In his new book, You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice, Tom Vanderbilt turns Kant's position on its head. Scarlet Begonias, there's an objective winner – and it's got nothing to do with what I did behind the boathouse in the summer of '95. For Kant, there are universal truths of beauty and our aesthetic judgments should aspire to uncover them. In his 1790 The Critique of Judgment, perhaps the definitive philosophical treatise on taste, Kant argues that judgments of aesthetic matters, such as art and music, should be rendered in a disinterested fashion, unsullied by our wants and needs. Does she truly dislike the band because the music, as she says, is "boring and undisciplined?" Or is it the mere idea of a jam band that she rejects? Conversely, do I love the Dead purely because of Jerry's genius – or because it is a nostalgic summer-camp soundtrack? With no resolution in sight, do our reasons for disliking, or liking, even matter?Īccording to Immanuel Kant, they do. I've never much questioned my son's preference for pop, but my wife's position – not her Bieber-fever, which I reluctantly accept, but her Dead-dread – vexes me. If put to the test, the pair vote in a block Justin Bieber soundly defeats Jerry Garcia every time. Try as I might, I can't get my wife and two-year-old son into the Grateful Dead.
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