In contemporary discussion of value-judgments, however, appreciation
is a peculiarly treacherous term. It is first asserted (or assumed)
that all experiences of good are modes of knowing: that good is a
term of a proposition. Then when experience forces home the immense
difference between evaluation as a critical process (a process of
inquiry for the determination of a good precisely similar to that
which is undertaken in science in the determination of the nature of
an event) and ordinary experience of good and evil, appeal is made to
the difference between direct apprehension and indirect or inferential
knowledge, and "appreciation" is called in to play the convenient rôle
of an immediate cognitive apprehension. Thus a second error is used to
cover up and protect a primary one. To savor a thing fully--as Arnold
Bennett's heroines are wont to do--is no more a knowing than is the
chance savoring which arises when things smelled are found good, or
than is being angry or thirsty or more than five feet high. All the
language which we can employ is charged with a force acquired through
reflection. Even when I speak of a direct experience of a good or bad,
one is only too likely to read in traits characterizing a thing which
is found in consequence of thinking, to be good; one has to use
language simply to stimulate a recourse to a direct experiencing in
which language is not depended upon. If one is willing to make such an
imaginative excursion--no one can be compelled--he will note that
_finding_ a thing good apart from reflective judgment means simply
treating the thing in a certain way, hanging on to it, dwelling upon
it, welcoming it and acting to perpetuate its presence, taking delight
in it. It is a way of behaving toward it, a mode of organic reaction.
A psychologist may, indeed, bring in the emotions, but if his
contribution is relevant it will be because the emotions which figure
in his account are just part of the primary organic reaction to the
object. In contrary fashion, to find a thing bad (in a direct
experience as distinct from the result of a reflective examination) is
to be moved to reject it, to try to get away from it, to destroy or at
least to displace it. It connotes not an act of apprehension but an
act of repugning, of repelling. To term the thing good or evil is to
state the fact (noted in recollection) that it was actually involved
in a situation of organic acceptance or rejection, with whatever
qualities specifically characterize the act.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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