On the existence of objectively excellent texts

Spinning this off from another thread, to avoid taking it off-topic:

Sure. There are a couple ways of looking at it:

One, you can measure a text's excellence by how many people, living and dead, it influenced. This is what GK Chesterton called the most democratic way of thinking, because you include the votes of the dead, not submitting to the oligarchy of those who happen to be walking around.

If you do this, you'll find yourself with a set of books that can be divided into four "great conversations".

There are Western great books that have deep intertextuality with each other but know the Middle East only somewhat and the other great books not at all.

There are Middle Eastern great books, which have some overlap (The Bible and Greek philosophy) but omit whole genres of Greek Classics (like epic, tragedy and comedy), know Latin not, and go off in their own direction with the Qur'an, Islamic philosophy, and Persian literature.

There are the Indian great books, which can be divided into the enduring Sanskrit works, Buddhism's Pali Canon, and much younger vernacular texts. The Sanskrit texts include the Vedas or most authoritative Hindu scripture (Sruti) with branches ranging in antiquity from the Rig veda to various Upanishads; a less canonical body called smriti with several branches including the two epics (The Mahabharata and The Ramayana), Puranas, Dharma sastras ("science of virtue"), Artha sastra ("science of economics") and Kama sutra ("science of pleasure"); the most influential Mahayana Buddhist texts; and texts in several secular genres including the Panchatantra and other fables, Kalidasa and other dramatists, and the classical mathematicians (who wrote proofs in verse!). I won't even go into vernacular poetry and prose, since there are just too many languages, and the relative influence of, say, classical Tamil poets vs. the 19th century Bengali renaissance could be argued endlessly by people much more knowledgeable.

And of course there are the Chinese classics. These can be divided into Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist, and secular. Confucians have thirteen classics, I don't know much about Taoism beyond the 'Tao Te Ching or Chinese Buddhism, and the most influential secular classics include the Art of War, the Twenty-Four Histories, and the four (or five) great novels, to name a few branches.

Alternately, there's the Hutchins/Adler approach, where you start with around a hundred irreducible "great ideas" that have occupied literari as long as we'd had literacy, then build a canon (in their case, an exclusively Western canon) out of the authors who have had the most enduring things to say about the largest number of these.

But that does not mean they are objectivly excellent in all ways. Are they all edifying? Are they all philosophically coherent? Are they all fun to read?

Some of these can be especially good in certain aspects, but to me "objective excellence" would require someone outside of humanity to state that they are the best. Otherwise they can't be "excellent" simply "good for a certain thing".

@https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13023089300A92324600&page=8#181:

Objectively excellent and Important are two different qualities.

edited 9th Apr '11 3:01:28 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

Some books are better than others in certain areas, but since it's a book and not equatable to something like math, nothing written can be objectively excellent. For the record, I hated Jane Eyre as both a source of entertainment and as a source of analysis. It largely struck me as overrated for simply being feminist at a time where women were oppressed, there were probably other books at the time that did the same thing "better".

EDIT: Tomu once again sums up what I meant to say in a clearer and more concise manner. Here's one internet for you.

edited 9th Apr '11 3:05:42 PM by Usht

Wait, me? Being CONCISE? That's bizarre. I always thought I was prone to overly elaborate language with redundant adjectives and adverbs.

From the sadly derailed thread:

I didn't say that. But if someone as intelligent and in love with the written word as I am can't get anything out of those books, then what good are they, really?

Moby-Dick is one book. I'm guessing there are other "classics" that you do like. But every one I've ever tried has bored me. It's at the point now where when someone tells me a book is a "classic," I take that as a mark against it. I guess you can say that means there's something wrong with me. I wouldn't doubt it. But the fact remains that "classic" status is self-perpetuating, and thus largely meaningless in itself.

Don't tell me to read a book because it's a "classic." Tell me what I stand to gain from reading it. And no, "becoming well-read" doesn't count. I'm already well-read.

I love the classics to death and specifically hunt them down. Stamping the label classic on something is a very good way to get me to read it because by and large I like how such things are written. Now...objectively excellent? Well...I wouldn't go that far.

I'm a big Dungeons and Dragons fan. But I dislike Lord of the Rings. You get these people who are like "Dude, Lord of the Rings was so influential for the shape of D&D how can you not like it" and I'm like "Yeah, it's how we got here, but it's where we were not where we are."

And then I hit my gong.

From the other thread:

We can't help but steer this conversation to your tastes, can we? Well, what has this voracious reader liked, and benefited from reading and analyzing?

edited 9th Apr '11 3:14:32 PM by kashchei

Agreed with you there tomu, tolkein could NOT write characters.

And one thing I find dunny is when Dickens is included, because for the most part that was pulpy rubbish that just happened to survive well by being popular.

edited 9th Apr '11 3:17:12 PM by JosefBugman

Just a thought before we get too deep in (though we probably already are), is this entire topic to figure out what is True Art for literature?

EDIT: Someone... needs to revise that page.

edited 9th Apr '11 3:17:16 PM by Usht

Lot R is the best damn set of books I have ever read EVER. Most of Tolkien's work falls into that, but Lot R especially. Shit had me in tears multiple times...SAM AND FRODO. FROOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDOOOOOO!!! And those two orcs that talked about the good ol' times and how they wanted to live a simple life filled with raping and pillaging on their own terms without some all powerful asshole treating them like shit all the time...

I can certainly see how people would dislike them though. Tolkien doesn't know how to pace. At all. He's descriptive to a frightening degree and goes off on cultural tangents that involve poetry or architecture. Then we have the issue of the characters who are considered by many to be terribly written. I disagree of course, but I am just me. The writing is just very old. Incredibly old.

edited 9th Apr '11 3:17:59 PM by Aondeug

It seems to be likely to head that way I am afraid, look out for the eventual arguement about "truth" thats coming at the midway point of page 2.

Its why I liked the radio play version, still long (and not nearly enough details about the battles) but with all the different accents it was just much more fun to listen to.

edited 9th Apr '11 3:18:50 PM by JosefBugman

There's certainly such a thing as an objectively important book, but I don't think there's such a thing as an objectively good (that is, well-written) book.

For one, The Bible is probably the most important book ever written, but as far as writing style it's (I would say) pretty horrible. It can't decide whether it wants to be a storybook or a law book or a history or a genealogy. It repeats itself a lot. It's badly paced

Or in another example, I've read both The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings and I woudl say The Hobbit is a better book by far. Not many people agree with me.

EDIT from the other thread:

Actually, this is another example: at least in the Communist Manifesto, I found Marx's writing to be very clear. Mostly wrong, of course, but clear.

edited 9th Apr '11 3:20:34 PM by BlackHumor

@Aon: See, that's the big reason why I liked Tolkien. Descriptive works with a solid plotline are fascinating.

@kashchei

Look, I'm not saying my tastes are objectively correct. I'm saying no one's tastes are objectively correct, and that the existence of a canon of "classic" literature is hampering the development of modern literature. Just look at Rottweiler's primary criterion for a work being considered objectively excellent—it must have influenced a large number of people both living and dead. Well of course newer works don't qualify! And if we could look 200 years into the future with our chronoscope, we'd see that they still wouldn't qualify, having been scuttled by the snotty, "classics"-worshiping academics before they ever got the chance.

edited 9th Apr '11 3:23:40 PM by Karalora

This entire thread is a red herring.

Well, it depends on the genre. A successful epic, for instance, gives us a glimpse of a higher realm where all points to virtue, even the catastrophes (think of all the bloodshed that would have been averted if Paris had judged with reason and not his, ahem, little head). A successful tragedy gives us catharsis by empathy with the misdeeds of a hero (see Aristotle's Poetics). A comedy of ideas like The Clouds of Aristophanes makes us laugh and ponder huge issues like egotism, democracy and the purpose of education.

Rott, it's hard to tell only looking at this picture, but you do realize that you just did a big bit of circular logic, right? Whenever anyone questions your values, you cite "The classics" and whenever someone questions "what makes it a classic" you cit "The virtues!"

You can't define Objectively Good Work by something that's already contested or else you have a pretty meaningless definition (at least for the people you're in disagreement with).

Nitpick: Not that everything he wrote was necessarily wrong, but, e.g., Aristotle's Physics has been proven almost completely wrong.

Or in a nutshell, just because Aristotle said it doesn't make it true.

Wasn't he the one that said meat gave birth to maggots?

"I didn't say that. But if someone as intelligent and in love with the written word as I am can't get anything out of those books, then what good are they, really?"

Isn't it a bit presumptuous to conclude that these texts are worthless because you haven't managed to get anything out of them, despite knowing that multitudes of people before and after you haven't had the same problem?

Which radio play, Josef? There's like five. I assume you mean The Mind's Eye's adaptation? I have that one. I love it dearly.

Girlfriend: That is part of why I love Tolkien's work. Middle Earth is this lovingly put together thing. It's not complete by any stretch of the imagination, but there's just so much shit out there... That and the man could write an epic novel, a more child friendly adventure novel, histories, epic poems, and texts that read like The Bible stylistically. He had a few styles he was capable of and all are ones that I absolutely adore.

And...of course...Tolkien sounds amazing when read aloud. Sounding nice is very important for writing in my opinion. Direly important. Sentences should have a nice flow and sound to them and ohh...some people just have he most amazing enunciation and pronunciation...Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh...

I think what Kara meant is "Your definition has no demonstrated use-here is a counter-example" not "My preferences should be what the definition conforms to."

All that proves is that people sometimes win when shooting craps.