Principles Of Taste Research Articles

Baudelaire's Two Cosmopolitanisms

In his text on the ‘Exposition Universelle 1855’, Baudelaire upholds what he calls ‘cosmopolitisme’ as the antidote to the constraining influence of universalizing principles of taste that are meant to define beauty for all times and places. Baudelaire’s view is that such aesthetic systems close off the possibility of beauty, which, he maintains must contain an element of novelty. Accordingly, the proper attitude for the viewer (or reader or spectator) to take before a work of art is one that remains always open to novelty and to the ‘universal vitality’ out of which it springs. This attitude is the cosmopolitan one. Yet Baudelaire characterizes this attitude in ways that seem fundamentally incompatible if not diametrically opposed. On the one hand, cosmopolitanism as described in this text seems to involve the slow, lived apprenticeship in the values, ways of life, and criteria of judgement of those in other places, the better to be able to appreciate the beauty of the objects produced in them. On the other, he speaks of the appropriate attitude toward an aesthetic object — indeed toward any object that presents itself to our senses — as one resulting solely from the spectator’s exertions on his or her own mind and will, exertions by which the spectator refrains from imposing criteria of judgement upon the putative aesthetic object in order, instead, to derive one’s criteria from it. While the text on the ‘Exposition’ provides the reader with no way of resolving this contradiction, Baudelaire’s remarks on fashion in ‘Le Peintre de la vie moderne’ (1863) provide a dialectical resolution.

UN’ESIGENZA DI PROFONDITÀ: LA MODERNITÀ DEL PENSIERO ESTETICO DI ARCHIBALD ALISON

Archibald Alison’s Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790) is usually praised for having assigned a previously unrecognized central role to emotions in aesthetic phenomena, within an associational perspective on judgments of taste. In this paper of mine I’m going to defend a formalistically-oriented reading of Alison’s aesthetic thought, by taking into account those sections of the Essays where he stresses the importance of form, not so much in itself but rather as naturally or intentionally aimed at satisfying an expressive purpose. Thus reinterpreted, Alison’s aesthetic theory, while avoiding the risk of radical subjectivism and relativism which is often (albeit, as I will argue, mistakenly) attributed to it, will reveal itself as theoretically coherent and compelling and also, to some extent, as predictive with respect to some of the current trends in the fields of contemporary music and visual arts.

I LIMITI DEL SOGGETTIVISMO ESTETICO. SUI PRINCIPÎ DEL GUSTO DI ARCHIBALD ALISON

Archibald Alison’s Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790) remained long neglected after their first release. They were rediscovered only twenty years later, thanks to a review by Francis Jeffrey published on the «Edinburgh Review» in 1811, which suddenly improved their fame and circulation. This paper aims at pointing out retrospectively the reasons for that prolonged indifference, considering if and how much Alison’s aesthetic theory and his emotivistic reductionism could sound interesting and acceptable for an eighteenth-century English reader.

Almost Gone: Rembrandt and the Ends of Materialism

This essay looks to Rembrandt’s late religious portrait The Apostle Bartholomew (1661) for a counterpoint to the affirmative materialism characteristic of much criticism today, a trend especially evident in recent vitalist revivals of Lucretius. Against the tendency of contemporary thinkers such as Stephen Greenblatt and Jane Bennett to celebrate the generative powers of recombinatory materialism, and against the tendency of art professionals to scrutinize every material aspect of a painting in order to preserve its physical state across time, Rembrandt’s Bartholomew presents the possibility of a mere materialism—a materialism that, without answering to our needs, allows for loss to be nothing other than loss. Taking advantage of its traditional subject matter (martyrdom by flaying), the painting calls attention to the vulnerability of skin and thus to the deterioration of material surfaces. This susceptibility to damage includes the painting’s own chemical surface, its pigments subject to darkening and decomposition under the influence of ordinary environmental elements: light, air, humidity. This essay also considers the Romantic era provenance of The Apostle Bartholomew , which happened to belong to a materialist in the Lucretian tradition, the English antiquarian Richard Payne Knight. In his Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste (1805), Knight’s reduction of painting to an austere optics devoid of emotion brings him very close to the impersonal materialism of the Rembrandt painting he owned, but his insistence on the timelessness of Rembrandt’s materialism—immune to degradation because of Rembrandt’s technical mastery and choice of durable pigments—indicates the prevailing blind spot of his aesthetic theory. Knight’s reified materialism is not anomalous; similar principles continue to guide the practice of art conservation today.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Some Questions in Hume's Aesthetics

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Some Questions in Hume's Aesthetics

Critique Conscious and Unconscious: Listening to the Barbarous Language of Art and Design

This article addresses two linked questions. The first question is, ‘Is there an art school critique?’ The second question is, ‘How is the possibility of an art school critique bound up with the characteristics of art and design speech?’ In addressing these questions, I identify a ‘barbarous’ aspect to speech in art and design that produces the persistent problem of a division of language, manifest in current divisions of theory and practice. I trace the origins of this barbarism to the historical inclusion of art and design within the signifying structure of an educational metaphor, which bound the utilitarian wish for a bourgeois ‘revolution’ in pedagogy to the social relations of nineteenth-century capital. One of the radical possibilities introduced by this wish for a pedagogical revolution, was the potential for a specific form of ‘art school critique’. It is the failure to sustain this critical position within the contract between the art school and commodity capital, that has determined the subsequent fate of art school critique. I locate the high watermark and the fall of a specifically art school critique to the same moment, namely the brief and antagonistic encounter with capital and commerce adopted by Henry Cole and Richard Redgrave in their so-called ‘Chamber of Horrors’ exhibiting ‘Correct Principles of Taste’ at Marlborough House in 1852. The significance of Cole's ‘Chamber of Horrors’ is that of a moment of critical antagonism that was not repeated, because the relationship of the art school to commerce, capital and the commodity evolved differently from that moment on. Precisely because it was not repeated, we are compelled to remember this critical moment in a dissimulated form, through the inertia and deadlock of theory and practice.

Associationism and Taste Theory in Archibald Alison's Essays

For good reason, Archibald Alison's 1790 Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste is chiefly remembered as the occasion of the so-called triumph of association in eighteenth-century British aesthetics.' Some earlier taste theorists had appealed to associationist psychology, but they did so primarily to help explain away the obvious diversity of responses to almost any object of taste: private emotional associations with an object, they suggested, often corrupt the process by which individuals arrive at judgments of beauty, thereby giving rise to the apparent diversity of tastes. Other taste theorists-those among Alison's mid-century predecessors, especially-had discovered some additional uses for associationist psychology. Alison, however, dramatically expands the role of that psychology in taste theory by arguing that genuine aesthetic experience (the emotion of taste) just is the experience of a special sort of train of emotional associations with an object. As one commentator puts it, Alison's essays are solely dedicated to the task of persuading his readers that the associationist psychology is the only source of taste. 2

Reflexão e fundamento: sobre a relação entre gosto e conhecimento na estética de Kant

A Crítica da Faculdade do Juízo, de Kant, é primordialmente uma investigação crítica acerca de uma certa classe de juízos chamados reflexionantes, que se subdivide em dois grupos, estéticos e teleológicos, e se define em oposição a uma outra classe, a dos chamados juízos determinantes. Nosso objetivo neste artigo é elaborar a hipótese de um privilégio fundacional do juízo reflexionante estético relativamente ao conhecimento determinante. Para tanto, pretendemos cumprir duas etapas. Em primeiro lugar, procederemos a uma análise da conexão entre os temas centrais - e aparentemente dissociados - do belo e da faculdade do juízo enquanto tal que justifica a passagem do projeto de uma crítica do gosto ao de uma crítica do juízo e delimita como alvo da obra o fundamento de determinação (Bestimmungsgrund) de uma "intersubjetividade" conceitualmente indeterminada. Em segundo lugar, passaremos à análise da relação entre a reflexão e o princípio da finalidade da natureza, com base na Introdução da terceira Crítica, a fim de identificar, na formulação "prática" do princípio do gosto, o germe de uma anterioridade que subordina a determinação à reflexão estética.

The Use of the Senses: Sensation, Danger and New Protagonists of Taste in Mid-Eighteenth Century Britain

From the mid-1740's the critical domain of taste, traditionally the preserve of a discerning ruling elite, became crowded with new entrants. These commentators, including Joseph Spence and John Gilbert Cooper, privileged individual judgement and sensory observation above notions of the public good. Several educated urbanites objected to this trend and began to alert the public to its potentially threatening impact. This article addresses that body of writing, including the recently attributed Hercules and Cadmus in George Lyttleton's Dialogues of the Dead (London, 1760), which was written by Elizabeth Montague, Allan Ramsay's Dialogue on Taste (London, 1757) and Frances Reynolds's Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste and of the Origins of Our Ideas of Beauty (London, 1785). Drawing from the writings of the Third Earl of Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson, I argue, Reynolds and her contemporaries hoped to seek solutions to the problems created by Britain's changing social consensus.

Logical Purposiveness and the Principle of Taste

In both Introductions to the Critique of Judgment Kant seems to identify the a priori principle at the basis of aesthetic judgments with the principle that guides reflective judgment in its cognitive inquiry of nature, i.e. the purposiveness of nature or systematicity. For instance Kant writes:

Hume's Principles of Taste: A Reply to Dickie

George Dickie argues that Hume's principles of taste have value-laden properties as their subjects, including those properties we now refer to as 'aesthetic'. I counter that Hume's principles have value-neutral properties as their subjects, and so exclude those properties we now refer to as 'aesthetic'. Dickie also argues that Hume's essay on taste provides 'the conceptual means for recognizing the problem of the interaction of aesthetic properties with other properties of artworks'. I counter that the very passages Dickie takes to provide these conceptual means in fact suggest that Hume recognizes no such problem.

Le plaisir, principe du goût dans la métaphysique de D'Alembert

We study here the Encyclopédie articles on Goût written by D'Alembert, Voltaire and Jaucourt rather than the more famous one by Montesquieu. D'Alem¬ bert elaborates on the metaphysical definitions given, starting from the 'esprit philosophique', composed of scientific speculation and artistic pleasure, and his philosophy develops the idea of pleasure as the principle of taste. As pleasure is what everyone knows and cannot explain, its existence, like that of movement, is doubted by no-one. Another strong claim is that taste is not arbitrary and to affirm the opposite would be to consider taste as fashion, not art. As there is a difference between culture -the result of what is best in society -and opinion built on prejudice, taste is part of culture and not of transitory opinion. This approach to taste provides the metaphysical basis on which the faculty of judge¬ ment will be built, beginning with the distinction between illusion and what can be felt.

James Shelley on Critical Principles

James Shelley claims that Hume's principles of taste have value‐neutral subjects rather than value‐laden ones that, for example, refer to aesthetic properties. I try to rebut his claim. I argue that Hume's essay on taste contains the conceptual means for recognizing the problem of the interaction of aesthetic properties with other properties in artworks, even if he does not explicitly make this point. I also deny Shelley's contention that I claim that principles are used as part of a temporal process to infer evaluational conclusions. Against Shelly's attack, I defend my use of the isolation clause in formulating evaluational principles. Finally, I show a way to formulate evaluational principles without the isolation clause by substituting an interaction clause.

Some Bloomsbury Interviews and Memories

In 1957-58 and in March 1965, in the course of writing book on E. M. Forster, I met with number of Bloomsbury, and fringe Bloomsbury, figures. These encounters, here recorded from notes and memory, will perhaps provide few footnotes to the Bloomsbury record. G. E. MOORE During an interview on Oct. 23, 1957, Forster reminded me that G. E. Moore was still alive and living in Cambridge and that I should try to see him. Forster himself, as I remember, arranged the meeting. I was invited for tea at 4:30 the following day. prospect of such meeting was little daunting. Though I had read Principia Ethica and some Moore criticism in Paul Arthur Schilpp's important volume, I felt quite unready to talk philosophy with the great man. I hadn't understood much of what I had read in Principia Ethica, and much that I half understood I didn't think I agreed with. And that whole chapter on The Ideal - which had moved Keynes to see a new heaven on new earth and Strachey to exclaim The age of reason has come (Keynes 82; Forster, Dickinson 110) - I found somewhere between unintelligible and plain silly. But who was I to hold such views when the whole world seemed agreed that Moore was great man, if not saint?(1) - and when his reputation as philosopher's philosopher was undisputed? I took some heart from the fact that Forster could treat Moore lightly - even make puns on his work(2) - but I hardly had his rights in the matter. house at 86 Chesterton Road was an old red-brick Victorian that had seen better days, one in row paralleling the Cam at about two-street remove. An air of postwar fatigue and shabbiness clung to the neighborhood, along with stubborn respectability. Mrs. an energetic, rather bouncy woman of middle age, smiled welcome and invited me in without ceremony. I was no sooner in the door, however, than she took me aside and whispered, conspiratorially, that she was to do all the talking. doctor had forbidden Moore to talk philosophy because of his heart - he got too excited. I didn't know whether to be glad or disappointed. Mrs. Moore gave promise of being lively and intelligent conversationalist, but she was hardly proxy for the main exhibit. That exhibit shone splendidly forth, like painter's model, in the center of the next room. There sat G. E. Moore in straight-backed chair, posed in profile like Whistler's mother, staring fixedly before him, as if mesmerized by some pure and distant thought. It was beautiful face - there is no other word for it - classical features, high brow, smooth white skin, silver hair, keen blue eyes. In some pantheon of ideal callings, he might serve, sculpted and labeled, to represent the philosopher, picture of otherworldly contemplation fit to sit next to Rodin's Thinker. One is tempted to hyperbole because there was something comic about the whole situation, especially when Mrs. after inviting me to sit down, settled into an armchair opposite and, smiling little mischievously, lit up pipe.(3) Throughout the interview, she puffed away happily as our words passed to and fro over the head of G. E. silent and immobile, gazing beatifically into space. I wasn't sure he even knew I was in the room. I remember only bits and pieces of what was said. We discussed Cambridge and Bloomsbury and my work, but Moore not at all, since Mrs. Moore declared herself unfit to talk philosophy, her husband's or any other. I remember her scolding me for not yet having read Keynes's My Early Beliefs,(4) which she called the best account she knew of Moore's influence on Bloomsbury (she always referred to him as Moore, in the third person), and we gossiped bit about Forster. I remember too the room we were sitting in, how dark and cluttered it was, and I wondered how the great Apostle of beauty could care so little about the aesthetics of his surroundings. room had space and oaken comfort, but it seemed more like warehouse filled with moveables than an area arranged after some principle of taste. …

Kant, Mothersill and principles of Taste

Kant, Mothersill and principles of Taste

Kant, Mothersill and Principles of Taste

Kant, Mothersill and Principles of Taste

Hume's Key and Aesthetic Rationality

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

Hume's Key and Aesthetic Rationality

HUME THE AESTHETIC THEORIST has always been overshadowed by Hume epistemolo- gist, metaphysician, and moral theorist. late even Hume's political theory has come in for detailed attention. The same cannot be said for his aesthetic theory, though have been a few incisive articles appearing on it in last twenty years.' In present essay I propose to look closely at some of central tenets of Hume's aesthetic theory, especially as it appears in his superb essay Of Standard of Taste. I will argue that some of his most important claims have been misunderstood, and that significance of his focal parable, discovery of the key with leathern thong, has been lost. Hume's aesthetic theory rests upon idea that are rules or principles of taste, and that aesthetic rationality consists in discovering and applying these rules, especially in cases where people dispute about 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 paper with a comparison of merits of Humean and Kantian models of aesthetic rationality. Of Standard of Taste, it will be re- called, focuses on question of whether aesthetic disagreements can be rationally re- solved. Hume grants at outset that common sense seems to hold that they cannot be, given popular maxim there is no disputing about taste. But, he continues (with brilliant in- sight), common sense also seems to hold contradictory position, since anyone who 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 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. course yoking of Bunyan to Addison is in retrospect unfortunate, given later rise in Bunyan's critical reputation. But general point about comparability of some aesthetic judgments to factual statements can be made using different examples. What Hume next endeavors to do in 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 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 aesthetic value of an object without assuming that aesthetic value is a property of object itself. As is well known, Hume's solution is a sort of observer theory of taste or evalua- tion in which correct or rational position in a dispute is identified with evaluation that an ideal critic would make under ideal conditions.4

Wordsworth and Coleridge Marginalia in a Copy of Richard Payne Knight's "Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste" [with Note

AMONG THE MANY BOOKS fortunately spoiled by Coleridge's abuse of their margins,' there is one in the Huntington Library which seems to have escaped commentators.The work itself, Richard Payne Knight's Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste, is a good example of the aesthetic criticism of the eighteenth century, and the marginal annotations are of great interest in that connection as well as in themselves. The volume's provenance and the general appearance of the script had assigned the annotations to Coleridge. To decipher these, to relate the text to the aesthetic controversies in which it played a part, to see the germs of later theory in Coleridge's scornful and speculative comments, was exciting and rewarding enough. But when one had to face the possibility that these apparent Coleridge marginalia are a rare, even a unique, phenomenon-a set of Wordsworth marginalia-then indeed the wonder grew. Careful comparison with manuscript Coleridge and Wordsworth letters of appropriate dates, and scientific tests of the penmanship, established the handwriting as undeniably Wordsworth's. What had begun as an opportunity to decipher some as yet unpublished Coleridge annotations, of special interest because critical, at significant points, of eighteenth-century theory, developed, as an important side issue, the puzzling fact that they are in Wordsworth's handwriting.2 The copy of Knight's Inquiry which contains the marginalia is of