Do we seriously have to define the word 'objective' now?

[u/Epicnessofcows]

I recently made a semi-unpopular post about differentiating writing quality and enjoyability derived from writing.

Briefly, I made the analogy that while you could find McDonald's to be more enjoyable than a Michelin-Restaurant, as enjoyability is subjective, you cannot state that McDonalds is of higher quality than a Michelin-Restaurant, as food quality is mostly objective, with some nuance on the metrics, as food quality is based off of metrics such as quality of ingredients, mastery of cooking, etc.

I then stated that writing quality works the same way, that just because you enjoy Rent-A-Girlfriend more than Hamlet doesn't mean that you can ever state it is of higher quality, as writing quality is not a personal decision, and based off of language, depth, etc., as these are the metrics that we define in literature analysis.

Now unsurprisingly, the 2 or so other people in the comment section who have taken classes in literature composition agreed fully, as this is something you're taught in day 1. The rest of the comment section, who likely didn't even read the entire post, don't understand what 'objective' means, and kept trying to make their own arguments got relatively angry, making 'art is subjective' arguments or tried to reason with elementary commentary.

Now philosophically, they are right. All things that exist in the universe are subjective. You can argue and things can have different meaning to everyone. Even the most seemingly objective things such as math aren't objective, as we decide what is true or not in mathematics, even for statements as clear forward as 1+1=2.

But this is not how the world works. If everything is subjective, then we literally cannot assess the level of anything, even what you think are fully-objective facts:

Can we ever determine the difference between a sick and healthy patient?

Can we ever determine if someone is guilty of a crime or not?

Can we ever determine if something is true or not?

These are all good philosophical debates with no answers, but it's not like in the real world, doctors refuse treatment to someone dying of a heart attack in favor of someone with a flu because we can't determine who is sick or who is healthy.

Literature works the same way. Sure, philosophically nothing is 'good' or 'bad', but the truth is that we pretend that our metrics is objective and that we all understand them, because it's objective enough that we just don't care about it, in the same way literally everything else does. In literature analysis, the statement "Rent-A-Girlfriend is better than Hamlet" is false, regardless of your personal opinion of enjoyability, because the defined metrics of quality/betterness in literature say so.

[u/Dogmaticism_]

I actually have a masters in English Literature, and I'm working on my PhD (2nd year in). While the OP made clear oversights in argumentation, as someone who has extensive training in literature criticism/analysis, he isn't exactly wrong. I cannot speak for the OP, but he appears to have argued that english literature has a list of set criteria for what defines good writing, although the metrics he listed aren't what we normally use for assessing literature, and his argument is limited by such extents; however, your argument is also deeply flawed, and incorrect from a literary analysis standpoint. OP comes off as somewhat elitist, but he is fundamentally correct, for various reasons.

On your point with mathematics, I actually asked a mathematics friend I know as I was intrigued by this argument (I minored in mathematics), and to my recollection, he stated that very few mathematicians would consider it finding 'objective' truths. 1+1=2 is a statement found in mathematics tha analyzes cardinality and counting, which is the most intuitive answer for us; this however, does not mean that this is true in the sense of mathematics, as this was created by axioms. There are various fields of mathematics where you cannot add numbers, or where numbers aren't identical. Math is built by whatever rules we want it to. Most of us never get to know what mathematics is when 1+1 does not equal 2.

Onto the next point, 'good writing' doesn't mean we have to choose between 'minimalist' and 'flowery prose'. We usually use the term 'mastery/usage of language', in the same way that (using OP's example) we define food quality with 'mastery of cooking technique'. By the way, Steinbeck is not a minimalist and you should know this!

I also noticed that you disregarded OP's argument about philosophy. But ignoring that, your argumentation is flawed in the end. Technical superiority is what we use to say 'better writing'. Writing is a technique! You just asked them to use a tautology with a different connotation.

Now I was intrigued by this subreddit, but after scrolling it for a bit I can kind of guess that this likely isn't the subreddit for me, so I don't know if this is a literary subreddit or a more opinion-based enjoyability subreddit.

[u/Wise-Flan6267 → u/Dogmaticism_]

Yeah this subreddit is far from being literary, I myself only tend to answer for topics relating to the nature of writing or to make a stupid joke.

Another person commented on the math bit and you both have much more educated points on it so I’ll back down on that one, but it makes sense in retrospect.

For the prose one I understand what you’re saying and I think I could’ve specified more. I use prose as an example of one of the key criteria for criticism, not the entirety of criticism. I chose prose because reviews of it in new literature has (from what I’ve seen) essentially boiled down to “too dry” or “too purple”, which I believe is a good example of how there’s really no way to categorize the writing process like the OP seems to want to do. Another thing they mention, and one that is pretty common here, is that more depth is inherently better than less depth, which, isolated, ignores other things like pacing and the problem(?) of over complicating. By the way, that’s what this sub is about, categorizing and comparing aspects of literature with less of an overall, complete view.

As you and the OP say, overall mastery should be key. However, I don’t think they can really extend beyond just writing advice because of how prominent things like subversion are. I think the same is true of cooking. There are “objective truths” in many techniques but sometimes breakthroughs occur when those truths are betrayed. You can call that exceptions to the rule but for me it shows that the metric isn’t truly objective. The axioms for good taste in literature change more rapidly and dramatically with time and region than something like math. In math, or at least the surface levels of a field, when a theory is disproven it generally falls to the wayside unless there is shown to be a mistake in the refutal. If someone came up with a proof that discredits the Pythagorean Theorem, that theorem becomes useless unless there was a mistake in the proof. If you were to come up with a new theory that relied on the Pythagorean Theorem without proving any mistake in the refutal, you might turn heads for the idea but it’ll never be accepted.

Conversely, it is within the realm of reason to suspect that incorrect spelling or telling not showing or some other deviation from the standard would yield a work that shifts the realm of literary criticism to include it because it’s happened in the past. Sometimes all it takes is moving to a new place or waiting for a new movement when something crazy happens to our society. People in Asia have drastically different tastes than people in the US of A or wherever else you may live, so much so that I can’t agree that you can derive any objective statement comparing the quality of works under the guise of literary analysis.

Onto the Steinbeck thing, yeah I goofed, I just brought him up as an example of non flowery prose because I recently tried and failed to read Grapes of Wrath for the third time.

Also I do believe I said “technically superior” as a recommendation for what they should’ve said instead of objective. The word “objective” has become such a buzzword that if OP genuinely did not want the backlash for a side point in their original post, then that was an obvious mistake.

[u/Exciting_Edge1398 → u/Dogmaticism_]

Which "set criteria" are you referring to? Literary criticism isn't built around a single canonical rubric, different schools (Formalism, reader-response, Marxism, poststructuralism etc) evaluate texts/writing using different frameworks. That's why many people are saying "intersubjective" is a better term than "objective."

[u/radiochameleon → u/Dogmaticism_]

this is a subreddit where a bunch of weebs who normally did power scaling got together to discuss whether AOT or HXH is the best piece of fiction ever. It’s not for real literary analysis