Toward an Epistemology of Literary Judgment

Abstract: This essay examines an epistemological thread that runs through Michael W. Clune’s A Defense of Judgment . The first half raises worries about Humean judgment, ultimately doubting whether it can vindicate all it has been asked to. The second half argues that expertise can be grounded in fully tacit knowledge, though that fact inevitably—and rightly—introduces outsider skepticism. The explicitness of that tacit knowledge is not a requirement of expertise as such, but rather a contingent feature of the requirements of academic life. But this, among other things, may be what makes literary education a worthy pursuit.