Interpretation, Pleasure, and Value in Aesthetic Experience

Author(s): Richard Shusterman

Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Winter, 1998), pp. 51-53
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
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Discussion

51

because it is pleasant,like a sunset.Only once does he

envisage the possibility that it is "directlyfelt as valuable, even if not always as pleasant"(p. 38).
But that is, for me, the centralissue. As long as we
identify the value of art, and of the aesthetic in general, with pleasure, then we will be tempted to think
of the aesthetic experienceas a centralelement in our
thinking about the arts, their place in life, and their
connections with other practices. Pleasure is inherently experiential, and if the aesthetic is tied to it,
then the aesthetic is tied to our experience.I want, by
contrast, to separatepleasure from value. Pleasure is
perhaps one of the grounds of value, but value depends on many other things as well. And I believe
that the salient point about the arts and everything
else that is approachedaesthetically is that they are
seen as valuable,though not therebyas pleasant. Perhaps the main groundof aesthetic value is the ability
of what has it to make palpable the existence of new
possibilities where we had not suspected they existed
before: in the two-dimensional representationof the
world, in the expression of the way in which consciousness manifests itself, in the arrangement of
sounds independently of counterpoint, in the depiction of small relationships between acquaintances
that is the staple of currenttelevision, in the preparation of edible ingredients, in the codification of our
knowledge of the laws of the motion of physical objects, in the combinationof elements that can constitute an original,exemplarymode of life. Any such accomplishmentcan fill us with admirationand a sense
of great value, but not all of them need produce pleasure. Some may produce a sense of foreboding, insecurity, even of danger: their consequences may be
something of which we are afraid, either for ourselves or for others. But the broadeningof possibility
is in principle something we admireand value.
But value is not as closely tied to experienceas pleasure is. And even if we agreed, as we should, that the
experience of valuable things and activities is itself
valuable,I doubtthatwe could find an element that is
both common to all our experienceof valuablethings
and also informative,even in the apparent(and, I believe, only apparent)way in which pleasureseems to
be informative.And thoughI agreethatcontemporary
philosophy of art has become largely irrelevant to
what people care about when they care about the arts
or anything else aesthetically,I do not think that a returnto the aestheticexperiencewill solve its problems.
Whatwe need to addressis the questionwhy we value
the arts, not why we value how they make us feel.
ALEXANDER

NEHAMAS

Departmentof Philosophy
PrincetonUniversity
Princeton,New Jersey08544

1. Richard Shusterman,"The End of Aesthetic Experience," TheJournalof Aestheticsand Art Criticism55 (1997):
29-41. Referencesto Shusterman'sarticle will be given parenthetically in the text.
2. Neil Postman,AmusingOurselvesto Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking,
1985).
3. Richard Shusterman,Pragmatist Aesthetics (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992).
4. Cleanth Brooks, The Well WroughtUrn (New York:
Harcourt,Brace & Co., 1947), p. 180; Yvor Winters, "The
ExperimentalSchool in AmericanPoetry,"in his In Defense
of Reason (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1947).
5. Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature
(HarvardUniversityPress, 1985); "WhatShouldWe Expect
from Reading?(There Are Only Aesthetic Values),"Salmagundi 111 (1996): 27-58.
6. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, trans. H. T.
Lowe-Porter,(New York:Knopf, 1968), p. 498.

Interpretation,Pleasure, and
Value in Aesthetic Experience
As an admirerof AlexanderNehamas'swritings,I am
gratefulfor his critiqueof my aesthetic theory,but regret that he saddles me with alien views. I certainly
do not think that aesthetics is "irrelevant"to artists,
who frequentlystudy aesthetic issues by readingaesthetic texts, often citing them in their work, and even
soliciting them from philosophers for their catalogues.1 Moreover,though the elite fine arts may be
largely "irrelevantto the broadpublic,"I could never
argue that this entails that aesthetics is irrelevant,
since I insist that aesthetics involves more than the
elite fine arts, emerging in many other areas where
appreciativetaste is exercised. Nehamas shares this
view, demonstratingit in his fine work on television.
We also agree that both philosophy and life can be
pursuedand judged on aesthetic grounds. If my article on aesthetic experience did not cite this as exemplifying the aesthetic in "somethingoutside art,"it is
simply because pragmatistaesthetics construes philosophy as an art of living-hence not entirely outside the concept of art.2
Ratherthan reformulatemy detailed views on popular art, which many like Nehamas already know
from Pragmatist Aesthetics (and which are further
elaboratedelsewhere), I simply remindreadersof my
sharp critiqueof Frankfurt-schoolpessimism, which
engendered my alternative position of meliorism.3
Recognizing that popularart needs criticism and improvementbecause it still leaves much to be desired,
meliorism conversely insists that such art can greatly
reward critical attention and is worth improving,
since it can and often does achieve real aestheticmerit
and social good. As popular art has both good and
bad dimensions, so does the developmentof informa-

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The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism

52
tional technology that greatly spurredthe rise of popular culture. If fragmentationthrough informational
overflow makes traditional aesthetic experiences of
unity more difficult to achieve, it compensatesin other
ways, even aesthetically,as I insist, by contributingto
some of today's "mostexciting, rewardingartistic encounters."4
The considerableconvergenceof our views is often
concealed by Nehamas's exquisite skill in polemical
interpretation,which is capable of unhinging my casual allusion to sunsets from its commonplacecontext
and transformingit into the very ideal of my theory of
aesthetic experience. Though a far less avid polemicist, I realize thatit is more useful to underlinethe serious issues that really divide us.
1. Our oldest, perhaps deepest disagreement concerns interpretation.Agreeing thatart'sinterpretation
cannot be mechanical or separatedfrom experience,
we differ on what is demandedof understandingand
interpretations I allow a functional distinction between understandingand interpretationin both art
and other matters,while Nehamas insists, after Nietzsche, that "every view is an interpretation."Moreover, while I accept conventional understandingsas
adequatefor many contexts (including many artistic
ones), Nehamas insists that understandingor interpretationrequiresa more elaborateprocess of "working it out for oneself" to make it distinctively "one's
own"; so, studentswho understanda text either in its
conventionalmeaning or throughsomeone else's expert interpretationdo not really understandthe text at
all. One advantage I find in distinguishing between
understandingand interpretation(and between different levels in each) is that we can allow that conventional understandingsare understandings,while
insisting thatthey can or shouldbe improvedby more
deliberateefforts of interpretation,whether personal
or collaborative.
2. Pleasure is the second important issue that divides us, and Nehamas joins some excellent French
thinkersin criticizing my aesthetics for its alleged hedonism.6 Recent aesthetic theory typically undervalues the role of pleasureby concentratingon cognition
and falsely presumingthatpleasureand cognition are
somehow conflicting aims ratherthan the closest of
allies. The other reason for deprecating pleasure is
theory's failure to recognize its complexity. While
ancient and medieval thinkers explored its rich variety (e.g., voluptas,gaudium, laetitia, delectatio) and
could see its role in the most sublime, transformative
religious experience, today we simply assume that
pleasure must be something banally light, easy, and
self-indulgent-just pleasantness or fun. Nehamas
exemplifies this tendency to trivialize pleasure
throughconflation with the "pleasant."He therefore
dismisses my recognition of unpleasantyet valuable
feelings, falsely imputing to me the view that aes-

thetic experienceis only "valuablebecause it is pleasant"and that it must "not involve ... the possibility, at
least, of a serious transformationof the person who
undergoes it," even though I repeatedlyinsist (p. 30;
p. 41, n. 30) on the deeply transformativepower of
aesthetic experience.
This conflation of pleasure and thepleasant is also
the reasonwhy Nehamasnot only mistakes the sunset
example as central, but then goes on to suppose that
the experienceof a sunsetmustbe "mindlessly"pleasant. But there is nothing to preventus from having a
sunset experience involving complex interpretation
or "a sense of foreboding, insecurity,even of danger"
(say, before some anticipatedterrorsof the night).We
might even derive some particularly exhilarating
pleasure or delight from experiencingprecisely such
unpleasant feelings. Eighteenth-centurytheories of
the sublime were not blind to this. My case for the importance of aesthetic experience does not rely on its
pleasantness, nor solely on its wide range of deeper
pleasures, but also on its vital phenomenological
vividness, throughwhich not only art's pleasuresbut
its other values (cognitive, ethical, etc.) can emerge
with more intensity and life.
3. The third crucial issue is the severing of value
from experience. I argue that experience is important
for aesthetics, partly because pleasure (and, more
generally, intensified feeling) is important, and that
such feelings are inherently experiential. Nehamas
resists this argumentby trying "to separatepleasure
from value" so that value can be untied from experience and insteaddefined as "thebroadeningof possibility," which "is in principle something we admire
and value" (even apparentlyif the possibility broadened is one of error, evil, and other things we deplore). I have a pragmatist'sdifficulty in understanding what value and "new possibilities" could mean
when severed from all experience (actual, future, or
imagined). When the link to experience is severed,
the notion of value seems too anemically vague and
metaphysicalto do any useful work.
Nehamas'sown arguments,oddly enough, betraya
recognition that aesthetic value cannot be separated
from experience. He claims that "the main groundof
aesthetic value is the ability of what has it to make
palpablethe existence of new possibilities." And Nehamas rightly recognizes that this value of making
new possibilities palpable can only be realized
through aesthetic understanding.But he also claims
that such understandingrequires a personal process
of interpretationwhich "has to be worked out internally" to make the understanding "one's own."
This demands an experiential process, hence Nehamas's claim that "interpretationand experience
cannotbe separated."But if aesthetic value cannotbe
separated from understanding, and understanding
requires interpretation,and interpretationcannot be

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Discussion

53

separated from experience, then it follows that

aesthetic value cannot be separatedfrom experience
either.
The cogency of this elenchus is a trivialvictory for
aesthetic experience. The varieties of aesthetic experience (and of its pleasuresand nonpleasure-centered
values) need more careful exploration. Nehamas's
critique is a stimulatingchallenge for exploring such
"new possibilities" of aesthetic experiencethat might
enhance its still depreciatedvalue.
RICHARD SHUSTERMAN

Departmentof Philosophy
Temple University
Philadelphia,Pennsylvania 19122

INTERNET:

SHUSRICH@ASTRO.OCIS.TEMPLE.EDU

1. ArthurDanto and Jean-FrangoisLyotard are contemporary philosophers whose aesthetic writings are avidly
read and solicited by visual artists. But even my own texts
have sometimes been used andcommissionedby such artists,
most recently by the Germanartists RosemarieTrockeland
CarstenHoller for their installationHausfur Schweine und
Menschen,created for the 1997 Documenta exhibition. My
text, entitled "AHouse Divided," appearsin DocumentaXthe book (Kassel: Cantz, 1997), pp. 650-652.
2. See especially RichardShusterman,PracticingPhilosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life (New York:
Routledge, 1997), but also Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living
Beauty,RethinkingArt (Oxford:Blackwell, 1992).
3. See Pragmatist Aesthetics, chaps. 7-8; "PopularArt
and Education," Studies in Philosophy and Education 13
(1995): 150-158; "Breakingout of the White Cube,"in Suzi
Gablik, ed., ConversationsBeforethe End of Time(London:
Thames and Hudson, 1995), pp. 247-265; "Rap Remix:
Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and Other Issues in the
House," Critical Inquiry 22 (1995): 150-158; and Practicing Philosophy,chap. 5.
4. Richard Shusterman,"The End of Aesthetic Experience, TheJournalof Aestheticsand Art Criticism55 (1997):
38. Subsequentcitations from my article appearwith parenthetical page references.
5. This is why I am careful to describethe cyborg's products as "interpretiveoutput"or "interpretivepropositions"
ratherthan gracing them with the term "interpretation."For
Nehamas's account of interpretationsee his Nietzsche: Life
as Literature(Harvard University Press, 1985); quotation
from p. 66. My theory of interpretationcan be found in
PragmatistAesthetics,chaps. 4, 5; and Sous l'interpritation
(Paris: L'6clat, 1994). I challenge the metaphysicalunderpinnings of Nehamas's Nietzschean interpretivetheory in
"Nietzsche and Nehamason OrganicUnity,"SouthernJournal of Philosophy26 (1988): 379-392.
6. See, for example,RainerRochlitz, "Esth6tiquesHedonistes," Critique:revueginirale des publicationsfrancaises et
9trangeres540 (May 1992): 353-373.

Not an Actual Demonstration:

A Reply to Iseminger
Gary Iseminger's "ActualIntentionalism vs. Hypothetical Intentionalism"Icontinues a discussion with
JerroldLevinson about author'smeaning previously
presentedin Intentionand Interpretation.2
Iseminger's
argument(as established in 'An IntentionalDemonstration?')proceeds by, first, identifying two contradictory interpretivestatements-quite literally,statements of the formp and not-p-which, he claims, are
both compatiblewith the literarytext underinterpretation (PremiseOne).Since binarylogic tells us only one
of two contradictorystatementscan be true (Premise
Two), the true interpretivestatementin any particular
case will be the one that applies to the meaning intended by the authorof the literary text in question
(PremiseThree carriedover into a conclusionwith respect to any particularcase). WhetherPremiseThree
actuallycashes out in revealingthe actualauthor'sactual intentions (Iseminger'sclaim), or merely the intentionsthatan ideally situatedreaderwould hypothesize to be those of the author(Levinson's claim), the
argumentassumesthatit is, at least in some instances,
possible to find two contradictoryinterpretivestatements that are equally well suited to capturingthe
meaning of a literarytext, or of a phraseor fragment
from a literarytext. Here, of course, it is assumedthat
the literary"text"is the bruteset of linguistic inscriptions or, more accurately,the word-sequencemeaning
of somethingthat,conceivedof as an author'swork, is
literary.To transformthe text into a literarywork,one
must be able to eliminate those meanings which,
while consistentwith the text, are no partof the work.
Binarylogic is thoughtto help here, since if one of two
contradictoriesis false, then the one that is true is so
because it is true of the work, not true of the text. In
the meantime, I take it that Iseminger believes his
demonstrationdeals with interpretivestatements of
the sort that characterizeliterary interpretationand
criticism,thoughadmittedlyIseminger'spreferenceis
for fairly modest interpretiveremarks.3
I want to challenge Iseminger's demonstrationof
actual intentionalism, which I will call his actual
demonstration.My objective is not to defend Levinson's hypotheticalintentionalismagainst Iseminger's
actual intentionalism. Rather,I want to show what I
think are decisive problemswith the argumentas it is
workedout in the particularcase that Isemingeruses
as his model. It is my contention that Isemingerhas
not satisfactorilydemonstratedthat his premises are
correct in specific interpretive cases. Nor are the
sorts of interpretivestatementsthat are advancedfor
considerationof any real interestas examples of literary interpretationor literary criticism. I will argue
that the argument in Iseminger's actual demonstration is not an actual demonstration,after all.

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