ABSTRACT
Rilke said, “A work of art is a work of infinite loneliness and with nothing to be reached so little as with criticism.” Argumentation, on the other hand, is work of the mind—a dialectical undertaking that looks forward to the moment of critical inspection. The purpose of this chapter is to present the outlines of a theory of criticism. I begin by distinguishing between evaluation and criticism, after which I present and discuss several principles of criticism.
