Aesthetic Reasoning: A Hermeneutic Approach

Abstract

This essay considers the foundations of reasonable evaluation in the arts. These we argue concern the relations that constitute (1) our experience of art, and (2) the ontology of the art work itself. The being of the artwork, the experience and the interpretation of it all involve over-lapping modes of part–whole relations. The experience of meaningfulness is not an experience of a singular object or framework of meaning as closed and complete but an experience of relational meaning whereby exposure to one set of meaningful relations transforms another in an on-going and open manner. This suggests that the experience of art itself provides the norms for reasonableness of evaluation. These norms are not rules in the sense of offering a method. They are characteristic of the features of an experience of meaningfulness itself. The essay suggests that the reasonableness of a response to a work can be considered in terms of (1) its appropriacy relative to the context of its own horizon and the horizon surrounding the production of the work; (2) its plausibility, that is, its internal coherence and consistency as a reading; (3) whether the structure of the response is consistent with, supplements, or expands the intelligible content of the work; and (4) whether it gives a sense of the latent possibilities still held within a work and intimates where the movement of a work’s subject-matter might