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Full Idea
To explain why not everyone who is prepared to encounter a thing's aesthetic properties can recognise them, ...eighteenth century theorists posited the existence of a special faculty of aesthetic perception, that of taste.
Gist of Idea
The faculty of 'taste' was posited to explain why only some people had aesthetic appreciation
Source
Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 1.2)
Book Ref
Davies,Stephen: 'The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed)' [Wiley Blackwell 2016], p.7
A Reaction
But there seem to be two aspects to taste - first the capacity to enjoy some sorts of art, and second the ability to discriminate the good from the bad. The latter is 'standards' of taste (Hume's title). Do non-musical people lack taste?
| 12964 | If would be absurd not to disagree with someone's taste if it was a taste for poisons [Leibniz] |
| 6608 | Strong sense, delicate sentiment, practice, comparisons, and lack of prejudice, are all needed for good taste [Hume] |
| 23663 | There are axioms of taste - such as a general consensus about a beautiful face [Reid] |
| 20408 | With respect to the senses, taste is an entirely personal matter [Kant] |
| 20409 | When we judge beauty, it isn't just personal; we judge on behalf of everybody [Kant] |
| 20411 | Saying everyone has their own taste destroys the very idea of taste [Kant] |
| 14842 | Why are the strong tastes of other people so contagious? [Nietzsche] |
| 20407 | Taste is the capacity to judge an object or representation which is thought to be beautiful [Tarski, by Schellekens] |
| 12163 | Literary meaning emerges in comparisons, and tradition shows which comparisons are relevant [Scruton] |
| 6605 | Critics must be causally entangled with their subject matter [Fogelin] |
| 20385 | The faculty of 'taste' was posited to explain why only some people had aesthetic appreciation [Davies,S] |