Directions: In the following article, some sentences
have been removed. For Questions 41--45, choose the most suitable paragraph from
the list A--F to fit into each of the numbered blank. There is one extra choice
that does not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.
Theories of the value of art are of two kinds, which we may
call extrinsic and intrinsic. The first regards art and the appreciation of art
as means to some recognized moral good, while the second regards them as
valuable not instrumentally but as objects unto themselves. It is characteristic
of extrinsic theories to locate the value of art in its effects on the person
who appreciates it. (41) _____________________ The extrinsic
approach, adopted in modem times by Leo Tolstoy in What Is Art in 1896, has
seldom seemed wholly satisfactory. Philosophers have constantly sought for a
value in aesthetic experience that is unique to it and that, therefore, could
not be obtained from any other source. The extreme version of this intrinsic
approach is that associated with Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and the French
Symbolists, and summarized in the slogan "art for art’s sake."(42)
_____________________ Between those two extreme views there
lies, once again, a host of intermediate positions. We believe, for example,
that works of art must be appreciated for their own sake, but that, in the act
of appreciation, we gain from them something that is of independent value. (43)
_____________________ The analogy with laughter--which, in some
views, is itself a species of aesthetic interest--introduces a concept without
which there can be no serious discussion of the value of art: the concept of
taste. (44) _____________________ Similarly, we regard some
works of art as worthy of our attention and others as not. In articulating this
judgment, we use all of the diverse and confusing vocabulary of moral appraisal;
works of art, like people, are condemned for their sentimentality, coarseness,
vulgarity, cruelty, or self-indulgence, and equally praised for their warmth,
compassion, nobility, sensitivity, and truthfulness. Clearly, if aesthetic
interest has a positive value, when motivated by good taste; it is only interest
in appropriate objects that can be said to be good for us. (45)
_____________________. [A] Thus a joke is laughed at for its own
sake, even though there is an independent value in laughter, which lightens our
lives by taking us momentarily outside ourselves. Why should not something
similar be said of works of art, many of which aspire to be amusing in just the
way that good jokes are [B] All discussion of the value of art
tends, therefore, to turn from the outset in the direction of criticism. Can
there be genuine critical evaluation of art, a genuine distinction between that
which deserves our attention and that which does not [C] Art is
held to be a form of education, perhaps an education of the emotions. In this
case, it becomes an open question whether there might not be some more effective
means of the same result. Alternatively, one may attribute a negative value to
art, as Plato did in his Republic, arguing that art has a corrupting or
diseducative effect on those exposed to it. [D] Artistic
appreciation, a purely personal matter, calls for appropriate means of
expression. Yet, it is before anything a process of “cultivation", during which
a certain part of one’s "inner self" is "dug out" and some knowledge of the
outside world becomes its match. [E] If I am amused it is for a
reason, and this reason lies in the object of my amusement. We thus begin to
think in terms of a distinction between good and bad reasons for laughter.
Amusement at the wrong things may seem to us to show corruption of mind,
cruelty, or bad taste; and when it does so, we speak of the object as not truly
amusing, and feel that we have reason on our side. [F] Such
thinkers and writers believe that art is not only an end in itself but also a
sufficient justification of itself. They also hold that in order to understand
art as it should be understood, it is necessary to put aside all interests other
than an interest in the work itself.