From: msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 18:16:32 GMT

                                    Tuesday, the 29th of December, 1992

Curtis Yarvin writes:
  Eh so?  The critics of the past may have had more subtle biases than
  the patriarchal chauvinism induced by the malnourished phallic stature
  of their agrarian times.  Who's to say that their scales of "literary
  merit" have aught to do with what ought be?

  And for that matter, can any of you poxwit pundits give me a definition of
  "literary merit" that isn't circular?

Well, Dani has already raised the all-important point that everything
depends on with respect to *what* one is measuring the merit. I trust you
well understand there's a (perfectly good, perfectly objective) political
reason why American schoolkids ought to be taught The Federalist Papers and
not the articles of Iroquois confederation, if there has to be this choice
(I don't think there does, but my option would always be demanding a lot more
from schools than schools now seem capable of doing). Or Homer and not The
Foundation Trilogy.

But, I suppose there's also a little of the skeptic's scoff at the
possibility of objective aesthetic judgment in what you say, that
you are assuming there can be no objective criterion for grounding
such judgment. I think this scoff is simplistic.

We must examine making, and the standard by which we judge it, beauty.

Consider making furniture. Chairs, for example. Now here we have a craft
that begins in an objective human want: To be able to sit down. So,
already there's an objective criterion (of utility) for dividing chairs
into the functional ones, and the ones which don't work as chairs.
But, functional chairs aren't exactly simple to make, and there's
a skill to the craft of carpentry, an expertise that one can learn by
training and apprenticeship, but which expertise will not be available to
the untutored. Therefore, we have all the ingredients necessary for the
propagation of a cultural form, and for the setting up of extra, artificial
(artificial here means man-made---possibly though man-discovered---, not
necessarily subjective) standards on top of simple utility for the judging
of beauty in chair making. An art form develops, and a standard of judgment
for that art form along with it. Artist and critic. Objectivity can still be
found even if the art form itself and the critical standard of beauty by
which it is judged were completely arbitrary. Objectivity can be found
in so far as experts agree. (You might want to compare the story in
one of the two Feynman collections about how Feynman thought art criticism
was all hocus-pocus until he got in to painting, and was surprised
to find himself agreeing more and more with ``received opinion''.)

Ezra Pound said Sappho and Dante, Guido Cavalcanti and Arnaut Daniel and
the Shih King are important. He actively disliked Milton. Somehow (and
however much I like Milton, and however idionsyncratic Pound's
tastes were) this simply weighs more than any pronouncement I am likely
to make on the subject.

There is nothing circular in saying that Ezra Pound or Mortimer Adler
or Allan Bloom or Kenneth Rexroth thought a book important to read,
and that that is reason to read it in lieu of other books. Their opinions
simply weigh more than most other opinions.

If your beef is that Forgotten Work X has been slighted by Pound, or by
other experts, your course is clear: You can argue your point. But, if you
want your opinions (especially generalizations about bias in judging
``literary merit'') to have, say, the same critical weight as these experts'
opinions, you're going to have to demonstrate a comparable expertise.
I would suggest that that isn't a trivial thing to do.

                       Mike Morris
                (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written