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Full Idea
Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to the valuable character of having 'taste'.
Gist of Idea
Strong sense, delicate sentiment, practice, comparisons, and lack of prejudice, are all needed for good taste
Source
David Hume (Of the standard of taste [1757]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.6
Book Ref
Fogelin,Robert: 'Walking the Tightrope of Reason' [OUP 2004], p.159
A Reaction
I agree entirely with this, but then I am a very politically incorrect elitist when it comes to taste. It just seems screamingly obvious that professional wine-tasters have a better appreciation of wine than me, and so on for the rest of the arts.
| 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] |