political, perhaps unconscious, perhaps just sociohistorical) as the object
of interpretation, quite apart from any concern with artistic beauty, value,
or success. It is, moreover, possible to do some interesting work by
accepting this argument and its conclusion. For example, under the
banner of“distant reading,”Franco Moretti has organized and led a small
army of researchers to investigate the distribution of topics, plot motifs,
forms, and themes in every European novel from Ancient Greece tothe
present, all without regard to either questions of value or exercises of
sensibility.^41
While there is every reason to think that this approach can yield at least
some interesting results, it is not mandatory, and the argument in favor of an
exclusively value-neutral practice of interpretation on which it rests is
unsound. As Alexander Nehamas has aptly argued, artistic beauty and
artistic value do not always strike us immediately in perception. While
we may be struck initially by something that we then undertake to interpret,
the activity of interpretation can be undertaken as “the expression of
[your] need to become actively engaged”with the work, that is, as a way of
figuring out how and why it has struck you or mattered to you.^42 “We can
be attracted to things of which we are not yet fully aware.”^43 Nehamas
describes at length his own deepening involvements with Manet’sOlympia,
involvements developed by his efforts at understanding it and its effects
on him. With close interpretive attention, we can sometimes learn both
how and that something is beautiful or artistically successful. Hence premise
1 is false.
In a Deweyan spirit, Nehamas likewise sensibly deplores“the passion for
ranking, the fervor for verdicts that has deformed our attitude toward the
arts, and our lives.”^44 Instead of either merely interpreting without involve-
ment, on the one hand, or seeking a conclusive verdict, on the other, we
should learn to live with our ongoing, developing involvements with a work
and seek to understandthem:“evaluation enters the moment criticism
begins, inextricably entangled with interpretation and evident even in the
(^41) See Franco Moretti, ed.,The Novel,vol. I, History, Geography, and Culture(Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2006), and Moretti, ed.,The Novel,vol. II, Forms and Themes(Princeton University
Press, 2006).
(^42) Alexander Nehamas,Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art
(Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 55.
(^43) Ibid., p. 71. (^44) Ibid., p. 137.
Understanding art 161