... I would have more to say about Daniel Green's post Opinions, but never got around to it. Dave Lull has graciously reminded me of that, so here is what I wanted to say.
First, I pretty much agree that a critic or reviewer whose work is characterized largely by unsubstantiated opinions is unlikely to stay on my reading list. (Terry Teachout's own views, by the way, tend to be quite well informed.) But what caught my attention in Daniel's post was this question: "Are the best critics today those who pontificate, or those who direct readers back to the specific qualities of the works ostensibly under review?"
I think it is defintely the latter and the reason I think that is because, in the Jesuit college I went to, the course I had in metaphysics was taught by Father Edward Gannon, who used as the text book William Luipen's Existential Phenomenology. It was my introduction to that school of thought and had a lasting impact on me. Among other things I learned that if one accurately and precisely describes what one experiences one will make clear what one feels and thinks about that experience. This frees you from having to use stale evaluative terms and forces you to be concrete in your judgments. Regarding criticism, it ensures that your opinions are grounded in specifics and substantiated by the details of the work under consideration.
Update: Dave Lull sends along a quote from John Ciardi's How Does a Poem Mean? that fits in perfectly with what I was trying to say:
"A useful first distinction can be made by dividing all adjectives (and by extension, all modifiers) into those which present evidence and those which
present judgments."
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