IN DEALING WITH TRUTH, and in response to an extreme skepticism that treated truth as if it were totally subjective and relative to the individual’s opinions, we distinguished an objective aspect in which truth is universal and immutable from a subjective aspect in which individual claims to have a hold on the truth vary from individual to individual and from time to time.
In addition, we separated the sphere of truth from the sphere of taste. In the former, agreement is to be sought and engaging in argument can serve this purpose. In the latter, differences of opinion should be tolerated and there is no point in arguing to overcome them.
In dealing with goodness, and once again in response to an extreme skepticism that treated goods as if they were totally subjective and relative to the individual’s desires, we found a parallel to the objective and subjective aspects of truth.
Real goods, we found, are relative not to individual desires, but to desires inherent in human nature and so are the same for all human beings. To the extent that human nature is everywhere and at all times the same (that is, as long as the species persists in its specific characteristics), real goods have the universality and immutability that gives them objectivity. The sameness of human nature at all times and places is usually concealed from us by the overlays of nurture and culture, but these can be stripped away and the common underlying nature laid bare.
Another way of making the same point is to say that, while many value judgments belong in the sphere of taste, some belong to the sphere of truth. Prescriptive judgments about the real goods that ought to be desired because they fulfill our natural needs have a truth that differs from the truth of descriptive judgments about the way things are in reality. About these value judgments, we should seek agreement, and when we disagree, we should try to overcome our differences by resorting to argument—by appeal to evidence and by reasoning. The evidence will be drawn from and the reasoning will be about our knowledge of human nature and our understanding of it.
The subjective aspect of goodness falls on the other side of the line that divides real from apparent goods. Apparent goods are relative to individual desires and are, therefore, subjective. When, wanting something, the individual calls it good, that is an expression of taste on his part, not a judgment that he should expect others to agree with or about which he should engage in argument with others.
Two things emerge from this review of ground we have been over. One is the sovereignty of truth in relation to goodness and, as we shall soon see, also in relation to beauty. The discovery that oughts can be true enables us to draw the line between the objective and subjective aspects of goodness. It places our judgments about real goods in the sphere of truth, and our opinions about apparent goods in the sphere of taste.
The other thing to emerge is the reason there is an objective as well as a subjective aspect of both truth and goodness. It is not the same reason in both cases.
The objectivity of truth derives from the existence of a reality that is independent of our minds and of our thinking about it. Since we attain truth by bringing our thought into agreement with the reality we try to know, that reality provides the standard whereby our thought is measured and is found true or false. The subjectivity of truth derives from the fallibility and deficiencies or inadequacies of human thought.
Goodness does not have objectivity in the same way, for our judgments concerning the good do not have truth by agreement with the reality we seek to know. With regard to real goods, what takes the place of objectivity is the intersubjectivity of human needs, which is to say their sameness for all human beings because they are inherent in human nature. Here it is human nature (which, of course, is a reality to be known) that provides the standard whereby our value judgments—our oughts—can be found true or false.
When we come to beauty, the same interest persists—the concern with what is objective and what is subjective in our attribution of beauty to things. That is the focal concern with regard to all three of these great ideas, but we can anticipate encountering greater difficulty in our effort to treat beauty in a manner that parallels our treatment of truth and goodness.
The reason for this should be immediately apparent. In the case of truth, one and the same reality measures our success in trying to arrive at true judgments about what does or does not exist or about the characteristics of that which does exist. In the case of goodness, one and the same human nature measures our success in trying to arrive at true judgments about the goods everyone needs and therefore the goods that everyone ought to desire. But, in the case of beauty, where shall we look for the common measure of our success in trying to arrive at true judgments about what is or is not beautiful?
There is still another reason for puzzlement. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” it has been said; “that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.” We have also been told, “Take care of truth and goodness, and beauty will take care of itself.”
These remarks suggest that beauty is so related to truth and goodness that these other ideas should be able to guide us in our consideration of beauty. Despite the poet’s vision of the matter, beauty is not identical with truth, at least not in the sense in which we have considered truth so far—as a property of propositions or statements.
Beauty would appear to be more intimately related to goodness. The reason for thinking so lies in the fact that beauty, like goodness, is a quality we attribute to things because of a relation they have to us. Both the good and the beautiful please us. Beauty may be a special type of goodness or it may be radically distinct from goodness.
We must find out which is the case. Only after we have discovered how the reason for our attribution of beauty to things differs from the reason for our attribution of goodness to them, can we proceed to the more difficult question about the objectivity and subjectivity of beauty.