EXSCRIBO

3 VALUE JUDGMENT

“Absolute values…are inborn in all humans identically in all times and place, in what Pluto called the Eye of the Soul, and what Kant called the Faculty of Judgment, or Taste” (17).

I think absolute values, whether they be the Eye of the Soul or the Faculty of Judgment, have a lot to so with instinct. The book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell talks about why our snap judgments are the ones we should pay attention to. In relation to value judgments, we know within the first few seconds of meeting someone or seeing/hearing/smelling/tasting something how we feel about it. Gladwell mainly discussed this instinctual reflex in regard to sensing danger and threat, but this concept can also be applied to taste. What we like, don’t like, and feel neutral about usually relies on intuitive feeling. We decide, either subconsciously or consciously, whether we like something or not within the first few seconds of encountering it. Now, that’s not to say our minds don’t change, but I think that it is very rare to be truly ambivalent about something. In other words, I think its difficult to see something as being black and white, right and wrong, or good and bad when value judgments are so ingrained in who we are.

“Artists seen as great by their own generation may seem mediocre to a later one, and vice versa. The very notions of what makes a work good have been observed to change from age to age” (18).

It’s interesting to put art in a position of approval or disproval in the context of time. If an artist of the past were to create the same artwork today, would it be seen or interpreted in the same way? I think it really depends on the specific art we’re talking about. One could argue that some works have gained prestige with time, even when out of context. With classical paintings, for instance, we know enough about them and their artists historically to analyze them according to their original context. The same way that the paintings of the past would be out of context in our world, the art of today might be harshly rejected by past and future generations. We really have to consider all art movements and how each one was revolutionary of its time. The “next big thing” is most likely something the world has never seen before, something that surprises people and reflects societal factors of the time.

“…we take as objective measures of value what we have been conditioned to take that way” (21).

We really are products of everything and everyone we’ve experienced, encountered, and interacted with. The lessons we’ve learned, the things we’ve been exposed to, and the opinions we’ve formed over our lives are only a few pieces of the equation that makes us who we are. That being said, it makes total sense that the way we make value judgments is also a product of these things. The way we judge things depends on how we’ve been conditioned to judge, interpret, or comprehend them. I think that with art these judgments are especially true.