Against Interpretation

patronize the faculty of taste is to patronize oneself. For taste governs every free—as opposed to rote—human response. Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion—and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly. It’s rare that the same person has good visual taste and good taste in people and taste in ideas.)

Art is useful, after all, Aristotle counters, medicinally useful in that it arouses and purges dangerous emotions.

Lie or no, art has a certain value according to Aristotle because it is a form of therapy.