| 12964 | If would be absurd not to disagree with someone's taste if it was a taste for poisons [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: If someone acquired a taste for poisons which would kill him or make him wretched, it would be absurd to say that we ought not to argue with him about his tastes. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.21) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a first step in any discussion of taste on which you would hope that sensible persons would agree. 'It is just a matter of taste' is definitely not the end of discussion. Aesthetic taste is important, just as values are important. |
| 6608 | Strong sense, delicate sentiment, practice, comparisons, and lack of prejudice, are all needed for good taste [Hume] |
| 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'. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the standard of taste [1757]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.6 | |
| 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. |
| 23663 | There are axioms of taste - such as a general consensus about a beautiful face [Reid] |
| Full Idea: I think there are axioms, even in matters of taste. …I never heard of any man who thought it a beauty in a human face to want a nose, or an eye, or to have the mouth on one side. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 6: Judgement [1785], 6) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to disagree, but the human face may be a special case, since it is so deeply embedded in the minds of even the youngest infants. More recent artists seem able to discover beauty in very unlikely places. |
| 20408 | With respect to the senses, taste is an entirely personal matter [Kant] |
| Full Idea: With regard to the agreeable, the principle Everyone has his own taste (of the senses) is valid. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 7 5:212), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 1 | |
| A reaction: This is a preliminary concession, and he goes on to defend more objective views of taste. |
| 20409 | When we judge beauty, it isn't just personal; we judge on behalf of everybody [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It is ridiculous if someone justifies his tast by saying 'this object is beautiful for me'. . .If he pronounces that something is beautiful, then he expects the very same satisfaction of others: he judges not merely for himself, but for everyone. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 7 5:213), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 1 | |
| A reaction: For Kant this would also be the hallmark of rationality - that we expect, or hope for, a consensus when we express a rational judgement. But this expectation is far less in cases of beauty. We do not expect total agreement from very tasteful people. |
| 20411 | Saying everyone has their own taste destroys the very idea of taste [Kant] |
| 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'. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790], CUP 7 5:213), quoted by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 2.2 | |
| 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. |
| 14842 | Why are the strong tastes of other people so contagious? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Why are likes and dislikes so contagious that one can scarcely live in proximity to a person of strong sensibilities without being filled like a vessel with pros and cons? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 371) | |
| A reaction: I was on the receiving end of this when young, and I think it influenced me to propound stronger views about things than I could ever justify, since my natural disposition is to be cautious about all views. Nice question. Why? |
| 20407 | Taste is the capacity to judge an object or representation which is thought to be beautiful [Tarski, by Schellekens] |
| Full Idea: Taste is the faculty for judging an object or a kind of representation through a satisfaction or a dissatisfaction, ...where the object of such a satisfaction is called beautiful. | |
| From: report of Alfred Tarski (The Concept of Truth for Formalized Languages [1933]) by Elizabeth Schellekens - Immanuel Kant (aesthetics) 1 | |
| A reaction: We usually avoid the word 'faculty' nowadays, because it implies a specific mechanism, but 'capacity' will do. Kant is said to focus specifically on beauty, whereas modern aestheticians have a broader view of the type of subject matter. |
| 12163 | Literary meaning emerges in comparisons, and tradition shows which comparisons are relevant [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: We must discover the meanings that emerge when works of literature are experience in relation to each other. ...The importance of tradition is that it denotes - ideally, at least - the class of relevant comparisons. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Public Text and Common Reader [1982], p.27) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice attempt to explain why we all agree that a thorough education in an art is an essential prerequisite for good taste. Some people (e.g. among the young) seem to have natural good taste. How does that happen? |
| 6605 | Critics must be causally entangled with their subject matter [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Critics must become causally entangled with their subject matter. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This remark is built on Hume's views. You may have a strong view about a singer, but it may be hard to maintain when someone plays you six rival versions of the same piece. I agree entirely with the remark. It means there are aesthetic experts. |
| 20385 | The faculty of 'taste' was posited to explain why only some people had aesthetic appreciation [Davies,S] |
| 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. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 1.2) | |
| 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? |