So I've been rereading Michael Fried's Art and Objecthood, and keep coming across interesting little gems. I wrote at some length about one elsewhere, but would like to say a few short words about a new one that is more appropriate for the rants I like to put up here.
"'All judgments of value begin and end with experience... the arguments themselves [arguments for or against value] will not be binding." (18)
I get asked a lot why I don't like music, and I have, I flatter myself to think, a reasonably wide array of interesting, if not necessarily always compelling, responses. But it is dishonest (I think I agree with Fried here) to claim that the reasons precede or supersede the judgment; they exist only ex post facto, and, whether they are dismissed, dismantled or diseminated, they ultimately are only justifications for the truth--they are not the truth itself (I feel more comfortable saying "truth" here than elsewhere, since I don't mind saying that when I say "Beirut sucks" it is true).
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