Hume and the Standard of Taste
Hume focuses on the case of comparisons of literary works. Suppose someone says that author A is
better than author B. These judgments, if based on anything, are based on the speaker's personal
preference for A over B. In other words, these comparison's are a reflection of literary taste. (Hume
presumes that what he says about literature will extent to the other "finer arts.")
The problem is this: taste involves a response to something, and the preference is based on the
pleasure that we receive in that response. If A gives more pleasure than B, then there does not seem
any basis for denying that A is better than B, provided we understand that "A is better than B" is
reporting the speaker's findings (and not making any claim that we will get more pleasure from A
than from B).
On the other hand, we want to say that some people are just wrong when they say these things,
even when we know that they really do like A more than B. In other words, we cannot seriously
believe that everyone's taste is equally legitimate.
So what's the standard of taste? That is, what rule or principle shows whose taste is not worth
knowing about?
It is important to notice that our pleasures are rule-governed, that is, they are not entirely random.
(Most people enjoy ice cream on a hot day. If you tell me that you cannot eat it because you have a
bad tooth and it will cause you pain, I understand. But if you tell me that it tastes bad to you, I am
likely to think that there is something very unusual about you -- the normal rules don't apply.)
Where rules of normal response are present and apply in a predictable way, then the resulting
pleasure can be used as a basis for recommending something.
Next, note that some rules say that only a small number of people will notice and enjoy certain
things. Literature (and the other arts) stimulate our mental ("internal") taste, and a lot of literature
falls into the category of stuff that will only interest and please a few people.
Most people aren't "delicate" enough; their literary tastes are just too crude to serve as a basis for
comparing most authors. Among other things, their tastes are insufficiently educated. Our tastes for
art are cultivated by education and practice. (People with no previous exposure to opera are likely to
be bored.)
Education aside, not everyone is even capable of noticing some of the important things that are
important to the experience. It's like wine tasting -- some people are simply more capable of tasting
what is there. If you cannot "taste" an artwork because you cannot perceive what's in it, you are in
no position to make recommendations to others about it.
The story of Sancho's kinsmen is introduced. The point seems to be that, even if the majority think a
work of art is good, it might really be terrible, because the majority are often in no position to judge
most artworks. Most people will lack the required delicacy of taste.
Artistic style is a major obstacle -- our tastes have to be educated to deal with changing styles.
Through lack of delicacy, lack of practice, prejudice (you won't give it a chance because it's not
familiar or related to your social situation at the present time), or other distortion of taste, most
people are not good judges.
However, no matter how delicate you naturally are, or how much you practice, etc., there will be
obstacles to becoming a true "critic" of art:
, (1) Inborn personal disposition -- we want art that reflects our general sensibility (some people just
literally can't respond to irony).
(2) Differences in morality -- we cannot approve of art that too strongly assaults our basic sense of
right and wrong (although we can adjust for "innocent" differences that we see as allowable cultural
differences).
Freeland But Is It Art?
Hume says he doesn’t use the term ‘aesthetics’ but rather ‘tastes’ “a refined ability to perceive
quality in an artwork.” (Page 9) Taste can tell a lot about the person who is viewing the artwork.
Someone might prefer one piece of artwork that differs from the one I may prefer. But where do we
get our ‘tastes’?
“Hume emphasized education and experience: men of taste acquire certain abilities that lead to
agreement about which authors and artworks are the best. Such people, he felt, eventually will reach
consensus, and in doing so, they set a ‘standard of taste’ which is universal. These experts can
differentiate works of high quality from less good works.” (Page 9) Everyone is entitled to their own
opinion and can think whatever they want, but their opinions and ‘taste’ might not be ‘right.
Freeland labes a cockroach as something that’s ugly, while a rose is considered beautiful. If the
object has a good purpose and presents itself in a appealing matter, then it can fall under the
category of “beautiful.” Sure, someone can say the cockroach is beautiful, and I would agree, but I
don’t think it is beautiful in a ‘tasteful’ way. More of a purposeful way. The cockroach still doesn’t
have the appealing presentation or look that you would typically think of when the word comes to
mind. Our minds do not connect a cockroach to beautiful. But I can be wrong about the cockroach
and the rose too. We are the beings that made up the definition of beauty. Somewhere along our
entire existence, the definition could have been completely flipped on its head and rethinked. The
roach would be beautiful, and the rose would be hideous.
Why and how would this get turned upside down? The answer is our human experience and
education could have been completely different. Somewhere along the line of humanity, an event
could have happened that changed our whole experience of beauty. We could have had a bad
experience with beauty and then from that moment on thought of a rose as horrible, or foul. And our
experience with a rodent or roach could have been indifferent or ‘beautiful.”
Kant Critique of Judgment
Judgment is the ability to think the particular as contained under the universal. The subjective
character of an object consists in its aesthetic value. That portion of the Object which is based on the
understanding of an object constitutes the objective aspect of an object of sense. In understanding
an object both subjective and objective references are important. An object is called as purposive
only if it is directly connected to the feeling of pleasure. Our ability to judge by such pleasure is called
taste. The universal validity of an object is very much important in the aesthetic judgment. We use
imagination not just understanding in order to decide something is beautiful. Interest is what we call
the liking which is associated with the presentation of an objects existence. In aesthetic judgment
what matters is what I do with the presentation within myself. Even while acknowledging the beauty
of an object we must be indifferent to its existence in order to have a correct aesthetic judgment.
There is also another aspect called agreeable in the aesthetic judgment. It is that which the senses
like in sensation. It is a person’s inclination towards an object of beauty. In order to consider some
object as good one should know what the purpose of an object is but it is not necessary to find
beauty in a thing. The concepts of agreeable and good are both different in the sense that agreeable
concerns just the senses but the good refers to the usefulness or the intrinsic goodness of an object.
But both of them are connected by the aspect of interest in their objects. We call agreeable that
gratifies our senses, beautiful what we just like and good that we endorse. Taste is the ability to
