Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory

by Barbara Herrnstein Smith

Charges of abandoned standards issue from government offices; laments for the loss of the best that has been thought and said resound through university corridors. While revisionists are perplexed by questions of value, critical theory--haunted by the heresy of relativism--remains captive to classical formulas. Barbara Herrnstein Smith's book confronts the conceptual problems and sociopolitical conflicts at the heart of these issues and raises their discussion to a new level of sophistication. Polemical without being rancorous, Contingencies of Value mounts a powerful critique of traditional conceptions of value, taste, judgment, and justification. Through incisive discussions of works by, among others, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Northrop Frye, Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, and Jürgen Habermas, Smith develops an illuminating alternative framework for the explanation of these topics. All value, she argues, is radically contingent. Neither an objective property of things nor merely a subjective response to them, it is the variable effect of numerous interacting economies that is, systems of apportionment and circulation of "goods." Aesthetic value, moral value, and the truth-value of judgments are no exceptions, though traditional critical theory, ethics, and philosophy of language have always tried to prove otherwise. Smith deals in an original way with a wide variety of contemporary issues--from the relation between popular and high culture to the conflicting conception of human motives and actions in economic theory and classical humanism. In an important final chapter, she addresses directly the crucial problem of relativism and explains why a denial of the objectivity of value does not--as commonly feared and charged--produce either a fatuous egalitarianism or moral and political paralysis.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 28, 1988

About the author

Barbara Herrnstein Smith is Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Duke University and Director of its Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory, and Distinguished Professor of English at Brown University.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides fantastic insight into the systems of value that consistently operate and, at the same time, consistently change. Without making the idea of evaluation useless, Herrnstein Smith instead calls attention to the various forms it takes, and (above all) stresses our need to understand the fact that every evaluation is contingent on the time, place, and context in which it happens. The fact that this was written over two decades ago, when the idea of evaluation had fallen out of favor, makes the importance of its contribution all the more remarkable. I have to confess that some of Herrnstein Smith's close readings of philosophy were somewhat lost on me, but this wasn't a deficiency of her clear and incredibly lucid prose-style, merely indicative of the fact that I'm not cut out to think about things on philosophic terms. Otherwise, I couldn't have found the book more incredible, both as a distillation of centuries of ideas and as an attempt to further elucidate where we all should go from here.

[MJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book offered an incredible look into how we, as a literary society, decide which books hold value and why. Much of the arguments suggest that part of the value of a work stems from the fact that it is taught. The author looks at how different people may value different works for different reasons. Smith studies the subjectivity of value and the various aspects of determining value from many differny angles.

Though the arguments can sometimes seem circular, I believe the points she made were interesting and logical. Furthermore, her writing style more entertaining than most writings on critical theory that I have read. The personal anecdotes she adds to help demonstrate her arguments are interesting, amusing, and relatable.

[Jessica Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting ideas on criticism. Extremely well written and enlightening chapters. Encourages one to rethink the way we understand criticism and the literary canons