The Basis of Criticism in the Arts

Harvard University Press has partnered with De Gruyter to make available for sale worldwide virtually all in-copyright HUP books that had become unavailable since their original publication. The 2,800 titles in the “e-ditions” program can be purchased individually as PDF eBooks or as hardcover reprint (“print-on-demand”) editions via the “Available from De Gruyter” link above. They are also available to institutions in ten separate subject-area packages that reflect the entire spectrum of the Press’s catalog. More about the E-ditions Program »

This book presents a philosophy of criticism, the aim of which is to offer a technique of criticism free from bias or dogmatism. This aim cannot be achieved by simply looking at supposed facts or simply feeling values, because the main issues in criticism turn on the true nature of aesthetic facts and of aesthetic values. Stephen Pepper maintains that there are four outstanding world hypotheses with clear but differing perspectives on these issues, and that the best available judgment of the aesthetic value of a work of art consists in submitting it to the scrutiny of the four conceptions of aesthetic value characteristic of these points of view.