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Full Idea
To say thast 'Everyone has his special taste' would be to dismiss the very possibility of aesthetic taste, and to deny that there could be aesthetic judgement 'that could make a rightful claim to the assent of everyone'.
Gist of Idea
Saying everyone has their own taste destroys the very idea of taste
Source
Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 7 5:213), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 2.2
Book Ref
'Key Thinkers in Aesthetics', ed/tr. Giovannelli,Alessandro [Continuum 2012], p.65
A Reaction
I am a great believer in the objectivity of taste (within sensible reason). But the great evidence against it is the shifting standards of taste over the centuries. Nineteenth century collectors wasted fortunes on inferior works, it seems to us.
| 12157 | Kant gave form and status to aesthetics, and Hegel gave it content [Kant, by Scruton] |
| 20346 | The aesthetic attitude is a matter of disinterestedness [Kant, by Wollheim] |
| 18547 | Only rational beings can experience beauty [Kant, by Scruton] |
| 22711 | The beautiful is not conceptualised as moral, but it symbolises or resembles goodness [Kant, by Murdoch] |
| 4025 | Kant saw beauty as a sort of disinterested pleasure, which has become separate from the good [Kant, by Taylor,C] |
| 22046 | The mathematical sublime is immeasurable greatness; the dynamical sublime is overpowering [Kant, by Pinkard] |
| 5643 | Aesthetic values are not objectively valid, but we must treat them as if they are [Kant, by Scruton] |
| 21458 | The sublime is a moral experience [Kant, by Gardner] |
| 20410 | The judgement of beauty is not cognitive, but relates, via imagination, to pleasurable feelings [Kant] |
| 20412 | Beauty is only judged in pure contemplation, and not with something else at stake [Kant] |
| 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] |