Full Idea
Hume suggest we get away from the fruitless discussion of beauty, and simply concentrate on the qualities we admire, and ought to admire, in a critic - qualities such as delicacy and discernment.
Gist of Idea
Forget about beauty; just concentrate on the virtues of delicacy and discernment admired in critics
Source
report of David Hume (Of the standard of taste [1757]) by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction 6
Book Reference
Scruton,Roger: 'Beauty: A Very Short Introduction' [OUP 2011], p.123
A Reaction
We might wonder how you can admire 'discernment' without some view of the thing being discern, which is in danger of being beauty. How do you judge delicacy and discernment without judging the objects of the critic's taste? Mere authority?