Reason and Controversy in the Arts

by Mortimer R. Kadish

"This study is a fresh and original attempt to liberate the theory of criticism from the limitations of connoisseurship, and the assumptions of aesthetics from the difficulties and paradoxes of aesthetic relativism. It presents a picture of what rationality in the assessment of the arts would be like if one were expected to justify one's decisions in and about the arts. Kadish focuses upon the way in which competent and reasonable people express their differences, not upon the way they instruct novices. Among good critics, the author proposes, differences are not managed as differences...