STATE OF CRITICISM
43
conception of aesthetic intUItiOn, partly in the spirit in which Ga–
damer says "we need
to
overcome the concept of aesthetics itself," and
partly to show that Greenberg does not offer us the aesthetics we do
need, even if that need is more an afterthought of our consciousness of
art than inherent in it. I will then circle back
to
the original intention
of Greenberg's paper, namely the attempt to define "true" criticism–
or rather, what amounts to the same thing, to reinstate what he regards
as the traditional function of criticism-and show that, despite its
usefulness in reminding us that art criticism in practice has gotten
wildly out of hand, the idea of criticism as qualitative evaluation of art
is not only a half-truth but one which mocks the whole truth.
Greenberg importunately totalizes evaluation in the hope of detotaliz–
ing interpretation, but in so doing he falsifies the roles of both, and
thereby the complex nature and spirit of the critical enterprise as such.
Everything that Greenberg tells us about aesthetic intuition has
already been told us by Kant, and more clearly and systematically.
Greenberg's characterization of aesthetic intuition as "unanalyzable,"
"prearticulate," "transhistorical," and "intrinsic, ultimate, and auton–
omous" paraphrases Kant's conception of taste or aesthetic judgment.
This can be demonstrated even more pointedly. Greenberg argues that
the contemporary critic would be helped by an acquaintance with "the
right kind of aesthetics," which "might lead him
to
keep more firmly
in mind that aesthetic value judgments can't be demonstrated in a wa)
that would compel agreement; consequently that in the last resort it's
his reader's or listener's taste that he has to appeal to, not his reason or
understanding. " Compare this with Gadamer's summary of Kant's
achievement in the third
Critique:
In the subjective universality of the aesthetic judgment of taste, he
[Kant] discovered the powerful and legitimate claim to independence
that aesthetic judgment can make over against the claims of the
understanding and morality. The taste of the observer can no more
be comprehended as the application of concepts, norms, or rules
than the genius of the artist can.
Presumably the genius of the critic resides in the intuitions of his taste.
The key point is the subjective absoluteness-the subjective
universality-of genius and taste, an absoluteness not only self–
justifying (this is the full weight of Greenberg's characterization of
aesthetic intuition as "intrinsic, ultimate, and autonomous") but in no
need of explication (its unanalyzability). Such absoluteness guarantees
the existence of "art as art": the "absolute value of the aesthetic,"
