Who cares if you like it? Philosophy and the aesthetics of beer.

“De gustibus non est disputandum.”

In matters of taste there can be no dispute.

The above appears to be the predominant attitude when it comes to discussions concerning aesthetics. Whether one is arguing about the quality of music, beer, television, or a painting, most conversations tend to flat-line rather quickly, resolving themselves with cheap “let’s agree to disagree” truces. This attitude is misguided; furthermore, it is nothing more than a form of relativism invoked in the aesthetic realm. Unfortunately, relativism doesn’t have a good track record of being taken as a serious contender for truth in any other area it has been proposed. Take the realm of ethics, for example: relativism is an empty moral philosophy (virtually no practicing ethicist accepts it; the problems with the view are well known and devastating, and it’s just all around the first view most ethics textbooks introduce and dismiss). The problem is, even if you have a hunch that some aesthetic object is better than another, it is notoriously hard to provide a rational justification as to why.

First, it’s very difficult to even know where to start such a dispute. I think many agree that there is something more to aesthetic objects than mere preference. A claim like “this beer is good because I think it’s good” sounds cheap, it’s too easy. Is the fact that I like something the only thing that decides whether it’s actually good? On the flip side, when we start thinking about alternatives to relativism in relation to art and aesthetics we find equally suspicious claims. If someone said “this beer is objectively good, and you should see that”, how would you react? Most people, of course, would respond with dismissal. How arrogant! What a coincidence that the beers you enjoy just so happen to be the “objectively good” ones. What could even be meant by “objectively good beer” anyway? That all beer drinkers should enjoy it? That sounds fishy, and just on the face of it wrong.

So, relativism and absolutism about beer both seem suspect. Is it possible to uncover a more balanced view meriting agreement between these two extremes?

Where do we start? How can we say some beers are better than others? Here’s one strategy: start with the obvious.

Beer shouldn’t kill you. I know, that’s so blindingly obvious that it’s hardly worth mentioning. What could we possibly learn from that? Well, here’s why: it’s useful to start with something no one will disagree with to mark our boundaries and better get the lay of the land. If we start with the obvious, we can slowly work inwards, moving from trivial truths to substantive ones.

Here’s the first move: a beverage that kills its drinker is just not a good beverage; almost by definition. Beer, like almost all human artifacts, has a function (or several). One of the functions of beer is to produce pleasure when consumed. We could then say that a good beer is any beer that can reliably produce this effect, and/or any beer that can produce this effect in higher quantities or intensity than others. Any beverage that fails to do this in some way is just not a good instance of its kind. Any substance that kills its drinker for sure can’t be a good beer. In fact, this is how a poison is defined. Whether or not something is a poison is strictly determined by its function.

Suppose you wanted someone dead. You go to your local neighborhood shady character and ask if he has any poison you might be able to buy. He hands you a vial, instructs you to empty its contents into your target’s drink, and they should be dead within the hour. Fueled by your anger, you do as instructed. And yet, lo and behold, your target merely complains of a stomach ache and heads off to bed early. You anxiously await news of his death, only to find out he wakes up feeling perfectly healthy.

You rightly would conclude that whatever you were given was either not poison at all, or at the very least, just not a very good one. Would anyone in this situation object to your characterization that “this is not very good poison” as merely a matter of opinion or taste? Of course not. Because, once again, a poison is defined by its function, and any substance or object that fails to work as intended is simply a bad example of it.

So, if you’re on board with my strategy so far, we can slowly start to see how this argument will take shape. If we agree that there are certain properties no beer should have, such as the property of “being poisonous”, we can start to rule out other properties that will lead to a beer being poisonous.

For one, beer shouldn’t be too acidic. If the acidity in a beer nears battery acid levels then it’ll most certainly kill you. So now we can say the following is true:

Beer shouldn’t be too acidic.

Yes. This is a value judgment. But it’s a true value judgment. It’s a value judgment that follows from premises we’ve all agreed on. Likewise, a beer’s alkalinity level cannot be near those of ammonia. If the pH level of your beer is the same or even close to that of Drain-o’s, you will die. We can therefore accept that this following value judgment is also true:

Beer shouldn’t be too basic.

Identifying these two extremes allows us to find a position somewhere in the middle. We move from obvious premises everyone can agree on and make progress by attempting to draw out the proper inferences and implications of those premises. We start with a claim like “beer shouldn’t kill its drinkers.” If we can all agree with that, then we should also be able to agree with any value judgment that flows from that fact, such as “therefore, beer shouldn’t be too acidic”.

Beer is made by human beings for human beings and serves a purpose: to be enjoyed by a community of drinkers, to be refreshing or warming (think pilsners and porters respectively), to be a social lubricant that eases social anxiety and creates a sense of comradery. Beers that do not fulfill any of these functions simply cannot be considered good instances of their kind because they do not function as intended.

Here is an additional (if slightly tangential) example to highlight this point: a lawnmower’s purpose is to cut grass. Any lawnmower that fails to do that job is simply a bad instance of that artifact. Hardly any of us think what makes a good lawnmower is a mere matter of opinion — why? Because part of what constitutes how good an artifact is is its ability to carry out its intended purpose. The intended function of an artifact constrains and places limits on what makes a good and bad candidate of its kind.

Readers may be asking why I am writing this article. I am attempting to establish some minimal groundwork. Groundwork that’s needed to move from what qualities beer shouldn’t have to qualities that it ought to. To make this move, we have to be confident that relativism about beer, wine, entertainment, and art in general is false. And if the general outline of this piece has been persuasive, then we should all be able to agree that we can safely reject the claim that in matters of taste there can be no dispute.

We can have reasonable disputes in aesthetics. We might not yet be able to give a list of criteria that will help us establish what a good beer is, but we’ve effectively crossed out what it cannot be (which consequently refutes relativism), and from here we can work our way inland, chipping away at the edges until we can have some confidence about what criteria a beer has to meet in order for us to be justified in calling it good.

There do seem to be some indispensable “fixed points”, and once we’ve homed in on them we can then start looking for the kinds of properties and qualities that good beers should exemplify.

By the end of this blog series, I hope to have shown that there are good and solid reasons one can give as to why a Czech Pilsner Urquell is preferable to a PBR.

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