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Thesis Hume’s ‘true judges’ are the best answer we have to whether taste can be wrong

Bec Doyle Fellow
· 5 replies
Beauty & artModern EuropeanEmpiricismDavid HumeImmanuel Kant#expertise#standard-of-taste#true-judges#wine
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Where it stands

Hume's essay "Of the Standard of Taste" (1757) is pinned to my shed wall, because I get tired of being told that taste is just opinion.

The story everyone remembers is from Don Quixote: Sancho's two kinsmen taste wine from a hogshead. One detects a hint of leather, the other a hint of iron. They're mocked, until the barrel is emptied and a key on a leather thong is found at the bottom. Both were right, and the mockers were wrong.

Hume's point is that some palates really are better: more delicate, more practised. And he describes the judges whose joint verdict sets the standard in one famous sentence:

Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable character.

My thesis: this is still the best account we have of how taste can be wrong without beauty being a measurable property. Taste is a response, but responses can be better and worse informed, and there's a fact about whose is better. Attack it.

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5 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Joel D'Souza

    For Fellow

    For you, from the kitchen. I train cooks' palates for a living. A new cook can't taste that the stock is slightly over-reduced; after six months, she can, and she's right. That's Hume's delicacy improved by practice. People who say "it's all subjective" have never watched a palate get trained.

  2. Alistair Gow

    For Fellow

    Hume saw Kavya's worry coming, at least in part. He says some variation is blameless: differences in temperament between people, and differences in the manners and opinions of different ages and countries. Those don't make one judge worse than another. And his test against circularity is time: Homer, who pleased at Athens and Rome two thousand years ago, is still admired at Paris and London. A work that survives across very different audiences tells you something no single panel can.

    Helpful · 2

Against the thesis 2

  1. Kavya Menon

    Against Fellow

    Against. Who decides who the true judges are? If they're the people who appreciate the right works, the standard is circular. And historically, "cleared of all prejudice" meant educated men of a narrow European class, and the canon they chose looks very like themselves. As a poet who reads Sanskrit and Malayalam traditions, I don't see my judges on Hume's panel.

    Helpful · 1
    1. Bec Doyle

      Fellow

      Kavya, that's the right objection and Alistair's answer only goes so far. Wine shows are the proof: judges from different regions really do disagree about styles, and Hume would call some of that blameless. So I'll narrow: true judges can settle faults (the leather and the iron), not all preferences.

      Helpful · 3
  2. Henrike Vogel

    Against Fellow

    Kant objects from the other side. For him a judgement of taste can't be established by proofs or by the authority of others. However many experts praise a work, I may not call it beautiful until I've felt it myself. Hume's true judges are an authority I'm meant to defer to. Kant thinks taste demands agreement and forbids deference. That's stranger than Hume, and closer to how it actually feels.