stalemate in, 185, 186
in art, 105 value and, 181–183
in Dhobi Ghat (film), 90 aesthetic discounting, 156–157
in Plumed Hat, The, 89 aesthetic emotions, 111–121
Abstract Expressionism, 254 ancillary emotions, 112–113
ad hoc categories, 136 anti-aesthetic response, 113
Adajania, Homi, 66 pleasure, 112
aesthetic argument, 178–214 aesthetic intent, 78
art and, 226–236 aesthetic pleasure
categories and, 181–183 attachment memories and, 38–39
deviations and, 205–206 emotions and, 30–31
disagreement over attribution in, expectancy framework, 28
185–186 as a form of intense pleasure, 112
emotions in, 210–214 interest, 30
focus on recipient of target, 210–211 music-evoked, 30
focus on target, 210 non-anomalous surprise and, 27–28
negative response to target, 212 predictability and, 27–28
exemplars and, 209 quality and intensity of, 107–108
hypothetical psychology experiment, 179 rewards, 30
information processing problems sublime, 34
habituation, 201 aesthetic response, 107–161, 245–249
non-discernibility of pattern, 199–200 attachment and, 6, 57–65, 116
in pattern isolation, 199–204 biasing in, 159
pattern violation, 201–204 categorization and, 61–63, 159
predictability, 200–201 components of, 107
justification and, 188–189 convergence of, 78–84, 106
enjoyment features, 190–199 to decorative arts, 135
information processing, 199–209 emotions involved in, 115–116
obstacles, 190–199 endogenous reward, 52–57, 246–247
nature of, 179–180 functional properties, 123–124
negative, 180, 187 idiosyncrasy and, 52–65
positive, 180, 187–188 information processing in, 107, 113,
problems in, 183–190 130–142
biases, 194–195, 206 pattern recognition and, 52–57,
empathy limitations, 192–193 145–151
inaccuracy/excessive bias of prestige standards and, 159–161
prototypes, 206 prototype approximation and, 57–65,
pattern recognition, 191–193 134
prototypes, 204 prototypes and, 121
277
278 Index
aesthetic response (cont.) high vs. popular, 225

public beauty and, 108, 151–159 historical theory of, 217, 218
personal responses, effect of, 153 instinct, 47
personal responses, effect on, 153–155 Lascaux cave paintings as, 224
pre-formation of personal response, main purposes of, 251–252
155 metacriteria for, 220
race and, 9 in Mrs. Dalloway, 42–45
retrospective, 230–231 as part of comparison set, 216–219
skills and, 196 personal vs. public, 251
sublimity and, 114–115 philosophical account of, 219–221,
aestheticized group exaltation, 121 224–225
aesthetics propaganda and, 222–226
of absence, 82 prototype-defining contrast in, 208
identity of principles and, 52 repeated experience of, 228
laws of, 20 re-reading criterion of, 223–224
literary, 19–45 retrospective response to, 230–231
masculine, 6 sentimentalism in, 228–229
politics and, 2–10 theories of, 217
of presence, 83 “ugly subject”, 252
of prototypes, problems with, 29–34 work as, 234
social norms and, 50–51 art films, 221
targets of, 33 At Bertram’s Hotel (Christie), 222
of violence, 122 attachment
affective force, 63 aesthetic delight and, 38–39
African-Americans, 157 aesthetic response and, 6, 31–32, 57–65,
After the Fall (Miller), 236 116
Age of Innocence, The (Wharton), 110 aesthetic targets and, 33
Ellen Olenska’s parasol in, 142–145 insecurity and security in, 116, 121
exemplar in, 142–145 literary support for, 64
irony in, 233–234 in Miller’s The Price, 238, 240, 242
Aldama, Frederick Luis, 103, 157 music and, 32
All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque), prototype approximation and, 30–31
120 repudiation of, 255–256
allusive modeling, 141 in Wharton’s The House of Mirth,
ambivalence, 71, 170, 211, 232–234, 129–130
237–240, 243, 244 Attachment memories
Ancient Voices of Children (Crumb), 102 in Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, 38–39, 64
ancillary emotions, 115, 117 attention, 13, 26–29, 34, 35, 53, 54, 86,
Andersen, H.C., 61 87, 107, 111, 113, 121, 147, 155,
Andromache (Racine), 173 156, 191, 192, 206, 216, 228, 234,
anger, 102, 103, 113–116, 120, 169, 174 246, 255
anti-aesthetic response, 113, 249–256 Atwood, Margaret, 222
argument. See aesthetic argument Austen, Jane, 64
Aristotle, 137 avant-garde, 254–255
Arnaud, A., 85 averaging
Arnold, M., 139 affective force, 63
art, 219 cognition, 59–60
and evolution, 111 critical periods, 59
as aesthetic object, 156 memories and, 58–59
beauty and, 10–12, 215 awe, 118–119
categorization of, 227–228
catharsis in, 229–230 “Balada de la Placeta” (Lorca), 102
conceptual, 251 Banquet, The (film), 209
definitions of, 216–222 bardolatry, 162
vs. entertainment, 225–226, 228 Barr, A., 84, 87
habituation in, 156 Barrett, T., 251
Index 279
Barsaat (film), 67, 68 Bourdieu, Pierre, 154

Barsalou, L., 59, 136 bourgeois ideology, 50
Bayesian statistics, 134, 146, 149–151 Brecht, Bertolt, 225, 255
“beautiful”, 24, 25 Brillo Boxes (Warhol), 253
beauty Buff (publication), 160
aesthetic judgment and, 24 Bush, G.W., 25
aesthetic norms, 207–208
African-American, 157 Cage, John, 253
art and, 10–12, 215 Calvo-Merino, B.D., 56
bias, 5 Cantos (Pound), 223
celebrity, 153 capitalism, 51
contrast sets and, 207–208 Carey, J., 77, 217, 218, 251
emotion and, 25 Carlson, A., 122–123
essential, 49 Carroll, N., 133, 181–183, 217, 218
facial, 47 Carter, Elliott, 11
femininity and, 10 Cartier-Bresson, Henri, 216
idiosyncrasy of, 46–75 categorization
male, 25 ad hoc categories, 136
in Mrs. Dalloway, 34–45 aesthetic argument and, 181–183,
non-anomalous surprise and, 25 207–209
personal, 25, 247 aesthetic response and, 61–63
prototype-approximation and, 29 biasing and, 159
prototypes and, 20–25, 37–38, 207–208 forms of, 245
psychological sense of, 51–52 memories and, 80
public. See public beauty pattern isolation and, 133
star, 153 prototype approximation and, 80,
subjective sense of, 49 133
vs. sublimity, 108 prototype identification and, 136
three meanings of, 48–52 rule-abstraction and, 136
universals of, 46 rule-isolation and, 136
unspoken, 76–106 catharsis, 229–230
beauty industry, 8 caudate, 30–31
Beckett, S., 198–199 causal confabulation, 89
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 147–149 celebrity beauty, 153
Belmi, P., 8 Chambers, G., 160
Bernatzky, G., 32, 40 Charpentier, C., 224
bias, 194–195 Chatterjee, A., 131
beauty, 5 Chola Period, 21
categorization and, 159 Christie, Agatha, 222
confirmatory, 159 Cixous, Hélène, 64
group bias, 194–196 Clark, B., 229
Bible, 222 Clinton, B., 25
Biblical stories, 139 Clore, G., 179
Bimala (character), 78–79, 80, 82 Cocktail (Hindi film), 66, 68, 69–75
Biven, L., 140 Coetzee, J.M., 1, 7
black Americans, 24 cognition, 59–60
Black Madonna, 66 cognitive experience, guiding, 78
“black thug” stereotype, 23 colonoscopy, aesthetic response to, 61,
Bloom, Leopold (character), 252–253 63
body dysmorphia, 8 colors, prototypical, 20
Bordieu, P., 216 comparison set, 140, 216–219
Bordwell, D., 202 compassion, 117
boredom, 55, 56, 87, 113, 150, 188, 197, conceptual art, 251
255 concretization, 84
Bose, Nandalal, 226 confabulation, 89
Boucicault, Dion, 143 confirmatory bias, 159
280 Index
consciousness Dowling, W., 28

inaccessibility to another, 96–97, Duchamp, Marcel, 11, 216, 217, 219
103–106 durability, 60
shared, 105 Dutton, Denis, 47
contrast, 61–63
contributory emotions, 115, 117 “Early in the War” (Chambers), 159–161
Cooper, John, 3 ecstatic sublimity, 120, 121, 248
cosmetics, 8–9 Edelman, G., 51, 145
critical periods, 59 Elliot, Anne (character), 64
Critique of Practical Reason (Kant), 122 Eliot, T.S, 173
Crumb, George, 102 elliptical work, 83
Csı́kszentmihályi, M., 111 emotion sharing, 46
cultural superiority, 3, 4 in Mrs. Dalloway, 42–45
cultures, and conceptions of beauty, 47 emotional memories, 31, 105–106
Cyrus, Miley, 47, 65, 139, 153, 204–205 emotional response, 51–52
emotions, 30–31, 107, 254–255
Danto, Arthur, 217, 218 aesthetic, 111–121
Dardenne brothers, 67 ancillary emotions, 112–113
death, 116 anti-aesthetic response, 113
Death of the Goddess, The (Hogan), 66 contributory emotions, 115, 117–121
defect-based discounting, 158 core emotions, 113, 115, 117, 121, 247,
Delgado, M., 112 248
desire of the Other, 154 pleasure, 112
Desrochers, M., 86 in aesthetic arguments, 210–214
Dharma, 67 recipient-focused, 210
Dhobi Ghat (film), 60, 83, 90–99 target-focused, 210
aesthetics of absence in, 90 information processing and, 193, 212
art’s motive in, 90–91, 95–96 production of, 83
central story lines, 94–95 sharing, 42–45
cinematic techniques in, 98 weighting of memories and, 22
global indeterminacy in, 94 empathy, 117
Hindu/Muslim conflicts in, 92 encoding, 55
identity categories in, 93 entertainment, 225–226, 228
inaccessibility of consciousness in, 96–97 work as, 234
main characters, 91–92 entrainment, 28–29
motif of white blankness in, 98–99 essential beauty, 49
opacity of self in, 93–94 exemplars, 137–138, 140, 142–145, 209
opening scene, 97–98 existential loneliness, 39
sublimity in, 94 expectancies, 246
unreachability of otherness in, 96 in aesthetic processing, 28
Dickie, G., 217, 218 of listeners, 29
diet foods violation of, 26
categories, 57–58 windows of, 28
prototypes, 21, 57–58, 122 exploratory mindset, 22–23
discounting
aesthetic, 157 faces
defect-based, 158 composite images of, 20
disgust, 113–114 emotional responses to, 24
dis-habituation, 36–37 facial beauty, 47
Dissanayake, E., 32 facial prototypes, 58–59, 60
dominant class, 50 Faludi, Susan, 6
Donahue, J., 111 fana’, 119
dopamine, 112 Fanaa (film), 62–63
Döring, T., 162 Fareri, D., 112
dorsal pathway, 131, 132, 141 fashion models, 8, 154
Index 281
Federman, Raymond, 160 Heatherton, Joey, 65

femininity, 10 hedonic asymmetry, 82
Feng Xiaogang (film director), 209 Hemingway, E., 81
Fifth Symphony (Beethoven), 147–149 theory of omission, 77
films (movies) Herrbold, S., 28
as aesthetic object, 156 high art, 225
art, 221 high culture, 3, 4
Banquet, The, 209 hippocampus, 32
Barsaat, 67, 68 historical theory of art, 217, 218
categorization of, 207 Hitler, Adolf, 3
Cocktail (Hindi film), 66, 68, 69–75 Hoffman, R., 134
Dhobi Ghat, 60, 83, 90–99 Homage to the Spanish Republic 24
Fanaa, 62–63 (Motherwell), 1
Lorna’s Silence, 67 Home and the World, The (Tagore), 78
Mildred Pierce, 202–203, 204 Homer, 141
technological innovations in, 221 House of Mirth, The (Wharton), 110, 122,
Vagabond, 200 124–130, 223
Vibes, 207 attachment in, 129–130
Fishburne, Laurence (actor), 165 ecstatic sublimity in, 127–128
flaws, isolation of, 159 first part of, 125–126
flowers, as prototype of beauty, 37–38 friendship stories in, 125–126
Forsythe, A.M., 147 Lily Bart’s social decline in, 124–125
Fountain (Duchamp), 11, 216, 217, 219, Lily Bart’s death, 130
249–250 loneliness in, 126, 129
4’33” (Cage), 253 marriage stories in, 125
functionality, 60–61 pattern recognition in, 129
second part of, 125–126, 128
Gallese, V., 128 simulation of Gerty Farish’s character
Gaut, B., 157 in, 126–127
Gazzaniga, M., 89 stoic sublimity in, 127
gender norms, 231 humiliation, 66–69
generalization, 82
Gerrig, R., 111 identity categories, 93
Girard, P., 154 identity group, 120
glamour, 5 biases, 194–196
Godān (Premcand), 67 In Praise of Love (film), 223
Godard, Jean-Luc (film director), 223 indeterminancy, 78
golden ratio, 20 Indian classical music, 27, 54–55, 133,
gospels, 68–69 189, 191, 205–206
Green, M., 111 indigenous literature, 208
Greenblatt, S., 77, 162 individual response, 179
group bias, 194–196 individualism, 51
Guernica (Picasso), 11 information processing
in aesthetic argument
habituation, 36–37, 113, 201, 246, habituation, 201
253–254 non-discernibility of pattern, 199–200
Hallmark card commercial, 197 in pattern isolation, 199–204
emotional response to, 196 pattern violation, 201–204
idealization in, 232 predictability, 200–201
Hamlet (Shakespeare) 193, 201, 209 in aesthetic response, 107, 113, 130–142
Hansen, J., 22–24 categorization and, 133
Hartnett, Josh, 47, 65 components of, 252
hate, 120 duality of, 109–110
Hawthorne, N., 138 emotional memories and, 105–106
Haydn, Joseph, 205 emotions and, 193, 212
282 Index
information processing (cont.) indigenous-language, 208

exemplar-based, 137–138 postcolonial, 208
metaphors and, 101–102 Locher, P., 60–61, 135
rule-based retrospection in, 135 London, J., 28–29
Ingalls, D., 222 loneliness, 39
institutional theory of art, 217, 218 Long Day’s Journey into Night (O’Neill),
intentional object, 76 237
interest, 30 Lorca, Federico Garcı́a, 102, 105
Isenberg, A., 191 Lorna’s Silence (film), 67
Iser, W., 76, 78 Luke (Bible), 68
Ishizu, T., 120 Lung, K., 28
Jacob’s Room (Woolf ), 50 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 50

Jacobsen, T., 5 Madhumati (film) 97
Jeffreys, S., 5–8, 207–208 Mahābhārata (Vyāsa) 67, 68
Jesus, 68–69 Majnu, 64
John (Bible), 68 male beauty, 25
John, Saint (of the Cross), 124 Manzoni, Piero, 217, 218
Jordanova, L., 138 Marianism, 66
Joyce, J., 141, 192–193, 195 Marilyn Diptych (Warhol), 209
Jugni, 69–75 Marks, L., 86
Martin, Agnes, 215
Kagekiyo, 229 masculine aesthetics, 5–8
Kahneman, D., 57 Mather, G., 203
Kania, A., 253–254 mating choice, 154
Kant, I., 122, 247 Matisse, Henri, 84, 219
Kapoor, Raj, 65, 67, 139 Matravers, D., 255
Keestra, M., 56 Maxim Magazine, 47, 65
Kennedy, J., 86 McManus, I.C., 20
Khan, Asad Ali, 149 melodrama, 232–233. See also
Khan, Z., 64 sentimentality
Kieran, M., 33 memories
King John (Shakespeare), 138 categorization and, 80
King Lear (Shakespeare), 138, 196, 197, emotional, 31
229 prototype-formation and, 22, 58–59
Kivy, P., 133 prototypes and, 24
Koelsch, S., 32, 40 men
Kringelbach, M., 26, 30 male beauty, 25
Krupinski, E., 60–61 mating choices of, 154
Kwapis, Ken (film director), 207 Merda d’artista (Manzoni), 217, 218
metaphors, 100–103
Lacan, J., 154 common/standard, 101
Lakatos, I., 86 conceptual, 101
language acquisition, critical period in, information processing function of,
59 101–102
Lascaux cave paintings, 224 operation and function of, 100–101
lateral inhibition, 55–56, 85 radical, 100
Leech, G., 77, 203 meta-rules, 151
Lerdahl, F., 199–200 Miami Vice (television show), 156
Levinson, J., 49 Mildred Pierce (film), 202–203, 204, 223,
Lind, R., 255 227
linguistics, 134 Miller, A.
literary aesthetics, 19–45 After the Fall, 236
literature, 29–30 Price, The, 236–244
as aesthetic object, 156 Miller, D., 57
Index 283
Milton, J., 217 Nussbaum, M., 229–230

mimesis, 138 Nzegwu, N., 137
mimeticism, 154, 252
Minimalism, 254–255 Odyssey (Homer), 141
mirror neuron system, 56 Olivier, Laurence (actor), 165
Mitchell, Joan, 254 omission, theory of, 77
modeling, 141 On Criticism (Carroll), 181–183
Modernism, 11, 208, 227 O’Neill, Eugene, 237
Molloy (Beckett), 198–199 Orientalism, 51
Monroe, Marilyn, 139, 209 Ortony, A., 179
moral law, 122 Orwell, George, 3
mother/child interactions, 32 Oryx and Crake (Atwood), 222
Motherwell, Robert, 1 Othello (film), 138, 140, 154
Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf ), 50, 60 Othello (Shakespeare), 62, 162–177
aesthetic factors in, 36 act V, scene ii of, 167
art in, 42–45, 222 actors, 165–166
attachment memories in, 38–39, 64 emotional response in, 211
beauty in, 42–45 honor in, 170–171
emotion sharing in, 42–45 humiliation in, 171
existential loneliness in, 39 inconsistencies in, 203–204
flowers as prototype of beauty in, 37–38 insincerity of Othello, 174–175
habituation and dis-habituation in, involvement or connectedness with
36–37 characters in, 167–168
interest and attentional orientation in, letters in, 173–174
35–36 murder as sacrifice in, 170
non-anomalous surprise in, 36 murder of Desdemona in, 165–166,
reward system in, 35 169–170, 171
sense of unity in, 39 narration and character in, 175–177
sublimity in, 40–42 parallel vs. complementary responses to
target-focused argument and, 210–211 simulated internality in, 168
murder mysteries, 202 qualms about, 162–177
Murphy, G., 134 comprehension errors in, 165–166
music simulation difficulties, 172
attachment and, 32 variable identifications, 166–172
mother/child interactions and, 32 rage in, 171
prototype-defining contrast in, 208 self-esteem in, 171
sequences, anticipating outcomes in, sense of betrayal in, 169
26 sexuality in, 171–172
shame in, 170–171
narrative theory of art, 217, 218 otherness of oneself, 103–106
National Gallery of Art, 87 Our Lady of Czestochowa, 66
Nazi propaganda, 3, 182 out-grouping, 211–212
Neale, M., 8 overweight, 158
neural networks, 21, 24 oxytocin, 31, 32, 115
New American Bible, 68–69
New Testament, 68–69 paintings, 84–90, 203
Nicholls, A., 86 Panksepp, J., 32, 40, 112, 140, 246,
Nilsson, U., 32 254–255
1984 (Orwell), 3 Paradise Lost (Milton), 217
Nisbett, R., 82 Parsons, G., 122–123
Nodine, C.P., 60–61 Passmore, J., 182
Noh play, 229 pattern, 254
non-anomalous surprise, 26, 36 characterization, 237, 240–241,
non-discernibility of pattern, 199–200 242–243
Novitz, D., 225 isolation, 199–204
284 Index
pattern (cont.) projection, 117, 118

non-discernibility of, 199–200 propaganda, 222–226
recognition, 52–57, 109, 145–151 “Prophetic Pictures, The” (Hawthorne),
aesthetic argument and, 191–193 138
Bayesian statistics and, 134, 146, Protestantism, 51
149–151 prototype
non-habitual, 150–151 aesthetic argument and, 204
prototype approximation and, 109 inaccuracy/excessive bias, 206
right hemisphere completion of, 89, aesthetic response and, 121
90 aesthetics of, 29–34
rule isolation and, 145–147 approximation, 20, 57–65
violation, 201–204 aesthetic argument and, 204
peak shift, 21 in aesthetic response, 134
personal beauty, 1, 25, 247 categorization and, 80
Philosophy of Art (Carroll), 181–183 pattern recognition and, 109
photographic realism, 252 repudiation of, 252
Picasso, Pablo, 11, 217, 218 beauty and, 20
Pierrot Lunaire (Schoenberg), 11 contrast effects of, 22
Pinker, S., 134 deviation, 113
Platonism, 49 diet foods and, 21
pleasure. See aesthetic pleasure evolutionary explanation for, 23–24
Plumed Hat, The (Matisse), 84–90, 219 formation of
emotion expression, 87–88 affective force, 63
emotions, 86–87 cognition, 59–60
lateral inhibition, 85 critical periods, 59
loops and patterns, 85 memories and, 22, 58–59
relative completeness, 85 sub-prototypes, 245–246
simulation of action in, 88–89 public beauty, 1, 25, 49–50. See also beauty
simulation of emotion in, 88 aesthetic response and, 31, 108,
tactility, 85–86 151–159
targeted absence in, 89 personal responses, effect of, 153
politics, and aesthetics, 2–10 personal responses, effect on, 153–155
Polykleitos, 21, 219 pre-orientation of personal response,
popular art, 225 155
postcolonial literature, 208 cultural differences in, 152
Postmodernism, 208, 227, 251 public norms for, 158–159
Pound, Ezra, 223 publication decisions, 159–161
Premcand, 67
presence, aesthetics of, 83 race, 9
prestige standards, 159–161 Racine, J., 173
Price, The (Miller), 236 rāga, 134–135, 189, 205–206
attachment in, 238, 240, 242 Rāga Asavari, 149
characterization pattern in, 237, Rāga Lalit, 192, 206
240–241, 242–243 Rai, Aishwarya, 25
complications in, 239 Rai, Raghu, 216
flashbacks in, 239 Rainville, P., 118
fraternal conflict in, 238 Ramachandran, V.S., 20, 131–132
opening scene, 237 Rāmāyan.a (Vālmı̄ki) 141, 201
prototype of selfish brother in, 240 Rao, Kiran, 83, 90
stereotypes in, 239–240 Rauschecker, J., 132
themes of, 243 Rauschenberg, Robert, 253–254
Prince, A., 134 Ray, Satyajit, 78
principle of minimal departure, 203 Reisenzein, R., 88
principles, identity of, 52 Reiss, B., 162
Prinz, J., 119 Repp, B.H., 131
Index 285
response. See aesthetic response Steiner, Wendy, 3, 10

retrospective necessity, 27 Stewart, I., 135
reward system, 35, 52–57, 246 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 254
pleasure-seeking and, 30 stoical sublimity, 120, 121, 248
Rezia (character), 46 strategic opacities, 77
Rhode, Deborah, 5 sublimity, 40–42, 118, 247–248
Rich, Steve, 254–255 aesthetic response and, 114–115
Riders to the Sea (Synge), 147 vs. beauty, 108
Rolls, E., 115 ecstatic, 120, 121, 248
Romanticism, 208, 227 in The House of Mirth, 124
Roy, Bimal, 97 humiliation and, 66–69
Rumi, 66, 68 moral law and, 122
Rupp, S., 162 in Mrs. Dalloway, 34–42
Rushdie, Salman, 90 stoical, 120, 121, 248
Ryan, M.-L., 151 sub-prototypes, 245–246
S.ūfism, 72–73, 119
sahr.daya, 189 Summertime (Coetzee), 7
Said, E., 51 symmetry, 135
Sanskrit, 34, 196, 222 Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Opus 67
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 11, 154 (Beethoven), 147–149
Sati (Bose), 226 Symphony No. 88 in G major (Haydn),
Sax, G., 138, 140 205
Scarry, E., 76 Synge, John, 147
Schadenfreude, 117
Schoenberg, Arnold, 11 Tagore, Rabindranath, 78
Schwartz, M., 33 Taj Mahal, 132
Scruton, R., 33 Tamil statuary, 20
SEEKING system, 255 Tan, E., 29
sentimentality, 196–197 Tanuja (actress), 25, 47, 65, 152, 204–205
in art, 229 taste
melodrama and, 232–233 variability in, 46, 47, 58
Septimus (character), 46 Tenenbaum, J., 149
sexual desire, 6–7 Tervaniemi, M., 191
Shakespeare, W., 62, 64, 138, 162, 233 To the Lighthouse (Woolf ), 49
Shapiro, J., 254 Tompkins, J., 196
Shaughraun, The (Boucicault), 143 Topolinski, S., 22–24
Sheehy, C., 147 touchstone, 139–142
Short, M., 77, 203 Trehub, S., 32
Sidney, Philip, 4–5 trophy wife, 7, 154
Silvia, P., 11, 26 Trump, Donald, 154
simulation, 76–77 Tyson, Mike, 23
cognitive involvement of, 111
in Othello, 172 “Ugly Duckling, The” (Andersen), 61, 207
in The Plumed Hat (Matisse), 88–89 “ugly subject” art, 252
skill, 196 Ulysses (Joyce), 141, 192–193, 195
Smith, G., 157 Understanding Nationalism (Hogan) 57–58
social norms, 50–51 universalism, 50
soldiers, 122 unspoken beauty, 76–106. See also beauty
Solso, R., 191 Dhobi Ghat (film), 89
sonata, 20, 131 intentional object, 76
Spear Bearer (Polykleitos), 21, 219 The Plumed Hat (Matisse), 84–90
Spotts, Frederic, 3 unguided aesthetic response in, 78–84
Standing Parvati, 20
star beauty, 153 Vagabond (film), 200
Starr, Gabrielle, 12 Varda, Agnès (film director), 200
286 Index
Vartanian, O., 11 women. See also beauty; House of Mirth,

ventral pathway, 131–133, 141 The (Wharton); Mrs. Dalloway
Vibes (film), 207 (Woolf )
violence, aesthetics of, 122 aesthetic norms, 207–208
Vuust, P., 26, 30 masculinized features, attraction to, 22
mass media’s depiction of, 206
Wales, K., 11 men’s mating choices, 154
Walton, Kendall, 48 prototype of, 206
war small noses in, 25
group pride and, 120 traditional/modern division between, 69
stories, 122 “trophy wife”, 154
Warhol, Andy, 209, 253, 255 weight, 158
Watt, I., 50 wonder, 118–119
Waves, The (Woolf ) 50 Woolf, Virginia, 120
weighting, 21 Mrs. Dalloway, 34–42
emotion-based, 22 A Room of One’s Own, 34
Welles, Orson, 165 work
wen, 26 as art, 234
Wharton, Edith, 110, 122, 124, 142, as entertainment, 234
233–234
What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion Youth (Coetzee), 1
(Hogan), 2, 11 Yudhisthira, 67
white racist stereotype, 24
Wojciehowski, H.C., 128 Zeki, S., 2, 20, 120

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Beauty and Sublimity

Recent decades have witnessed an explosion in neuroscientific and

p a t r i c k c o l m h o g a n is a professor in the Department of English,

Patrick Colm Hogan

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

Acknowledgments page viii

Introduction: why beauty? 1

Works cited 257

An earlier version of part of Chapter 1 appeared as “Literary Aesthetics:

McDermott, Georgina Paiella, Evan Reardon, and David Smith. My

science; second, works of art.2 In this respect, it continues the project

Aesthetics and Politics

of tension with one another. When I discuss beauty in public talks, I

3 Gell-Mann defines beauty by reference to mathematical simplicity. In terms of the anal-

ultimately cruel to women.4 Jeffreys’s analyses are important and conse-

blanching and hair straightening.8 These are commonly seen as a matter

8 I am grateful to Bhakti Shringarpure for reminding me of the relevance of these practices.

in Chapter 1, there are differences in male and female facial luminance

Beauty and Art

corner – aesthetics. As Wales notes, “aesthetic describes the percep-

of restriction should hold for aesthetic response (i.e., the experience of

number and intensity of components, the stronger the aesthetic

13 Here and throughout, I am using “aesthetic experience” merely to refer to an experi-

apply cross-culturally and trans-historically. However, by their nature,

of just what constitutes such response, seeking to explain its components

principles governing that response, as isolated in earlier chapters. For

account, but proceeding with their own independently defined projects.

Some empirical research indicates that beauty is in part a matter of

including the emotion sharing that is a key function of the production

Beauty and prototypes

4 See http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/39325 and

and perceptual properties might affect network configuration and output

induced the exploratory mindset by providing the category label “stars”

reaction to a “white racist” who is a bedridden ninety-year-old woman

Beauty, emotion, and non-anomalous surprise

7 A relevant image of Tanuja may be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6

to music at least initially suggests something different. This is, roughly,

not with confidence. However, it is not anomalous because we are able

11 Drawing on neuroscientific research and on phenomenological literary criticism, Arm-

sections where the instrumentalist repeats an unvarying melodic motif

leads us to focus our attention to the most salient temporal locations

Some problems with the aesthetics of

aesthetic pleasure of music. However, surprising convergent evidence

they conjecture that “musically evoked chills” may “represent a natural

Mrs. Dalloway (I): beauty and sublimity

she illustrated her parable of women’s disenfranchisement with the exam-

(34) – suggestions that are, of course, immediately recognizable as part

response and generalizable objectivity occur in attachment relations.

exquisite moment of [Clarissa’s] whole life” occurred in her attachment

This leads us to the sublime.26 Whereas beauty is connected with a

of chills (143–144) – a response that may be linked with the feeling of

a comforting sense of unity with life, Septimus’s direct experience with

Mrs. Dalloway (II): art, beauty, and emotion sharing

30 In characterizing this as a misrepresentation, I am clearly disagreeing with the view,

31 On the importance of emotion sharing in a non-aesthetic context, see Rimé.

together “[s]o-and-so in South Kensington; some one up in Bayswater;

In sum, it is important to begin by distinguishing aesthetic response from

weighted averages. The weighting is a function of context and mem-

students of literature today are likely to phrase the problem in terms of

ideological consequences. For example, judgments of beauty may serve

Three meanings of “beauty”

emotional memories, although perhaps the least consequential, may vary