If "art" were a term of honor, reserved solely for those few products that have the power to objectify our most fundamental values, we could witness a second renaissance, including a new appreciation of neglected artists, a new direction for aspiring artists, and a new esthetics to guide future critics and historians of the arts. To this end, the value of the term "art" must be restored, which requires not only a new definition, but also a proof that that new definition better captures the artistic function. This is the promise of "What Art Is." Sadly, however, Torres and Kamhi do not deliver.

Instead, T&K offer a pretentious (and at times inaccurate) account of Ayn Rand's esthetic theory with a critique that offers neither any good reasons to accept her theory nor any good reasons to reject it.

T&K devote the first 55 pages of their 539-page work to recount the theory that Rand presented in the first 64 pages of "The Romantic Manifesto" (a work whose style and tone lives up to that title-a manifesto). A typical passage from T&K goes like this: (quoting AR's statement on the artistic significance of a painting including a cold sore on the lip of a beautiful woman) "[that minor affliction] acquires a monstrous metaphysical significance by virtue of being included in a painting. It declares that a woman's beauty and her efforts to achieve glamor (the beautiful evening gown) are a futile illusion undercut by a seed of corruption which can mar and destroy them at any moment-that this is reality's mockery of man-that all of man's values and efforts are impotent against the power, not even of some great cataclysm, but of a miserable little physical infection." To which T&K obliquely add, "particular details do assume greater significance in a work of art than they would possess in reality, because the viewer is at least subliminally aware that their presence is intentional, and that the artist must therefore have considered them important" (T&K, 49).

Interspersed throughout such banal commentary is T&K's critique-or, more exactly, their quibbles (a critique is at least coherent), which consist chiefly of reading Rand either in the most concrete-bound or most exaggerated way possible and then criticizing her for being concrete-bound or exaggerated. An example of their context-switching gimmick can be seen in their repeated quibble that Rand misuses the term "entity." As she made clear in ITOE (264-276), Rand uses the term (as everybody does) in two senses: in a primary sense, to refer to physical, coherent objects (e.g., a ball), and in an extended sense, to refer to anything that exists (e.g., a thought). Whenever a term is used in two senses, there is the danger of equivocation. But T&K variously criticize Rand for using the term strictly in the primary sense (61), or in the extended sense (336n23), but not in both senses simultaneously (62)! How can Rand win? T&K use the same gimmick in their complaints about Rand's use of the term "Romanticism" (31-33), which is variously meant as an era in art history and as an approach to art. Thus, when Rand uses the term to describe as approach to art, they scold her for being anachronistic, and when she uses the term to describe as era, they reproach her for seeing an approach that doesn't exist. Their gimmick becomes the most absurd when they claim that Rand is a psychological determinist (41), an argument that not only relies on switching the senses in her use of the word "determine," but also in quoting Rand out of context (thereby managing a context-switching, context-dropping twofer).

If the criticisms of Rand's theory weren't bad enough, T&K's support for her theory was even worse. Note that Rand's theory rises and falls on her contention that art serves a cognitive need-i.e., to objectify fundamental value-judgments-and that the fulfillment of this need provides art with its emotional power. According to T&K, Rand's theory, unlike others', is "informed by a more accurate understanding of human cognition and emotion"(16). Presumably, then, we would learn how this is the case. Unfortunately, for the next 93 pages, T&K support this contention solely by offering corroborating claims by pop psychologist Nathaniel Branden (who was Rand's student for many years) and clinical psychologist Edith Packer (who is also a Rand follower), neither of whom cite any relevant empirical support aside from inference and anecdote. Moreover, T&K's (very short) chapter "Scientific Support for Rand's Theory" only makes matters worse by uncritically recounting the *conclusions* of well-known neuropsychologists and anthropologists (such as Oliver Sacks and Ellen Dissanayake) without presenting enough evidence to allow the reader to judge for himself. Thus, the critical support that Rand's theory requires is supplanted with scientific window-dressing (just as T&K window-dress with more than 200 pages of footnotes and appendices!).

Window-dressing, I suppose, is a harmless past-time to amuse the rubes in Poughkeepsie, but T&K are also nasty. Throughout their work, they feel compelled to take unsubstantiated swipes at Rand and many other important Rand scholars, such as Leonard Peikoff and Harry Binswanger. These smears (like much of T&K's hopelessly self-indulgent editorializing) are not only unjust but appear especially absurd alongside the incredible fawning over Chris Sciabarra's work (proclaiming Rand to be Hegelian).

According to Gotthelf's "On Ayn Rand," "[t]here is, unfortunately, not much serious interpretive value among the secondary material that has been published on Ayn Rand in books or academic journals to date." Despite the importance of their subject, T&K have done nothing to change this assessment-either of material on Rand or esthetics.

I did not expect to like this book. Rand's esthetics are the part of her philosophy I find most deplorable. And although Torres and Kamhi are not slavish admirers of Rand who follow her every word, I can't say I cared much for their dreary essentialism. Rand was part of the Aristotlean tradition in philosophy. Her philosophy is more telogically centered than the naturalism of the pre-Socratics or modern science. It also embraces a form of "methdological essentialism," as the philosopher Karl Popper dubbed it, which I find hard to take, especially in strong doses. Methodological essentialists stress the importance of "What is" questions and the definitions of words. Torres and Kamhi, like Rand herself, are uncompromising definition mongers and "what is" analyzers. But I don't think esthetic questions can be solved by answering such questions as "What is art?" or "What is literature?" or by claiming that the bad, non-representational art of modernism and post-modernism is not really art at all, but a kind of fraudulent non-art pretending to be art. Torres and Kamhi stress the importance of defining art, but I have little use for this mode of analysis. Emphasis on definitions simply leads to hopeless arguments about words. I would much rather know why some works of art are successful and some not than know how art should be defined. Art is far too complicated to be summed up in essence of some definition. What I want to know is how does this or that piece of art function aesthetically, and if it functions well or poorly, than why? Science and naturalism emphasize "why" and "how" questions. This is what I would have liked to see from Torres and Kamhi. But being from the Socratic/Aristotlean tradition in philosophy, they have a different methodological point of view on this matter, one I find hopelessly inferior to the methodological nominalism of the sciences.

Nevertheless, despite these criticisms, I urge all those who are interested in art to read the book, regardless of what they think of Rand. The book is written on a much higher level than most pro-Rand books that are published nowadays. Torres and Kamhi, unlike Rand's orthodox disciples, at least are sound scholars with an appreciation for empirical evidence and close logical analysis. They are fair to opposing viewpoints (unlike Rand herself, who treated opponents as if they were sub-human), and they provide an excellent overview of the excesses of modern and post-modern art. Merely as a phillipic against bad art (or, as the authors would insist, "non-art"), I would give this book a five star rating. But because of the methodological essentialism, I have to drop it down to four. The emphasis on definitions really can get annoying.

My response to this work is captured in the title of my review. Torres and Khamy have achieved a level of scholarship in What Art Is that no other writer on the aesthetic theory of Rand has accomplished in the twenty years since the author's death. I would rank it along with Sciabarra's monumental Ayn Rand the Russian Radical. It's enormous accomplishment will keep Rand studies alive and bring her fame. Like Oscar Wilde she set out on her literary career either to be a writer or to become notorious. Notorious is mostly what she has become. Despite anyone's personal views on Rand's aesthetic theory whether completely sound or not, these authors have demonstrated that what they are going to be known for is EXCELLENT scholarship. This book has enough reference and bibliographical material to baffle any academic, and their grasp of the areas that are relevent to Rand scholarship is enormous! I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what the work of a genuine scholar is. Jacques Barzun got it right, if these authors are students of his, they deserve the highest marks.