David Hume

HUME ON TASTE AND THE ARTS I aim in this paper to explain the exact way to find the standarts of taste of David Hume by the association adn relation between the art and the one looking on. Hume's essay on taste he equates beauty with the sentiment of pleasure caused by the object that is the "exists merely in the mind," so no response to a work of art is superior to any other. It would seem that there is no such thing as a wrong response to a work of art. Common sense, which Hume will defend, holds that evaluative responses are neither true nor false, yet some are better than others; we cannot help but dismiss the taste of anyone who praises a minor writer like Ogilby above a genius like Milton In the second stage of the argument (paragraphs 6 through 16), Hume is seeking a standart that the sense can be verified by advocating the common sense. He focuses on the facts that reaching the barriers of culture and time. “The same Homer who pleased at Athens and Rometwo thousand years ago… Authority or prejudice may give a temprory vogue to a bad poet or orator…”1 As we can see that taste provides us the rules of composition for good art. External senses like sight, where uniformity of response provides some measure of objectivity, tied to the "sound state" of the sensing organ as an artwork like seeing. Hume says that what is sensed that taste is peacemaking by reflection on what is immediately sensed. Moreover according to Hume, for the good, He wants a standard that will recommend superior beauty. 1

Standard of taste prg 6

In the essay's third stage (paragraphs 17 through 27), Hume outlines what is required to improve one's taste and to be a true judge of at least some kinds of art. Five factors must come together: "Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice." These conditions for achieving good taste imply that only a very few will ever be qualified judges of any specific work of art. Yet the agreement of these acute critics, no matter what the results are, "is the true standard" he seeks. In the fourth and concluding stage, Hume acknowledges that some sources of variation in taste cannot be eliminated. Genuine taste requires making allowances for variations in customs and manners, so that as a critic I forget "my peculiar circumstances." Yet even here there are limits, as when works contain harmful superstitions and prejudices. This last point is discussed at greater length in the fourth stage of the analysis. In the fourth and final stage of the analysis, Hume considers two circumstances that will create unavoidable prejudices in even the best critics. First, preferences are not simply a matter of training or exposure (Paragraph 30). There are natural differences in persons, so that make some prefer comedy while others prefer drama. According to Paragraph 29, there are also unavoidable preferences due to a person's age (generational differences) and culture (cultural preferences). The second complicating circumstance is the critic's moral outlook. Hume advocates the position of moderate moralism, according to which moral defects )such as overt bigotry) are flaws that detract from the work's aesthetic merit. Hume is not a moral relativist: proper moral evaluation is guided by our

sense of "the natural boundaries of vice and virtue." A critic who does not confine her moral judgment within this natural boundary "departs from the true standard." As examples of work blemished by improper moral attitudes, Hume mentions several French plays displaying religious bigotry. Earlier, in Paragraph #4, Hume criticizes the Koran because it "bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society."