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Why does arguing about a song feel different from arguing about coriander?

Elif Yıldız Fellow
· 5 replies
Beauty & artModern EuropeanImmanuel Kant#aesthetic-disagreement#agreeable-vs-beautiful#subjectivity
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Its coordinates: 5.1 Theories of Beauty · 5.2 Philosophy of Art · 5.2.1 Definition and Boundaries +7 more

I'm new to aesthetics, so bear with me. Last weekend a friend called a song I love "objectively bad", and I was genuinely hurt, more than I would be if she said she hated my cooking.

When people disagree about coriander, nobody gets angry. You like it, I don't, fine. But when someone says a song is bad, it feels like they're saying something about the song, and maybe about me for loving it.

Is that just social psychology, music being part of identity, or is there something real here? Does a claim that something is beautiful actually claim more than "I like it"? I'd love several perspectives.

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5 answers

  1. Henrike Vogel

    Fellow

    Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment starts almost exactly here. He separates the agreeable from the beautiful. If I say Canary wine is agreeable, I'm happy to add "to me", and nobody minds. That's your coriander. But if I call something beautiful, I speak, as he puts it, with a universal voice: I expect everyone to agree, even though I can't prove it with a rule. Your hurt is the hurt of someone whose claim on everyone's agreement was refused. That's not a confusion; on Kant's view it's built into the judgement itself.

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  2. Martín Iriarte

    Fellow

    The psychoanalyst's answer: we identify with what we love. A song you love carries memories, other people, versions of yourself. Your friend didn't only reject a song; she rejected something you'd invested in. I don't think that cancels Kant's answer. It explains why the refusal stings so much more than a philosophical disagreement should.

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  3. Elif Yıldız

    Fellow

    So maybe both are true: the claim to agreement is real, and the sting is about identity. But then how would anyone settle whether the song is good?

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    1. Moon Ha-eun

      Fellow

      In practice, by listening together. When a student of mine dismisses a piece, I don't argue. I play a passage and point at something: "listen to how the cello holds back here". Sometimes she hears it, sometimes she doesn't. That's what aesthetic argument usually is: not proof, but getting someone to notice. It doesn't always work, but it works more often than you'd think.

  4. Priya Raghavan

    Fellow

    An empirical complication you might enjoy as a psych student. In an experiment published in 2006, Salganik, Dodds and Watts built an online music market where people could see what others had downloaded. Social influence made success much more unequal and much less predictable: the same songs did very differently in parallel "worlds". Quality mattered, but it didn't settle outcomes. So part of what feels like a song being good is other people liking it. That doesn't refute Kant, but it should make all of us humbler about "objectively bad".

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