Aesthetic Judgment and Taste
This area concerns judgments of taste—claims that something is beautiful or ugly—and the puzzle of how such judgments can be both subjective in basis and yet make normative, universal claims.
Definition
An aesthetic judgment is an evaluation that something has an aesthetic merit or quality, such as being beautiful; the central problem is to reconcile its apparent grounding in subjective feeling with its claim to inter-subjective or universal correctness.
Scope
This area covers the nature, basis, and normativity of aesthetic judgment: the antinomy of taste between subjectivity and the demand for agreement, Hume's empiricist standard of taste grounded in qualified critics, Kant's transcendental account of disinterested universal pleasure, and the contemporary debate over aesthetic realism and the autonomy of aesthetic judgment. It does not cover the metaphysics of aesthetic properties as such or specific theories of art, treated in neighboring areas.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- Are judgments of taste subjective, objective, or somewhere in between?
- Can there be a standard by which aesthetic judgments are correct or incorrect?
- Why do judgments of beauty demand the agreement of others?
- Must one perceive a thing oneself to judge it beautiful, or can one defer to testimony?
Key theories
- Hume's standard of taste
- Hume grounds the standard of taste in the joint verdict of qualified critics—those with delicacy, practice, freedom from prejudice, and good sense—whose convergent responses define what is genuinely beautiful.
- Kant's judgment of taste
- Kant analyzes the pure judgment of taste as a disinterested, conceptless pleasure that nonetheless claims universal validity, grounded in the free harmony of imagination and understanding.
History
Eighteenth-century aesthetics took the puzzle of taste as central: how a judgment based in feeling can lay claim to correctness. Hume answered empirically through the verdict of ideal critics, while Kant gave a transcendental account in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, deriving the universal claim of taste from the free play of the cognitive faculties. Twentieth-century work by Sibley and Mothersill renewed the study of taste and aesthetic judgment, and recent debate centers on aesthetic realism and the legitimacy of aesthetic testimony.
Debates
- The antinomy of taste
- Judgments of taste seem both subjective, since beauty is no concept, and objective, since we dispute and demand agreement about them; reconciling these is the defining problem Kant called the antinomy of taste.
- Aesthetic testimony and the acquaintance principle
- Whether one can warrantedly judge a work beautiful on others' say-so, or must encounter it oneself, divides those who accept aesthetic testimony from defenders of an acquaintance requirement.
Key figures
- David Hume
- Immanuel Kant
- Frank Sibley
- Mary Mothersill
Related topics
Seminal works
- hume1757
- kant1790
Frequently asked questions
- If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, why argue about it?
- Because judgments of taste, unlike reports of mere preference, claim that others ought to agree; this normative pull is what Hume and Kant tried to explain without making beauty a wholly objective property.
- What is the antinomy of taste?
- It is Kant's name for the apparent contradiction that judgments of taste cannot be settled by concepts or proofs, yet are not merely private, since we legitimately argue about and expect agreement on them.