The Analysis of Value-Judgements

Abstract

In view of the theoretical and practical confusion we encounter in criticism of which the avowed intention is to eliminate subjectivity from the critical act and place the whole discipline on a scientific basis, it seems a matter of some importance to inspect the language of criticism a little more closely than is usually the case. The logical analysis of critical terminology may well reveal the intrinsic nature of criticism itself. For underlying all criticism is a theory of literature (or art in general) and it is this basic theoretical structure we are really concerned with in modern claims to have eliminated the ‘subjective’ and bypassed the ‘intuitive’.