I don’t think I have “better” musical taste than anyone. I like a lot of music that lots of other people like, and I also like some music that very few people like and hate a pretty great deal of music that a lot of people like. None of this qualifies me to tell other people that they are right or wrong to like anything.
If I understand what you are saying, you think that one could not be qualified to tell people that they are simply wrong to like what they like, but one could be qualified to tell them that they like what they like because they are stupid, or for similar reasons, including sometimes when those reasons are (or are due to) things either or both of you would rightfully label wrong according to each of your values.
Yes. In other words, your aesthetic preference is what you like, not what you wish you liked. I believe that what Phil Goetz is struggling with in the original post—an extremely valid struggle that I think we can all relate to—is something like a three-layered conflict between (a) what he likes, (b) what he would like to like, and (c) what he would like to like to like. (a) and (c) are negative—he does not like the Great Fugue and would not like to like to like it, but certain pressures make him feel in some respects as though (b) he would like to like it.
Your comment gives me an opportunity to clarify one other thing. Aesthetic judgments are often based in part, though I believe almost never wholly, on factual beliefs of some kind. Insofar as those might be mistaken, I think it does present a limited sense in which I might be wrong to like something, but only wrong relative to my own meta-preferences. To construct a silly example, imagine I like Wagner’s music in part because I am under the impression that he was a morally upright person. (This might sound like a bad reason for liking someone’s music, but I would argue that things like that factor into our aesthetic judgments really often.) Now, it’s unlikely that even my belief about Wagner’s moral character would cause me to like his music if I truly found it viscerally unpleasant, so I do think that a core of more purely aesthetic judgment remains in most cases—but let’s say that my positive aesthetic judgment is made wildly positive by my belief about Wagner’s moral character, or that a slightly negative (just worse than indifferent) aesthetic judgment is made slightly positive by my belief. Since Wagner was not a morally upright person, though, I think it’s fair to say that the portion of my aesthetic judgment about his music that is informed by that belief is simply wrong. However, I don’t think there are—by definition—any aesthetic judgments that rely entirely on facts.
If I understand what you are saying, you think that one could not be qualified to tell people that they are simply wrong to like what they like, but one could be qualified to tell them that they like what they like because they are stupid, or for similar reasons, including sometimes when those reasons are (or are due to) things either or both of you would rightfully label wrong according to each of your values.
Yes. In other words, your aesthetic preference is what you like, not what you wish you liked. I believe that what Phil Goetz is struggling with in the original post—an extremely valid struggle that I think we can all relate to—is something like a three-layered conflict between (a) what he likes, (b) what he would like to like, and (c) what he would like to like to like. (a) and (c) are negative—he does not like the Great Fugue and would not like to like to like it, but certain pressures make him feel in some respects as though (b) he would like to like it.
Your comment gives me an opportunity to clarify one other thing. Aesthetic judgments are often based in part, though I believe almost never wholly, on factual beliefs of some kind. Insofar as those might be mistaken, I think it does present a limited sense in which I might be wrong to like something, but only wrong relative to my own meta-preferences. To construct a silly example, imagine I like Wagner’s music in part because I am under the impression that he was a morally upright person. (This might sound like a bad reason for liking someone’s music, but I would argue that things like that factor into our aesthetic judgments really often.) Now, it’s unlikely that even my belief about Wagner’s moral character would cause me to like his music if I truly found it viscerally unpleasant, so I do think that a core of more purely aesthetic judgment remains in most cases—but let’s say that my positive aesthetic judgment is made wildly positive by my belief about Wagner’s moral character, or that a slightly negative (just worse than indifferent) aesthetic judgment is made slightly positive by my belief. Since Wagner was not a morally upright person, though, I think it’s fair to say that the portion of my aesthetic judgment about his music that is informed by that belief is simply wrong. However, I don’t think there are—by definition—any aesthetic judgments that rely entirely on facts.
There are definitely people who dislike Wagner’s music because of his anti-Semitism.