How do we know what makes art valuable? Contemporary platforms—IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Letterboxd—reduce aesthetic experience to a number or binary threshold. In doing so, they conflate technical mastery with personal enjoyment, leaving no language for their essential tension. A film may be impeccably crafted yet leave one cold; another may be deeply flawed yet personally transformative. Current systems cannot articulate this distinction. This paper proposes a synthetic framework for understanding aesthetic judgment as a multidimensional phenomenon. The model isolates five components of craft as quantifiable criteria for technical execution. It then introduces a distinct sixth category, which formally accounts for the viewer’s subjective encounter. This separation does not diminish the ineffable; it names it, granting personal experience equal footing with technical critique as a mode of philosophical knowledge. The framework further accommodates context—viewing conditions, director’s cuts, repeated engagement—acknowledging art as a dynamic relationship rather than a fixed object. It also creates space for exceptional works where a single component so transcends expectation that it redefines our understanding of that aspect entirely. Current platforms present numbers without the story of their formation. By making categories visible, context legible, and personal resonance explicit, this framework offers a transparent language for aesthetic judgment. We may never fully agree on what makes art great, but we can understand why we disagree, providing a shared vocabulary for asking not merely „What is this work worth?“ but „How, and why. does it move  us?“

Keywords: aesthetic judgment, synthetic framework, personal resonance, philosophy of art

References:

Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. Minton, Balch & Company.

Lopes, D. M. (2018). Being for beauty: Aesthetic agency and value. Oxford University Press.

Zangwill, N. (2021). Aesthetic creation. Oxford University Press.