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>my father said "that's not true, you can claim Shakespeare isn't good but you're wrong". Could not disagree more. Your father can claim Shakespeare is good,

>my father said "that's not true, you can claim Shakespeare isn't good but you're wrong". Could not disagree more. Your father can claim Shakespeare is good, but that doesn't make him right. I think Shakespeare is good, but that's a subjective opinion and holds no more weight than someone who thinks Dan Brown is a better writer /shudder.

jacquesm 5y ago
Given that Dan Brown is alive and that Shakespeare is well and truly dead I'm pretty sure that Dan Brown is the better writer.
slibhb 5y ago
The essay I linked has a good response to what you wrote: > It is true that some people sometimes express the view that no judgments of taste are really better than others. They say, “There is no right and wrong about matters of taste”. Others will express the same thought by saying that beauty is “relative” to individual judgment or preference, or that it is “socially relative”. Such relativism is part of the intellectual air in in certain parts of the humanities. In particular, many intellectuals have expressed dislike of the idea that judgments of taste really have any normative claim, as if that would be uncouth or oppressive. However, if we are describing our thought as it is, not how it ought to be, then there is no getting away from the fact that normativity is a necessary condition of judgments of taste or beauty. If you actually believed what you wrote, you wouldn't have included a "/shudder" at the end. In fact, you believe that Shakespeare is better than Dan Brown to the point that disagreement makes you uncomfortable. That's a judgement of taste. How you ground that belief (if at all) is a separate question.
- cgrealy 5y ago
  > If you actually believed what you wrote, you wouldn't have included a "/shudder" at the end. In fact, you believe that Shakespeare is better than Dan Brown to the point that disagreement makes you uncomfortable. That's a judgement of taste. Yes, but it's subjective. The idea that Dan Brown could be considered a better writer than Shakespeare is horrifying to me. The idea that people would put pineapple on a pizza is sacreligious to me. That someone actually likes Nickelbacks music is borderline offensive to me. Unless you can objectively quantify why x is better than y, that is subjective. > there is no getting away from the fact that normativity is a necessary condition of judgments of taste or beauty. Even if you could agree to an evaluative standard for art, you still cannot objectively measure it. Just because a majority of people agree on something, does not make it so.

jacquesm 5y ago

Given that Dan Brown is alive and that Shakespeare is well and truly dead I'm pretty sure that Dan Brown is the better writer.

slibhb 5y ago

The essay I linked has a good response to what you wrote: > It is true that some people sometimes express the view that no judgments of taste are really better than others. They say, “There is no right and wrong about matters of taste”. Others will express the same thought by saying that beauty is “relative” to individual judgment or preference, or that it is “socially relative”. Such relativism is part of the intellectual air in in certain parts of the humanities. In particular, many intellectuals have expressed dislike of the idea that judgments of taste really have any normative claim, as if that would be uncouth or oppressive. However, if we are describing our thought as it is, not how it ought to be, then there is no getting away from the fact that normativity is a necessary condition of judgments of taste or beauty. If you actually believed what you wrote, you wouldn't have included a "/shudder" at the end. In fact, you believe that Shakespeare is better than Dan Brown to the point that disagreement makes you uncomfortable. That's a judgement of taste. How you ground that belief (if at all) is a separate question.

cgrealy 5y ago
> If you actually believed what you wrote, you wouldn't have included a "/shudder" at the end. In fact, you believe that Shakespeare is better than Dan Brown to the point that disagreement makes you uncomfortable. That's a judgement of taste. Yes, but it's subjective. The idea that Dan Brown could be considered a better writer than Shakespeare is horrifying to me. The idea that people would put pineapple on a pizza is sacreligious to me. That someone actually likes Nickelbacks music is borderline offensive to me. Unless you can objectively quantify why x is better than y, that is subjective. > there is no getting away from the fact that normativity is a necessary condition of judgments of taste or beauty. Even if you could agree to an evaluative standard for art, you still cannot objectively measure it. Just because a majority of people agree on something, does not make it so.