The problem with which I wish to deal in this paper is the problem of singular reasons in the humanities, whether they exist, or rather, whether they can exist: for it would seem that the word “reason” carried with it some idea of generality, so that the phrase “singular reason” was a contradiction in terms, a specification which could never be fulfilled. But humanists are always sensing the singularity of their studies: and the philosopher wondering about the nature of humane thinking either must conclude that it is really only inadequate science, its singularity being the mark of the fact that we never really have an adequate basis for any of our generalizations, an unfortunate reminder that the whole structure is built on the shakiest of inductive foundations; or, if he is unwilling to allow that humanists are just bad, or at least amateur, scientists, he is tempted to vindicate the rationality of their reasoning by inventing a special faculty of particular ratiocination which is able to perceive particular truths—the intuition of the moralists or the insight of the Collingwoodian mode.

The phrase ‘evaluative inference’ was used by Toulmin (Reason in Ethics, p. 38) for ‘that form of inference by which we pass from factual reasons to an ethical conclusion’; and the phrase has been attacked by Hare in his review of Toulmin (Philosophical Quarterly, 1951) and in his book (The Language of Morals, pp. 45 ff.). I shall try to dig out some of the questions at issue in that discussion, but to do so without the help of this technical term, or of any other that I can avoid.

One of the most influential logicians of the day has assembled and in part rewritten a number of his essays on important questions of logical theory.1 The result is a most impressive book, at once powerful and graceful, and breathing a certain intellectual hauteurr which accords well with its conspicuous property of being intellectually first rate. These are not humble analytical gropings, undertaken by the dim light of an author’s sense of the sensible; but a series of campaigns in abstract metaphysics, directed from the firm ground of mastery of a rigorous and exacting technique. “Those of us who have a taste for desert landscapes” is a phrase of the author’s. With a Roman ruthlessness he makes a solitude in which he can quantify peacefully over lumps of rock.

The traditional business of aestheticians has been to supply an answer to the question, “What is art?” A single question is put, and apparently it is assumed—though recently the assumption has been fairly widely challenged—that there is a single answer to be supplied; that there is one definition or one essence of art from which all its properties can be shown to derive. However the problem is also quite frequently reformulated: some theorists prefer to ask, “What is aesthetic experience?” Here we find a second assumption: it seems to be taken for granted that it is appropriate to put either one question or the other, but not both; aesthetic experience having been characterized, art can be denned in terms of it, or vice versa. And it is assumed here, as before, that there is one essential answer to give. It is supposed, that is to say, that all aesthetic experience— the experience of reading War and Peace or Herrick’s two lines Of Julia, Weeping, the experience of looking at York Minster or the pattern on the carpet, if by good fortune the carpet is well designed— has some one distinguishing characteristic in all instances, in virtue of which alone they are to be called aesthetic.

In the recent article Poetry, Language and Communication by Bernard Mayo, the author, intending to establish new distinctions between poetry and other uses of language, has overshot the mark, and arrived at a completely obscurantist view of poetry.

Professor Flew's vigorous and interesting paper, “The Justification of Punishment,” in PHILOSOPHY for October 1954 discusses my article on Punishment in Mind for April 1939. It merits some rejoinder. Flew's paper ranges far beyond the particular issue of punishment, and much of what is most interesting in it has this wider relevance. I, too, therefore shall use punishment as a peg on which to hang some discussion of the wider problems of ethics.