Moral Prejudice and Aesthetic Deformity: Rereading Hume's "Of the Standard of Taste"

Abstract

Twenty years ago, a philosopher reassessing Hume's aesthetics wrote that his essay Of the Standard of Taste had been underrated.1 Twenty years later, Hume's essay occupies a prominent place in philosophical aesthetics, particularly among philosophers concerned with Hume's suggestion that moral considerations are relevant to the evaluation of art.2 Despite the proliferation of philosophers who cite Hume-whether as ally or foe-in debates over moralism in art criticism, however, we still lack an adequate account of Hume's own moralist aesthetics.3 Thus, although Hume's essay on taste may no longer be underrated, I believe that some problems raised by the essay's endorsement of a moralist aesthetics remain misunderstood. I hope to illuminate Hume's moralist aesthetics by pursuing one such problem. The problem, which I call the moral dilemma, arises when one attempts to square an account of the freedom from prejudice that Hume requires of true aesthetic judges with what he says about the relevance of moral considerations to the evaluation of art. I introduce and then attempt to disarm the dilemma by offering an interpretation of Hume's aesthetic point of view and drawing attention to the taxonomy of prejudices by which he justifies the true judge's moralism. The result is a reading of the essay that distinguishes Hume's aesthetic point of view from his moral point of view while defending the plausibility of assigning a moral dimension to aesthetic evaluation.