6. Aesthetic/Commercial Orientation
Although, as noted above, the aesthetic approach is seldom countenanced
any more in scholarly editing, it might be worth pointing out that many
editors and readers are attracted to their tasks initially for aesthetic
reasons, if aesthetics is defined to include pleasure and the
appreciation of skill in language, narrative, or forms—which are
not directly related to utility or exposition. Consequently, we believe
that aesthetics is relevant to the task of editing, but we acknowledge
that it is a difficult aspect upon which to reach consensus and is
especially vulnerable to the charge of the eccentricities of personal
taste. However, one can posit a difference between an approach to
editing that seeks to respect the known aesthetic principles of an
author or of a historical publisher, on one hand, and the very different
approach, on the other hand, that asks simply, How can we make this
old-fashioned work better so that it can have renewed commercial
life? The former has a historical dimension for which evidence (not the
editor's personal taste) can be adduced. And finally, we believe it is
worth pointing out that all the orientations, with their scholarly
attention to evidence and the inferences from the evidence that are
supported by argument, cannot, for all their efforts, be totally
objective or free from the sense that judging amongst variants involves
aesthetic principles. However, as previously noted, this subject is too
complicated to pursue in this essay.
