LOPES, DOMINIC MCIVER. Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value. Oxford University Press, 2018, 288 pp., $65.00 cloth.

Dominic Lopes's overall goal in Being for Beauty is to attack and replace aesthetic hedonism. He wants to defend aesthetic value as reason conferring, but not in a way that devolves into the mere provision of pleasure. He calls the alternative theory he wants to defend the network theory; it promotes a pluralistic view of aesthetic value and emphasizes the social dimension of aesthetic normativity. Being for Beauty is divided into five parts. Part I sets out six scenarios involving aesthetic value, with the goal of enlarging the instances we recognize. Part II makes the case for aesthetic hedonism, then shows why the theory falls short. Part III lays out and defends the network theory. Part IV offers three “bonus arguments” setting out the psychological situation of aesthetic agents, a perspectivist account of aesthetic disagreement, and a defense of aesthetic naturalism. Part V enlarges the scope of the study to acknowledge the personal and social dimensions of aesthetic activity. The motivating scenarios with which Lopes begins recount the stories of Elsie Reford, who designed and put in place an elaborate set of English gardens surrounding her family's fishing lodge north of Montreal; Berenice Abbott, who discovered, preserved, and popularized the photographs of Eugene Atget; Oprah Winfrey, who got an entire nation reading through her book club; Sam, a prescient teenager who collected and preserved video games by reconstructing their source codes; and Hannah, who built an audience for dance as director of a ballet school in rural England. Lopes's takeaway from this section is that we should recognize a variety of aesthetic acts over and above plain everyday (what he would no doubt call plain vanilla) appreciation. Examples that emerge from his chapter survey include “editing, curating, collecting, conserving, exhibiting, teaching, and connecting audiences” (p. 28). This list foreshadows the pluralism he will endorse in later parts of the book. Since he eschews aesthetic hedonism, Lopes characterizes aesthetic value not in terms of providing pleasure, but rather in terms of providing reasons to act. More specifically, providing reasons to perform aesthetic acts. He advances his argument through a set of formalized theses. Here are the formulae summarizing his own theory and the view it is meant to replace. Aesthetic Hedonism: an aesthetic value is a property of an item that stands in constitutive relation to finally valuable experiences of subjects who correctly understand the item. (p. 9) Network Theory: an aesthetic value, V, is reason‐giving = the fact that x is V lends weight to the proposition that it would be an aesthetic achievement for some A to φ in C, where x is an item in an aesthetic practice, K, and A's competence to φ is aligned upon an aesthetic profile that is constitutive of K. (p. 236) SAH [Standardized Aesthetic Hedonism]: An aesthetic value, V, is reason‐giving = the fact that x is V lends weight to the proposition that it would maximize A's pleasure were A to φ in C, were A's hedonic responses calibrated to those of true judges in joint verdict. (p. 61) Beauty is central to Lopes's theory—note the title of this book! Since he rejects aesthetic hedonism, he is not one to defend beauty in terms of pleasure‐triggering constellations of perceptible qualities. I certainly agree that this approach does not capture an adequate notion of beauty—consider the failed definitions that have accumulated in the history of Western philosophy. But I worry that Lopes's solution casts the net too widely. To track the experience of beauty, Lopes singles out two motivating questions: the aesthetic question (“What makes a value an aesthetic one?”) and the normative question (“How do aesthetic values source practical normativity?”) (p. 42). He tables the aesthetic question, noting that both theories under consideration, AH and NT, punt on this. So he sets himself the task of addressing the normative question. And he proceeds with no attempt to reduce the aesthetic to the nonaesthetic. Glossing various of his formulae, he observes that “[n]ever is the aesthetic phenomenon on the left‐hand side reduced on the right‐hand side to some non‐aesthetic phenomenon” (p. 49). What emerges from this framework is a view of aesthetic value as linked to reasons to act aesthetically, where presumably the latter is not limited to the perceptual taking in of aesthetic objects or to acts of aesthetic appreciation more broadly construed. Instead, aesthetic acts exhibit the broad range foregrounded in Lopes's opening set of scenarios. While Lopes at no point offers up a definition of the aesthetic, his approach does purport to circumscribe the concept of beauty. That is, I believe on his view every aesthetic quality that turns out to be reason‐giving—in particular, that turns out to be a reason supporting some specific aesthetic act—emerges as an instance of beauty. Consider the following extended passage: “The network theory is genuinely a theory of aesthetic value only given aesthetic value pluralism. On aesthetic value pluralism, [a] photograph's being haunting is a way of being aesthetically valuable that is a reason for A to φ and [a] garden's being vibrant is a way of being aesthetically valuable that is a reason for A’ to φ’. Being haunting and being vibrant do not share any independent aesthetic value properties; they are ways of being beautiful” (p. 129). This apparent scheme—generating instances of beauty from ways of being aesthetically valuable—seems overly permissive, and Lopes engages in considerable contortion to accommodate the subsequent admission that “some aesthetic values are aesthetic demerits” (p. 130). Lopes does not want to restrict beauty and the aesthetic to the realm of art. His examples, ranged throughout the book, include knot tying and wine drinking, coffee brewing and archery, men's cologne and Latin mega pop. He does, however, insist on a normative dimension. He secures this through appeal to expertise. “The network theory … understands the normativity of aesthetic value by appeal to expert aesthetic agency” (p. 92). (Lopes borrows here from Judith Jarvis Thomson.) Distinguishing experts from true judges, he notes that the latter are ideal figures we can only approximate; they are characterized by their appreciation of masterpieces. By contrast, experts exist among us and are set apart by the fact that they “routinely” act on their aesthetic reasons (p. 71). Recall that Lopes's definition of SAH speaks of “hedonic responses … calibrated to those of true judges in joint verdict” (p. 71). The reference is clearly Humean, and in fact, in Chapter 3, Lopes presents and critiques what he calls the Levenhume Deduction, an amalgam of Hume and Levinson, that defends a version of aesthetic hedonism. If experts are indeed set apart by their reliable response to the call of aesthetic reasons, I believe Lopes overlooks one important Humean qualification. I have in mind Hume's caution that ideal critics can only judge correctly when circumstances are propitious. So, for Hume, aesthetic judgment requires a proper time and place, with fancy subdued, mind serene, thought collected, attention rapt. Much later, when Lopes distinguishes competence from meta‐competence, his specification of what the latter requires of experts seems to echo the Humean caution just outlined: “Aesthetic experts must be able to assess whether conditions are both normal and relevant for them to achieve by exercising their core aesthetic competence. Normal conditions are, at the very least, those that are normal for perception, attention, imagination, and the other more basic psychological competences that seat core aesthetic competence” (p. 104). More can be said about Lopes's account of ordinary (“entry‐level”) aesthetic competence. This is the subject of Chapter 5. The “core competence for aesthetic agents” is competence in aesthetic evaluation, not appreciation (p. 106). Thus, it is dedicated to locating aesthetic value, where that in turn indicates how agents ought to act aesthetically. Compare the thesis labeled “VALUE:” “necessarily, V is an aesthetic value only if the fact that x is V lends weight to the proposition that A aesthetically should φ in C” (p. 38). Lopes proposes that such competence takes a developmental trajectory and relies on “a cluster of more basic traits,” among them “perceptual and affective discernment, conceptual repertoire, attention, and counterfactual imagination” (p. 102). Experts are especially adept at attributing counterfactual aesthetic values—they are able to take into account “how differences in an item's value‐realizing properties would impact its aesthetic value” (p. 102). Note how this tracks much of what Hume imported via his demands for practice and comparison. Overall, Lopes seeks an achievement model of aesthetic competence (p. 98). He maintains that achievement is success out of competence but stresses that those who strive must avoid being “Gettiered.” He concocts an example to illustrate this peril: after a skilled archer lets fly an arrow, a seismic tremor jolts the target. A fortuitous gust of wind then redirects the arrow which hits the bullseye (p. 97). Unfortunately, this successful outcome does not flow from the skilled archer's competence and so does not reinforce her expertise. However we finally understand Lopes's views on competence and expertise, a number of hard questions remain unanswered. How do we identify the experts among us? If their skills are developed gradually, when have they passed the threshold of minimal competence? How do they—and we, their audience—determine the aesthetic practice (more about this shortly) to which they belong? In broadening out his theory (clearly demanded by the modifier “network”!), Lopes locates aesthetic agents in social networks. To set out the network aspect of his view, Lopes begins by claiming that social arrangements scaffold aesthetic agency (p. 110). Specialization and cooperation enhance this process (p. 113). The aesthetic practices that arise are identified by their cognitive schemes and resources (p. 126). And finally, for Lopes “the configuration of aesthetic agency that makes someone a member of [aesthetic practice] K lies in their having an aesthetic competence that is ‘aligned’ on K's ‘aesthetic profile’” (p. 127). This last quotation is difficult to unpack. The “aligned on” relationship is mysterious. Later Lopes offers this explanation: “An agent's competence is aligned on K's aesthetic profile just when they are subject to, and closely enough comply with, K's core aesthetic norms” (p. 134). The notion of an aesthetic profile seems equally problematic. Lopes's definition seems so attenuated that there is nothing there for us to grasp. The aesthetic profile of a practice is simply “the pattern of correlations that obtains between the aesthetic value properties of items in the practice and some other properties they have” (p. 130). These “other properties” are those that determine whether or not an item has a given aesthetic value. Lopes proposes two core aesthetic norms that sustain aesthetic practices. The second norm is “get the practice right”—that is, “do not make aesthetic evaluations of items in K that are inconsistent with the pattern of correlations that really is K's aesthetic profile” (p. 134). This serves to identify and individuate aesthetic practices. “Its members do not make an aesthetic practice the one that it is; rather, their aligning on its aesthetic profile makes an aesthetic practice the one that it is” (p. 134). But what causes one profile to gel rather than another? Is it the case here that anything goes? Apparently, normativity is set locally (in Chapter 7, titled “Hundred Mile Aesthetics,” Lopes plays on the title of the best‐selling Canadian book The 100 Mile Diet, which advocates for eating locally) and is keyed to “doing what would be done by an expert in the practice” (p. 136). But I do not see that Lopes's exposition tells us what constraints shape the formation of any practice. Lopes's answer—“Agents are subject to the contingencies of socialization”—certainly does not close the question (p. 140). Perhaps at this point philosophers have to pass the baton to social scientists. The overarching aim of Lopes's project was to explain the source of aesthetic normativity. But the definition of an aesthetic profile, in its abstraction, seems to leave that question unanswered and perhaps unanswerable. An infinity of profiles is possible, if we take a Platonic approach to correlation patterns. What ones can take root? What ones should? Any answer is only complicated by Lopes's insistence at the close of Chapter 9, on the dynamism of aesthetic practices (p. 175). Let me close with some general considerations. Being for Beauty is a dense and difficult book. I have tried to indicate the texture of Lopes's formal definitions and argument. At times these comport oddly with the breezy and idiomatic language surrounding them—talk of sourcing normativity, scaffolding agency, punting questions, championing plain vanilla theories. While the book has a large and impressive bibliography, it proceeds entirely without footnotes. Instead, references to bibliographic entries are clustered after emphatic or substantive points. The reader can go back to the bibliography to track down the details of the papers and books referred to, and this does place many of Lopes's claims in context. But discursive footnotes are the locale where most authors would set out in detail the relevant points and arguments. Perplexed readers who look to Lopes's index to orient themselves will find it perfunctory and of little help. Lopes's project is ambitious and erudite. He draws not only on aesthetics and philosophy of art but also on other branches of philosophy and other disciplines in setting out his view. In this review I have only touched the surface, and I may well have failed to grasp the payoffs of some of his moves.

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