Hume's Key and Aesthetic Rationality

Abstract

HUME THE AESTHETIC THEORIST has always been overshadowed by Hume the epistemolo- gist, the metaphysician, and the moral theorist. Of late even Hume's political theory has come in for detailed attention. The same cannot be said for his aesthetic theory, though there have been a few incisive articles appearing on it in the last twenty years.' In the present essay I propose to look closely at some of the central tenets of Hume's aesthetic theory, especially as it appears in his superb essay "Of the Standard of Taste." I will argue that some of his most important claims have been misunderstood, and that the significance of his focal parable, the discovery of "the key with the leathern thong," has been lost. Hume's aesthetic theory rests upon the idea that there are rules or principles of taste, and that aesthetic rationality consists in discovering and applying these rules, especially in cases where people dispute about the aes- thetic value of an object. This idea may seem self-evident, yet it was denied by no less a personage than Kant.2 I conclude the paper with a comparison of the merits of the Humean and Kantian models of aesthetic rationality. "Of the Standard of Taste," it will be re- called, focuses on the question of whether aesthetic disagreements can be rationally re- solved. Hume grants at the outset that common sense seems to hold that they cannot be, given the popular maxim "there is no disputing about taste." But, he continues (with brilliant in- sight), common sense also seems to hold the contradictory position, since anyone who "would assert an equality of genius and ele- gance between Ogilby and Milton, or Bunyan and Addison, would be thought to defend no less an extravagance, than if he had maintained STEVEN SVERDLIK is assistant professor of philoso- phy at Southern Methodist University. a mole-hill to be as high as Teneriffe, or a pond as extensive as the ocean" (p. 7).3 That is, common sense recognizes that some aesthetic judgments, at least, are as clearly false or unjustifiable as certain empirical statements. Of course the yoking of Bunyan to Addison is in retrospect unfortunate, given the later rise in Bunyan's critical reputation. But the general point about the comparability of some aesthetic judgments to factual statements can be made using different examples. What Hume next endeavors to do in the essay is to show how it is possible that aesthetic judgements can have this sort of objectivity. Moreover, he attempts to do this while granting all along that "beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them" (p. 6, cf. 11). In other words, Hume attempts to show that it is possible rationally to resolve a dispute about the aesthetic value of an object without assuming that the aesthetic value is a property of the object itself. As is well known, Hume's solution is a sort of "ideal observer" theory of taste or evalua- tion in which the correct or rational position in a dispute is identified with the evaluation that an ideal critic would make under ideal conditions.4