Patrick Beger

I have always been interested in the conversation that debates whether some forms of art (or any representation of what we call 'art') could be considered 'better' than other forms or of similar ones. This most definitely comes from my background in music although I have always been an appreciator of most of the arts. I was very interested to read the details of how art can be defined, classified, and valued in certain ways that could compare itself to other pieces of art, thus being able to determine a certain value that one piece could have over another.

 

I have had conversations with people who thought some forms of music were better than others, and was interested to hear the various reasons. One person I talked to was making the case that jazz was the best form of music because it goes in and out of different keys and is the least confined and most technically challenging genre of music to play. But my thought was always that no one piece of art could be considered better than any other because just as author Cynthia Freeland brings up in a particular argument in the book: art can essentially be valued based on each persons own personal taste, just like a food, which was brought about by Scottish philosopher David Hume. But the book than objects by saying that both Hume and Kant believed that "some works of art really are better than others, and that some people have better taste." It's hard for me to disagree with this statement as well because I feel there are reasons why some art pieces become more popular than others for more reasons than just coincidental, blind agreements in taste.

 

I found it interesting the different qualifications that some came up with to determine value for certain paintings, which were referenced in the book such as Kant's account for beauty and what can be considered beautiful in art. By Kant's knowledge, something that is beautiful in art or in nature has the ability of "promoting an internal harmony or 'free play' of our mental faculties." And anything that does this would be considered beautiful. I also found it to be an interesting point that we consider roses beautiful for certain reasons and cockroaches to be ugly, etc. Although that seems obvious, it is interesting to me that a rose can be considered more beautiful than other flowers in comparison for certain reasons. It seems that for whatever reasons we have to make these claims about flowers, we use the same reasoning when determining ​​​​​​​​​​