Pleasure and the Value of Works of Art

THE CONNECTION between art and pleasure is deceptively familiar. But is pleasure the yardstick of value in the arts? Is a work of art only as good as it is pleasurable? The idea that the value of an art work is closely related to the pleasure that a perceiver derives from it has surely too much initial plausibility, and is of too long standing, to be wholly without basis. And, indeed, there is a substantial core of truth to it: the arts are intended, as much as anything, to give pleasure, and are, by and large, well suited to provide it. It would be a mistake, however, to rest with this simple nostrum, for it misleads us in a number of ways if taken as it stands, without certain caveats and qualifications. In this paper I sketch some of these, laying them out summarily at first, and then elucidating them in turn in more leisurely fashion. Most of the examples adduced later are drawn from the art of music, which is particularly appropriate to our theme, since it is often regarded as the hedonic art par excellence—to be justified, first and foremost, by the pleasure it affords. First, then, if the value of art is to be plausibly related to its provision of