mingle moral and aesthetic issues: partlyrnbecause the shape of the argument isrnidentical, and partly because those whornare subjectivists in the one, in my experience,rnare always so in the other. The instancesrnabound. One of the chargesrnMao’s widow was convicted of, in the trialrnof the Gang of Four, was a charge atrnonce moral and aesthetic—she had enjoyedrnThe Sound of Music. Dependingrnon one’s opinion of this film, this may indeedrnbe a serious charge. Whether it isrnan indictable offense is a question forrnthose who understand the legal system ofrnthe Chinese People’s Republic. But inrnmingling, as it does, moral and aestheticrnissues, it illustrates how misconceived itrnoften is to try to distinguish them.rnThis is where a more damaging confusionrnbegins. As an objectivist, I amrndeeply impressed in critical debate by anrninequality that reigns between moralityrnand the arts, on the one hand, and sciencernon the other. If you were to ask arnphysicist or a chemist in his laboratoryrnwhether his inquiry was objective, hernwould no doubt reply, in a bored sort ofrnway, that it was—unless, that is, he hadrnread a book like Thomas Kuhn’s Structurernof Scientific Revolutions (1962). Hernwould not, in answering, expect you tornconclude that he already knew the answerrnto the inquiry. Why, if he knew it,rnwould he be looking for it? “We don’trnknow yet,” he might say, or “We are notrnyet certain,” perhaps with an impatientrngesture that implied you were wasting hisrntime.rnContrast that with talk about moralityrnor the arts. If, in a literary seminar, yourncall criticism an objective inquiry, yournwill be instantly assumed to imagine thatrnyou know what the right judgments are.rnIn which case, as the late Allan Bloomrnhas recorded in his angry, entertainingrnbook The Closing of the American Mindrn(1987), you are branded an absolutist,rnwhich is rather, as he says, like believingrnin the persecution of witches. So a sensiblernassumption that effortlessly applies inrnthe laboratory is somehow inconceivablernonce it enters the library.rnSome of the problems here are perhapsrnno more than lexical, in the sensernthat “objective” and “subjective” canrnmean different things in different contexts.rnIn some contexts, “Are you beingrnobjective?” can mean “Are you getting itrnright?” But that does not explain or excusernthe gross inequality of usage herernbetween the arts and the sciences, forrnwhich no explanation, I believe, has everrnbeen offered. It is an inequality that evidentlyrnlies deep in the consciousness ofrnthe Western world. Indeed, the confusionrnbetween objectivity and certainty isrnso deep that it would be amazing in a literaryrndepartment to find an exception tornit, and it is observably a marker that dividesrnthe young in choosing to study thernarts or the sciences. To believe that objectivityrndefines no more than the logicalrnstatus of the question —that there isrnmuch that is in principle knowable thatrnis not yet known—often turns a youthfulrnmind science-ward: to believe that nornjudgments can be certainly made or certainlyrnknown, by contrast, turns it towardrnthe arts. That has its larger consequences.rnLiterary departments tend tornbe ftill of people who are there becausernthey believe there are no certain judgments,rnand who enjoy the sense of opennessrnand vertigo that such a belief confers.rnTell them that literary judgmentsrnare objective, and they will dismiss thernpossibility unexamined and with a wavernof the hand. Tell us another. It is a viewrnthat threatens much more than theirrnsense of literature. It threatens theirrnsense of being.rnIf they turn to a reference book, theyrnwill not necessarily be enlightened. Forrnexample, in an article called “ethical objectivism”rnin Paul Edwards’ Encyclopediarnof Philosophy (1967), Jonathan Harrisonrncalls the concept “far from clear.”rnThat is right. But then he does little tornclarify it. An ethical theory is objective,rnhe argues,rnif it holds that the truth of what isrnasserted by some ethical sentencernis independent of the person whornuses this sentence, the time atrnwhich he uses it, and the placernwhere he uses it.rnBut a lot of words like “here” and “now,”rnfar from being independent, rightlyrnmean different things in different placesrnand at different times. More damagingly,rnthe account puts all the emphasis onrnutterance, whereas it is plain that onerncan make moral and aesthetic choices,rnand act on them, without using languagernat all. As Iris Murdoch remarked at thernstart of her Sovereignty of Good (1970),rnan unexamined life can be virtuous.rnChildren too young to make any sentencesrncan still adopt role models, afterrnall, from those around them, and evenrnadults can admire or disapprove, imitaternor refuse to imitate, without using words.rnWhat is more, they can get such choicesrnright or wrong, which is the definingrncharacteristic of an objective inquiry;rnand we know that they are getting themrnwrong, on occasion and with great certainty,rnas when we read of pedophilernrings in a daily newspaper or hear ofrnyoung Germans in the 1930’s who adoptedrnthe Nazis as a role model and joinedrnthe SS. Even the most extreme moralrnskeptic would seldom argue that suchrnchoices are a mere matter of opinion orrnthat it is absolutist, in a discreditablernsense, to condemn them. There is oftenrna wide gap between seminar-theory andrntalk outside the seminar room, and therndogmatism of the extreme subjectivistrnlike Jean-Paul Sartre has often been remarked.rnHe believed moral choices,rnrightiy considered, to be free and individual,rnand yet publicly condemned whatrnhe called American war crimes in Vietnam.rnIn short, the claim that criticism orrnmoralit}’ is an objective inquiry has nothingrnto do with the claim to certain knowledge.rn(Equally, it does not exclude thatrnclaim.) One may know or not know arnnovel or poem to be good, and the objectivernstatus of the inquiry is unaffected.rnScientists, after all, can have hunchesrnthat are still unverified, but they do notrnusually conclude that any view of thernmatter is as good as any other. Indeed, inrnsome sciences, like demography, approximationrnis often as far as one can ever get,rnand yet demography is rightly seen as anrnobjective inquiry. The population ofrnChina is whatever it is, even though inrnthe nature of the case no expert can tellrnyou what it is except as an approximaternfigure. That is because there are hundredsrnof deaths in China every minute,rnand hundreds of births. The totalsrnchange even as you read this sentence.rnThat illustrates Wittgenstein’s pointrnabout the difference between accuracyrnand precision. Precision in some cases isrnnecessarily inaccurate. If criticismrnabounds in indeterminate question,rnthen, like the character of Hamlet, that isrnno good reason in itself to deny its objectivity.rnA puzzle, however, remains. Confrontrna skeptic with the simple distinctionrnbetween knowing something, on thernone hand, and thinking it an objectiverninquiry on the other, and you will be metrnwith a guffaw or at best a blank stare.rnWliat, he will ask, could it matter to sayrnthat criticism or morality is objective ifrnwe cannot know the answers? It mattersrnMARCH 1998/45rnrnrn