Journal of Scottish Philosophy Forum 9.1
The Journal of Scottish Philosophy has a number of featured articles that can be read in their entirety for free. "The Journal of Scottish Philosophy Forum" is a ‘debate’ web page, hosted by the International Association for Scottish Philosophy and based on some of these featured articles. From this Forum Page you can read both the abstract and the full article, plus short comments from invited experts and responses from the author. The current debate is always a recently featured article, while previous debates continue to be accessible through the Forum Archive. Each Forum is numbered in accordance with the issue of the Journal in which the featured article appeared.
Delicacy in Hume's Theory of Taste
By Theodore Gracyk
Minnesota State University Moorhead
Winner of the
George Davie Prize for 2010
ABSTRACT:
David Hume's celebrated essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ is the central text for understanding Hume's aesthetic theory, yet an important claim in that essay has received inadequate attention in the literature. Although it is understood that Hume stresses the importance of delicacy of taste, it is less well understood that this delicacy is a delicacy of imagination, which is distinct from a delicacy of perception. Using both the essay and other texts to elucidate this thesis, it appears that Hume's account of taste faces unresolved difficulties in defending a standard of taste.
Read the full article here
It should be obvious that I start from a different point in approaching David Hume’s aesthetic theory than does Ted Gracyk. In his abstract, Gracyk says that “‘Of the Standard of Taste’ is the central text for understanding Hume’s aesthetic theory”. I have argued in a number of places,and especially in my book, Hume’s Aesthetic Theory: Sentiment and Taste, that Hume’s aesthetic theory is central to the Treatise, and that that is where one must turn to understand how Hume develops an aesthetic (actually a theory of criticism and taste) out of the earlier eighteenth-century empiricist theories of beauty and taste. Moreover, as I read it, ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ is not the primary place to look for Hume’s theory of taste. The essay is primarily about the necessity for having standards in those areas of experience that are essentially subjective and how one can develop such standards in a typical area of general concern -- the extensive eighteenth-century literature on standards of taste.
Nevertheless, this is not the place to pursue that discussion, and I now set it aside to focus on Gracyk’s discussion of delicacy as a delicacy of imagination rather than a delicacy of perception. Before beginning, I would offer one initial quibble that still may be important. Eighteenth-century theories of taste begin with the third Earl of Shaftesbury, not Francis Hutcheson. Both Shaftesbury and Hutcheson are led into discussions of taste as a result of their opposition to theological-moral rationalism and the Hobbes’s denial of benevolence in human morality. Shaftesbury’s solution is to establish benevolence as a sentimental reality, and Hutcheson follows him in this. The parallel defense of beauty and taste as equally real sentiments upon which one can rely follows. This is important because there is a sense in which Hume returns to Shaftesbury against Hutcheson.
The question of the innocence of taste leads Gracyk to examine the difference between Hume’s theory and that of Aristotle, which is based on practical judgment. Now clearly, Hume is rejecting Aristotelian reasoning on critical judgment. Yet there remains a significant element of practical judgment in the decision, which Hume clearly endorses, not to accept a preference for Ogilby over Milton. Such a decision is absurd, setting up one horn of the dilemma that Hume addresses. If one wishes to have any critical influence, such a judgment will not do. One will appear foolish and thus without influence. That element of practical judgment links Hume’s theory of taste to seventeenth-century mannerism, which defended the individuality of mannerist painting on the basis of its subjective appeal to a wider audience and thus of its acceptability in polite circles.
Turning to Hume’s theory of imagination, Gracyk notes the difference between a justified use of the imagination and merely capricious imagination, quoting Hume’s distinction “between objects that are pleasing ‘by the primary constitution of our nature’ and those that he admits are only pleasing ‘by caprice’ [Hume 2007: 195]” (Gracyk, 4). This distinction allows Hume to give imagination a more important role in developing a justified taste. Gracyk then considers the suggestion that “Perhaps he regards imaginative association as an addition or supplement to a more basic analysis of beauty and taste, in which case the subjectivity of imaginative association is not endemic to beauty” (Gracyk, 4). This is a useful observation, but I think that it takes us in the wrong direction and should be pursued further and more deeply into Hume’s basic epistemology. Whether justified or capricious, imagination works in essentially the same way. An original impression of sense is subjected to reflection by the imagination. So in either case, imagination produces ideas rather than impressions. Those ideas may be the subject of further reflection (a kind of double reflection) in which the mental idea becomes a mental object without losing its subjectivity. The influence of imaginative ideas depends on two
factors: their strength and vivacity (we believe them, if only for a moment), and our ability to retain them in memory. Purely capricious ideas and associations, while dependent on imagination, fade almost immediately both in their immediate effect and in memory.
When imaginative ideas are objectified, as they are in painting or literature, or as they are when memory takes them as the passionate basis of action, then their continued effect depends on more than strength, vivacity, and continued recollection. They depend on an element of truth. As Hume says, “Poets themselves, tho’ liars by profession, always endeavor to give an air of truth to their fictions; and where that is totally neglected, their performances, however ingenious, will never be able to afford much pleasure. In short, we may observe, that even when ideas have no manner of influence on the will and passions, truth and reality are still requisite, in order to make them entertaining to the imagination.” In morality, this recourse to empirical truth (original impressions justified by causality or reasoning about the relation of ideas or number) allows Hume to reject superstition. In the arts, a more tolerant appreciation is allowable as long is the art is not itself superstitious or morally vicious. This analysis of imagination supports Gracyk’s conjecture that “perhaps Hume thinks that imagination plays an essential role in appreciating works of art, on the grounds that imaginative association supplements whatever directly meets the eye or ear in original beauty” (Gracyk, 5). As Gracyk goes on to note, something like this view of imagination is required if one is to be able to adopt the point of view of authors with a different world-view. We cannot follow them into moral viciousness, but we can imaginatively recognize the truth of their basic views of the world and human nature, for example.
I do not think that Gracyk goes far enough down this line of analysis with regard to Hume’s view of beauty, however. If one follows the epistemological analysis above, it seems clear that Hume must be committed to impressions of reflection that are both original and pleasurable, which makes them beautiful. They are original impressions of reflection only because they are based, as all impressions are, on impressions of sense, but it is the mind’s own sense of itself and its ideas that makes them reflective. Hume has none of the complications that arise for Hutcheson’s formula of “uniformity amidst variety” when confronted with pure colors or purely sensual pleasure. Hume can agree with Burke on the pleasures of sex, for example. Neither has much need for further analysis of the pleasure and ‘beauty’ involved until further moral or critical reflection enters the discussion. Of course further imaginative reflection is possible as is verified by the common eighteenth-century use of ‘beauty’ as a term of moral approbation and the continued association of physical beauty with moral beauty in the eighteenth century. Only when our
psychology becomes more complex does it cease to seem contradictory to say, without extensive qualification, that something is both beautiful but morally ugly.
Finally, Gracyk considers whether imagination is always necessary to the sentiment of beauty. This is something of a red herring. In the passage quoted by Gracyk: But though the value of every object can be determined only by the sentiment or passion of every individual, we may observe, that the passion, in pronouncing its verdict, considers not the object simply, as it is in itself, but surveys it with all the circumstances, which attend it. A man transported with joy, on account of his possessing a diamond, confines not his view to the glittering stone before him (Hume 1987b: 172) [‘The Sceptic’], it is only when the passion is considered as a whole and pronounces a verdict that it has gone beyond the original sentiment itself. The “glittering stone” is the starting point, and if it were not beautiful, the man would not be transported with joy in the same way. A complex process is involved in expanding imaginative apprehension, and it is not necessary to say definitively whether imagination is involved only in some original perceptions of sense because Hume is not committed to Locke’s distinction between simple ideas of sense and
complex ideas nor to the later analytical distinction between ideas of sense and more complex ideas of perception. Hume’s epistemology allows room for perception of complex objects, though at some point there must be original impressions. For Hume, as an educated human being of some experience, one can simply perceive either a color or a whole sunset. The latter may have involved an imaginative assimilation of a whole, but that does not make it the same as perceiving a sunset painted by Claude.
The consequence of introducing the imagination into a theory of taste seems to be skepticism. Gracyk, like most reader’s Hume, thinks that this is just what happens and that Hume must be saved from the taste of the skeptic by recourse to a “true taste” that is distinguishable from the immediate taste where anything goes. I, on the contrary, think that Hume does not need saving at all. Hume’s theory of taste, per se, is, in fact, purely subjective, and if it never left the level of subjective immediacy of pleasure, that would be the end of the usefulness of taste for criticism. But Hume does not end the story at that point, and he does not have recourse to a Kantian distinction between the aesthetic and the practical or to the later psychological theories that developed from Kant’s aesthetics. Hume simply moves on to more complex tastes and more complex theories of how taste may be judged. Taste remains thoroughly sentimental, but sentiment is self-reflective and self-judgmental when it enters into critical judgment. As noted above, truth plays a role in all subsequent iterations of sentiment, not independently of sentiment itself, but as sentiment continues to find pleasure in the ideas and ‘objects’ to which it refers.
Since I am cited with approval before Gracyk turns to the crucial example of Sancho’s kinsmen in explicating delicacy of taste, it would be churlish to disagree too strongly. I think that, for the most part, Gracyk has delicacy itself right. Delicacy of the imagination supplements the grosser immediate delicacy of sense that allows some to perceive colors, tastes, and shapes more accurately. And that is, in a sense, the purpose of Hume’s retelling of Sancho’s story (which is not quite the same as the way Cervantes tells it). But there are two problems that Gracyk does not adequately deal with. The first is the key itself. For the parable to work, there must be a key. Without it, Hume admits, no one would be led to accept the kinsmen’s expertise. Yet there is no key in the case of imaginative taste beyond the obvious pleasure that one finds in the reflective impression, which remains subjective. That pleasure should not be overlooked, however. The story could not work at all unless everyone agreed in advance that the wine was good. If on tasting it, the kinsmen spit it out with evident disgust, we would have an entirely different story. The only
reason that delicacy comes into play is because it is required by the particular claim of the kinsmen. That is what needs to be supported, and the key only supports their claim because of the nature of their claim – that they can distinguish the taste of leather and of iron accurately. There is a truth to which their claim refers, and the delicacy of their claim is supported by that truth, even for those who cannot experience it. Note that nothing in the story suggests that the education of the other wine tasters extends to their being able to taste the iron and leather once it is pointed out, nor should it. That would be antithetical to the point of the story. It is not a story about acquiring an educated palate. The existence of the key illustrates just what Hume claims it does: subjective judgments can be verified by other, empirical
evidence. The problem for “Of the Standard of Taste” is to determine what is available to play the role of the key when there is no key present, and that is the role of the criteria of good critics and the consequent agreement among them once they have been identified.
There is a further point that Gracyk overlooks, however. Sancho’s kinsmen are considered fools by the critics who laugh at them. There is a point here about what delicacy of taste refers to and why it is important, and it goes back to the initial disagreement that I pointed out at the beginning of my commentary. Hume does not need to prove that there is such a thing as delicacy of taste or that it depends on the imagination. To have followed his arguments on the reliance of taste on sentiment and on beauty as a sentiment is to recognize that there must be such thing as delicacy, since sentiment always depends, to begin with, on an impression. What Hume must demonstrate is that delicacy of taste in either of its forms (and they need not be distinct) can provide part of the solution to the problem he has set himself – to demonstrate the real possibility in some cases and the theoretical possibility in all cases of a standard of taste. Sancho’s kinsmen have a way to demonstrate that they are not fools and to put an end to the laughter. Literary critics and art critics have a similar way to point to the delicacy of their taste, first by
being able to discern the empirical support for their critical credentials (an empirical fact, as Peter Kivy pointed out more than thirty years ago ) and then by confirming their judgment by being able to point to other critical characteristics and the widespread agreement of those judges who have all of those characteristics. Sancho’s kinsmen may still turn out to be buffoons (as Sancho himself remains, up to a point), but they have a way to establish their credentials as wine tasters provided they share enough delicacy of taste with other wine tasters. And those who laugh take a risk if they do so. They need not be able to taste the iron and leather to think it wise not to laugh.
While I basically agree with Gracyk on the requirement for delicacy (who wouldn’t), I will add just a few additional comments before considering his conclusions. ‘Delicacy’ has tended to become the central characteristic of the authoritative critic in much recent commentary. Gracyk is surely correct to link it to the imagination, not just as delicacy of imagination but also as a form of imagination. But delicacy by itself is not enough. As Peter Kivy pointed out, what is important about the characteristics of the good critic is that the characteristics transfer the question of a standard from one that has no answer because of its subjectivity to one that can be considered empirically. That is even more true of being widely acquainted with what has gone before so that one can make comparisons and having a good eye or ear (good sense) so that one can see or hear what is going on.
Delicacy’ is only one of a set of criteria as Hume uses the term, and it is not essentially metaphorical. It is the capacity to make fine discriminations that others may be unable to make. That presents a problem for making delicacy the most important characteristic of the good critic. Only the most ardent partisans of a distinct aesthetic attitude think that too much knowledge detracts from critical ability, and only the most politicized post-modernist thinks that a lack of prejudice is a detriment to clear apprehension, but there are several ways that delicacy can work negatively, and Hume was aware of them. For one thing, too much delicacy may lead to not being able to see the forest for the trees. Eighteenth-century critics made fun of the pedants and antiquarians who spent all of their time correcting texts without ever actually reading them. Connoisseurs were objects of fun for being overly finicky. More importantly, however, for a system based on pleasure and pain as the fundamental sensations, delicacy can cause pain as well as pleasure – both sensually and aesthetically. Really high notes make my head ache; for a true musician, I am sure that too many false notes can do the same thing. Hume treats the problem by distinguishing delicacy of taste from delicacy of passion. “Delicacy of taste has the same effects as delicacy of passion: It enlarges the sphere both of our happiness and misery, and makes us sensible to pains as well as pleasures, which escape the rest of mankind.” Hume tries to protect delicacy of taste from that problem by acknowledging that taste involves more than just delicacy. Delicacy of taste is preferable for two reasons: we can be more selective in our tastes, more in control, and the pleasures, while rarer, are more refined. Neither selectivity nor refinement is a matter of delicacy alone. One must incorporate critical judgment. One element of that judgment is sentimental. It depends ultimately on pleasure. But the other element is empirical. Since the latter cannot be inferred directly from empirically testable impressions themselves (Hume’s fact/value distinction in some form), one is led back to critics and the need for a standard of taste. Only in combination are the characteristics of the true critic an empirical guide to which critics one should look to for consensus. Once the standard has been identified, one can look to it as a basis both for selectivity and guidance. I may either avoid atonal music in my concert going, or I may study it further in the hope, which may not be realized, of coming to enjoy it.
Gracyk thinks that delicacy of imagination can explain why some enjoy what others do not, but “it must do so in a way that does not render all taste into something problematically subjective” [Gracyk, 12]. This caveat can be read with two different emphases – either on ‘problematic’ or ‘subjective’. Certainly, one can agree that there are problematically subjective instances of taste – “I know what I like.” But if the emphasis shifts to ‘subjective’, so that the subjectivity of taste would make all taste problematic, then I, for one, emphatically disagree, and I think that Hume must as well if he is to be consistent. Not all judgments of taste are equal; some can be condemned and some confirmed. But it is not their subjectivity that condemns or confirms them. It is the additional factors that enter into the judgment – the quality
of the critic, the moral sentiments that are raised in addition to whatever judgment of beauty is present, and the truth of ideas as opposed to ideas that reflect superstition or error. Hume takes a lot of this for granted in a short essay intended to counter both the realists about beauty (Reid) and “anything goes” subjectivism (Mandeville). But I think it is all to be found in the Treatise.
Gracyk’s example of music that is too subtle is admirably developed with respect to subtlety. Some things are surely too subtle to deserve praise. But that does not affect delicacy of taste or the imagination. The one person who gets a musical joke also gets the pleasure. That does not make him a better critic, however. He simply has a more particular musical knowledge in this instance, and that entitles him to recognition of delicacy of taste in this instance. He is exactly like Sancho’s kinsmen who have a way to verify their delicacy of taste with respect to wine (or at least this wine that is acknowledged to be good), but who may fail miserably in selecting the wine to go with each distinct course of a meal. The problem, to say it one last time, is that one slides much too easily into treating “Of the Standard of Taste” as a treatise on taste itself – which it is only indirectly. I give Hume full credit for knowing what he is arguing. His associationist psychology may be limited (though I don’t think that makes it wrong), but he has no sorities problem. Hume cannot and does not expect the standard of taste to correct the imagination as Gracyk seems to suppose when he writes: “When it operates at the more subtle end of the spectrum of associative prompts, imagination is just as ‘innocent and ‘blameless’ – that is, just as resistant to correction through practice, lack of prejudice, and so on – as the variations in personal temperament that Hume recognises as an insurmountable obstacle to agreement in taste” (Gracyk,13). Of course it is innocent and blameless. It just is not expected to provide correction in such instances and it does not provide a standard.
Roger Shiner, in this respect, like Thomas Reid, James Beattie, and Alexander Gerard before him, is guilty of refuting what Hume never doubted and missing entirely what is valuable in his aesthetic theory, to paraphrase Kant. A standard of taste, Hume holds, is needed if we are to be guided in our taste; and as a good eighteenth-century enlightenment philosopher, Hume acknowledges that we need such guidance. A standard of taste may guide us by educating us, as whole individuals (not just as narrow specialists with a specialist’s knowledge and enjoyment), in what to consider. I had to be educated to read Joyce’s Ulysses carefully because my teachers insisted it would be worth it, and I didn’t want to be considered an ignoramus. Or a standard of taste, upheld by reliable critics, may lead us to understand tastes that are not, and may never be, our own. I doubt that I shall ever enjoy atonal music, but a standard of taste leads me to acknowledge both the critical acumen of those who do and in that sense to appreciate what I do not enjoy. I think atonal music both important and worthwhile, which surely is an aesthetic judgment. Hume
convinces me that the pure subjectivity of beauty and taste, which we rather misleadingly call aesthetics, need not turn our critical judgments into subjective utterances of the early positivist variety (‘x is beautiful’ means I approve of x) or exempt them from meaningful discussion and defense. Hume may not have all of aesthetic theory right, but he gives us a useful place to start over after trips into the dead ends of aesthetic realism and aesthetic psychologism.
Dabney Townsend
PO Box 915
Pooler, GA 31322
dabney.townsend@armstrong.edu
Reply to Townsend
By Ted Gracyk
I am honored that Dabney Townsend was willing to offer such a thorough critique of my efforts to make some sense of ‘delicacy’ in David Hume’s aesthetic theory. A point by point reply to Townshend would involve an answer nearly the length of my essay, so I will concentrate on a few central points. First, we agree on some important points about Hume’s philosophy. We agree that ‘Hume is not much of a skeptic’. I think we are in agreement that readers are tempted to project current meanings of terminology back onto Hume, but that we must resist this natural impulse. Furthermore, we agree that the philosophical vocabulary that became current in the twentieth century does not map neatly onto Hume’s texts. Nonetheless, our methodological assumptions are otherwise different enough that it is not surprising that our readings of Hume’s aesthetic theory differ, too. Second, there is the closely related question of what it means to look for Hume’s aesthetic theory. On this matter, we appear to part company, as I appear to construe ‘aesthetic’ more narrowly than does Townsend. Third, we disagree about the intended lessons of the wine tasting example that Hume employs in the essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’.
Townsend has done more than anyone to demonstrate the extent to which ‘there is a substantial aesthetic material embedded in Hume’s major philosophical works’. Viewing the essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ from this perspective, it is not surprising that Townsend treats that essay as a focused addendum to a larger theoretical enterprise, for Hume’s doctrine of taste has been worked out elsewhere, in great detail. The present forum is not the place to examine the details of Townsend’s larger project, but it is important to note that, like the majority of Hume scholars, Townsend regards Hume’s Treatise as the foundation stone of the interpretive edifice. Although it is the norm, this approach rejects Hume’s explicit request to proceed otherwise. In the Advertisement affixed to the beginning of the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume ‘desires that the following pieces may alone be regarded as his philosophical sentiments and principles’. If we respect Hume’s wishes and place our focus here (and in relevant essays published after the Treatise, such as ‘Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion’), we have many references to taste but we do not have much in the way of an aesthetic theory.
Suppose we concentrate on the second Enquiry as Hume’s mature position on taste. While I risk a slight overstatement in saying so, Hume’s numerous references to ‘taste’ and ‘beauty’ in the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals tell us a great deal about Hume’s view of human virtue and of character evaluation—of our taste for moral beauty—but next to nothing about the nature and reception of beauty as an aesthetic category for inanimate objects. There is little to be found on the topic of art beyond the observation that great poets have a rare and valuable talent to move the passions. However, even there it is human genius that is the proper object of esteem; Hume offers no real explanation of how the poetry is aesthetically admirable. It is certainly not an ‘aesthetic’ explanation in the sense of offering a theory that could be extended to explain why we have a taste for inanimate natural objects and scenes that lack utility, such as rainbows and sunsets—unless, perhaps, the sentiment that approves of rainbows is a spontaneous, inchoate recognition of the general utility of a specific weather pattern. Although non-moral taste is treated as
epistemologically parallel to moral taste, Hume’s second Enquiry assigns no real purpose to this non-moral operation of sentiment, or at least nothing akin to the purpose (in the moral case) of regulating human behavior and coordinating our social interactions for our mutual benefit. (There is an interesting suggestion, in the example of the young tree, that aesthetic judgments of nature involve anthropomorphization of natural phenomenon.) The problem, in brief, is that the second Enquiry offers little more than the bare assertion of a parallel between moral and non-moral taste. Given Hume’s purposes in explaining morals, he has no reason to explore the disanalogy that would lay out an aesthetic theory as such.
Backtracking to the Treatise, which Townsend regards as the crucial text for understanding Hume’s theory of taste, we gain precious little additional detail about Hume’s thoughts about non-moral beauty. So although I concede that Hume’s theory of taste is presented in its greatest detail in the Treatise, I do not see how that concession undercuts the view that the essay on taste is a better starting point for working out Hume’s aesthetic theory. For example, I do not share Townsend’s confidence that Hume’s major works explain how anything is ever ‘both beautiful and morally ugly’ unless, following the Treatise, we are talking about something that is both morally ugly and has a pleasing appearance of usefulness with respect to its design. People can possess this combination of properties. The mushroom cloud of a powerful bomb blast might also fit the bill. However, it is not clear that the opposition can, on balance, hold for a novel or painting on the Humean model. The difficulty is one noted by Townsend: ‘Hume … does not have recourse to a Kantian distinction between the aesthetic and the practical’. Once the Humean judge moves beyond an initial, superficial response, an artwork’s beauty is tied up in its power to affect audience behavior and therefore an evaluator’s sentiment will reflect the her understanding of which actions are encouraged and discouraged by that artwork. We do not have to read the closing paragraphs of Hume’s essay on taste in order to see that he would not hold Virgil’s Aeneid in high esteem if it promoted viciousness of character. What it less clear from the major works is his theory of how we hold it in high esteem beyond its promotion of desirable moral character.
I grant that there is some sense in which we can say that we have located a philosopher’s aesthetic theory when we locate a theory of beauty. With Hume, we find the word ‘beauty’ applied more frequently to human character than to the perceptible appearance of inanimate objects. Again, my point is that a taste theory that says so little about perceptual appearances is just barely a contribution to aesthetics. Therefore, had Hume never written his essay on taste, I question whether later philosophers would regard Hume as any more important than Jeremy Bentham when it comes to aesthetics. (I note that Bentham’s name does not appear in the index of either of two major reference works on aesthetics that I have handy for consultation at this moment.) Even with the essay on taste in hand, we receive limited insight into a Humean aesthetic for the non-literary arts. These points are relevant, in turn, to Townsend’s assertion that ‘atonal music [is] both important and worthwhile, which surely is an aesthetic judgment’. As presented in the Treatise and Enquiries, Hume’s theory of taste may support the judgment that atonal music is
both important and worthwhile on ‘moral’ grounds, as assigning merit to certain composers and audiences, rather than to the music. In light of Hume’s principle that ‘practice in a particular art’ will reveal, with time, the degree to which difficult works are ‘naturally fitted to produce’ approbation and disapprobation in unprejudiced listeners who possess strong sense and delicate sentiment, it is not clear that atonal music is aesthetically good art. It is historically important art, but that is not the same thing. The twentieth century offers us many important and worthwhile artworks within the sphere of anti-aesthetic art. But that admission is not, in the normal sense, an aesthetic judgment.
For these reasons, I do not agree that it is ‘something of a red herring’ to ask whether Hume regards imaginative association as at work in every exercise of taste. In the wake of Joseph Addison, this line of inquiry relates Hume directly to eighteenth-century aesthetic theory that is not merely an addendum to moral and political theory.
We may seem to be far off track from my article and Townsend’s reply, but I think that these prefatory remarks are relevant to understanding our different interests in exploring Hume’s version of Sancho’s story about the wine cask and the key. Townsend approaches it with the conviction that Hume’s major works have already furnished us with pretty much all that we need to know about Hume’s account of taste and sentiment. I approach it with no such conviction, and therefore I am intrigued by Hume’s statement that he is prepared ‘to give a more accurate definition of delicacy’ of imagination. I take it that he does not think that either he or others have adequately done so. He provides his version of the Don Quixote story about the key, then he says, ‘The great resemblance between mental and bodily taste will easily teach us to apply this story’. The two kinsmen have just demonstrated a delicacy of bodily taste, which is taste in the literal sense. Something like the key is needed in the case of mental taste, which is taste in the metaphorical sense and which is involved in the evaluation of art. Townsend rightly observes that the kinsmen will be laughing stocks unless they produce the key; he then observes, ‘the key only supports their claim because of the nature of their claim—that they can distinguish the taste of leather and of iron accurately’. As such, he thinks that the presence of the key furnishes ‘a truth to which their claim refers’. For Townsend, Hume’s primary task in this essay is ‘to determine what is available to play the role of the key when there is no key present’. Townsend contends that the critical
credentials of Hume’s true judges play that role.
I see two problems with Townsend’s appeal to the credentials of a true judge. First, this line of analysis runs afoul Hume’s of own description of the key. Hume tells us that identification of ‘general rules or avowed patterns of composition is like finding the key with the leathern thong’. Rule-governed patterns are like the key in the case of delicacy of imagination, rather than the credentials of those who possess the requisite delicacy. Second, the critical credentials of a Humean true judge are precisely what generates the need for the ‘key’ on any particular occasion. Since the operation of delicacy cannot be the empirical fact that functions as the key when the possession of delicacy is being called into question, Townsend proposes that ‘other critical characteristics’ become the empirical support or truth that demonstrates accuracy when delicacy is in question. However, to return to the central analogy in the case of the two kinsmen, suppose that the villagers do not dispute the kinsmen’s accuracy in identifying a medium level of tannins, floral overtones, and a red color. These ‘other’ credentials are hardly likely to convince the
village folk that they are right about the presence of two other tastes that are defects in the otherwise good wine. By analogy, suppose a critic finds subtle flaws in an artwork that is otherwise widely esteemed, where this critic’s negative sentiment arises from the way that the work stimulates her imagination. She might be the only critic who reacts with this criticism; Hume’s version of Sancho’s story has it that each of the two kinsmen independently identifies a different flaw, such that they do not agree with each other about the defect in the wine. Why would the years of practice, lack of prejudice, and strong sense of the critic validate a response that no one else shares? Yet, Hume says, ‘Though the hogshead had never been emptied, the taste of the one was still equally delicate, and that of the other equally dull and languid: But it would have been more difficult to have proved the superiority of the former, to the conviction of every by-stander’. In the parallel case of delicate mental taste, the artwork will inspire the true judge to engage in a sequence of imaginative association that results in vivacious associations that others do not make. To
prove the superiority of this exercise of mental taste, the critic will have to show that it follows an established pattern of imaginative association, so that it is not a wild, capricious association. But the specifics of this pattern will generally elude critics in the more subtle cases, and thus, as I put it, particular cases of non-moral taste are often ‘problematically subjective’ in Hume’s account. (Townsend is right to say that this ambiguous phrase is intended to receive emphasis on ‘problematic’ rather than ‘subjective’.)
Despite our differences, I admire Townsend’s articulation of the important methodological and interpretive disputes that have grown up around Hume’s limited and scattered writings on aesthetic theory. I concede that adopting his perspective on Hume resolves some of the issues that I see in Hume’s aesthetics, but I cannot fully endorse that perspective.
REFERENCES
Hume, David [1757] (1987) ‘Of the Standard of Taste’, in Eugene F. Miller (ed.), Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, rev. ed., Indianapolis: Liberty Press: 226-49.----- [1751] (1998)
An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp, Oxford: Oxford University Press ----- [1748] (1999)
An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ----- [1739-40] (2007)
A Treatise of Human Nature: A Critical Edition, Vol. 1, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Townsend, Dabney (2001)
Hume's Aesthetic Theory: Sentiment and Taste in the History of Aesthetics, London and New York: Routledge.
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Delicacy in Hume's Theory of Taste
By Theodore Gracyk
Minnesota State University Moorhead
Winner of the
George Davie Prize for 2010
ABSTRACT:
David Hume's celebrated essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ is the central text for understanding Hume's aesthetic theory, yet an important claim in that essay has received inadequate attention in the literature. Although it is understood that Hume stresses the importance of delicacy of taste, it is less well understood that this delicacy is a delicacy of imagination, which is distinct from a delicacy of perception. Using both the essay and other texts to elucidate this thesis, it appears that Hume's account of taste faces unresolved difficulties in defending a standard of taste.
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It should be obvious that I start from a different point in approaching David Hume’s aesthetic theory than does Ted Gracyk. In his abstract, Gracyk says that “‘Of the Standard of Taste’ is the central text for understanding Hume’s aesthetic theory”. I have argued in a number of places,and especially in my book, Hume’s Aesthetic Theory: Sentiment and Taste, that Hume’s aesthetic theory is central to the Treatise, and that that is where one must turn to understand how Hume develops an aesthetic (actually a theory of criticism and taste) out of the earlier eighteenth-century empiricist theories of beauty and taste. Moreover, as I read it, ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ is not the primary place to look for Hume’s theory of taste. The essay is primarily about the necessity for having standards in those areas of experience that are essentially subjective and how one can develop such standards in a typical area of general concern -- the extensive eighteenth-century literature on standards of taste.
Nevertheless, this is not the place to pursue that discussion, and I now set it aside to focus on Gracyk’s discussion of delicacy as a delicacy of imagination rather than a delicacy of perception. Before beginning, I would offer one initial quibble that still may be important. Eighteenth-century theories of taste begin with the third Earl of Shaftesbury, not Francis Hutcheson. Both Shaftesbury and Hutcheson are led into discussions of taste as a result of their opposition to theological-moral rationalism and the Hobbes’s denial of benevolence in human morality. Shaftesbury’s solution is to establish benevolence as a sentimental reality, and Hutcheson follows him in this. The parallel defense of beauty and taste as equally real sentiments upon which one can rely follows. This is important because there is a sense in which Hume returns to Shaftesbury against Hutcheson.
The question of the innocence of taste leads Gracyk to examine the difference between Hume’s theory and that of Aristotle, which is based on practical judgment. Now clearly, Hume is rejecting Aristotelian reasoning on critical judgment. Yet there remains a significant element of practical judgment in the decision, which Hume clearly endorses, not to accept a preference for Ogilby over Milton. Such a decision is absurd, setting up one horn of the dilemma that Hume addresses. If one wishes to have any critical influence, such a judgment will not do. One will appear foolish and thus without influence. That element of practical judgment links Hume’s theory of taste to seventeenth-century mannerism, which defended the individuality of mannerist painting on the basis of its subjective appeal to a wider audience and thus of its acceptability in polite circles.
Turning to Hume’s theory of imagination, Gracyk notes the difference between a justified use of the imagination and merely capricious imagination, quoting Hume’s distinction “between objects that are pleasing ‘by the primary constitution of our nature’ and those that he admits are only pleasing ‘by caprice’ [Hume 2007: 195]” (Gracyk, 4). This distinction allows Hume to give imagination a more important role in developing a justified taste. Gracyk then considers the suggestion that “Perhaps he regards imaginative association as an addition or supplement to a more basic analysis of beauty and taste, in which case the subjectivity of imaginative association is not endemic to beauty” (Gracyk, 4). This is a useful observation, but I think that it takes us in the wrong direction and should be pursued further and more deeply into Hume’s basic epistemology. Whether justified or capricious, imagination works in essentially the same way. An original impression of sense is subjected to reflection by the imagination. So in either case, imagination produces ideas rather than impressions. Those ideas may be the subject of further reflection (a kind of double reflection) in which the mental idea becomes a mental object without losing its subjectivity. The influence of imaginative ideas depends on two
factors: their strength and vivacity (we believe them, if only for a moment), and our ability to retain them in memory. Purely capricious ideas and associations, while dependent on imagination, fade almost immediately both in their immediate effect and in memory.
When imaginative ideas are objectified, as they are in painting or literature, or as they are when memory takes them as the passionate basis of action, then their continued effect depends on more than strength, vivacity, and continued recollection. They depend on an element of truth. As Hume says, “Poets themselves, tho’ liars by profession, always endeavor to give an air of truth to their fictions; and where that is totally neglected, their performances, however ingenious, will never be able to afford much pleasure. In short, we may observe, that even when ideas have no manner of influence on the will and passions, truth and reality are still requisite, in order to make them entertaining to the imagination.” In morality, this recourse to empirical truth (original impressions justified by causality or reasoning about the relation of ideas or number) allows Hume to reject superstition. In the arts, a more tolerant appreciation is allowable as long is the art is not itself superstitious or morally vicious. This analysis of imagination supports Gracyk’s conjecture that “perhaps Hume thinks that imagination plays an essential role in appreciating works of art, on the grounds that imaginative association supplements whatever directly meets the eye or ear in original beauty” (Gracyk, 5). As Gracyk goes on to note, something like this view of imagination is required if one is to be able to adopt the point of view of authors with a different world-view. We cannot follow them into moral viciousness, but we can imaginatively recognize the truth of their basic views of the world and human nature, for example.
I do not think that Gracyk goes far enough down this line of analysis with regard to Hume’s view of beauty, however. If one follows the epistemological analysis above, it seems clear that Hume must be committed to impressions of reflection that are both original and pleasurable, which makes them beautiful. They are original impressions of reflection only because they are based, as all impressions are, on impressions of sense, but it is the mind’s own sense of itself and its ideas that makes them reflective. Hume has none of the complications that arise for Hutcheson’s formula of “uniformity amidst variety” when confronted with pure colors or purely sensual pleasure. Hume can agree with Burke on the pleasures of sex, for example. Neither has much need for further analysis of the pleasure and ‘beauty’ involved until further moral or critical reflection enters the discussion. Of course further imaginative reflection is possible as is verified by the common eighteenth-century use of ‘beauty’ as a term of moral approbation and the continued association of physical beauty with moral beauty in the eighteenth century. Only when our
psychology becomes more complex does it cease to seem contradictory to say, without extensive qualification, that something is both beautiful but morally ugly.
Finally, Gracyk considers whether imagination is always necessary to the sentiment of beauty. This is something of a red herring. In the passage quoted by Gracyk: But though the value of every object can be determined only by the sentiment or passion of every individual, we may observe, that the passion, in pronouncing its verdict, considers not the object simply, as it is in itself, but surveys it with all the circumstances, which attend it. A man transported with joy, on account of his possessing a diamond, confines not his view to the glittering stone before him (Hume 1987b: 172) [‘The Sceptic’], it is only when the passion is considered as a whole and pronounces a verdict that it has gone beyond the original sentiment itself. The “glittering stone” is the starting point, and if it were not beautiful, the man would not be transported with joy in the same way. A complex process is involved in expanding imaginative apprehension, and it is not necessary to say definitively whether imagination is involved only in some original perceptions of sense because Hume is not committed to Locke’s distinction between simple ideas of sense and
complex ideas nor to the later analytical distinction between ideas of sense and more complex ideas of perception. Hume’s epistemology allows room for perception of complex objects, though at some point there must be original impressions. For Hume, as an educated human being of some experience, one can simply perceive either a color or a whole sunset. The latter may have involved an imaginative assimilation of a whole, but that does not make it the same as perceiving a sunset painted by Claude.
The consequence of introducing the imagination into a theory of taste seems to be skepticism. Gracyk, like most reader’s Hume, thinks that this is just what happens and that Hume must be saved from the taste of the skeptic by recourse to a “true taste” that is distinguishable from the immediate taste where anything goes. I, on the contrary, think that Hume does not need saving at all. Hume’s theory of taste, per se, is, in fact, purely subjective, and if it never left the level of subjective immediacy of pleasure, that would be the end of the usefulness of taste for criticism. But Hume does not end the story at that point, and he does not have recourse to a Kantian distinction between the aesthetic and the practical or to the later psychological theories that developed from Kant’s aesthetics. Hume simply moves on to more complex tastes and more complex theories of how taste may be judged. Taste remains thoroughly sentimental, but sentiment is self-reflective and self-judgmental when it enters into critical judgment. As noted above, truth plays a role in all subsequent iterations of sentiment, not independently of sentiment itself, but as sentiment continues to find pleasure in the ideas and ‘objects’ to which it refers.
Since I am cited with approval before Gracyk turns to the crucial example of Sancho’s kinsmen in explicating delicacy of taste, it would be churlish to disagree too strongly. I think that, for the most part, Gracyk has delicacy itself right. Delicacy of the imagination supplements the grosser immediate delicacy of sense that allows some to perceive colors, tastes, and shapes more accurately. And that is, in a sense, the purpose of Hume’s retelling of Sancho’s story (which is not quite the same as the way Cervantes tells it). But there are two problems that Gracyk does not adequately deal with. The first is the key itself. For the parable to work, there must be a key. Without it, Hume admits, no one would be led to accept the kinsmen’s expertise. Yet there is no key in the case of imaginative taste beyond the obvious pleasure that one finds in the reflective impression, which remains subjective. That pleasure should not be overlooked, however. The story could not work at all unless everyone agreed in advance that the wine was good. If on tasting it, the kinsmen spit it out with evident disgust, we would have an entirely different story. The only
reason that delicacy comes into play is because it is required by the particular claim of the kinsmen. That is what needs to be supported, and the key only supports their claim because of the nature of their claim – that they can distinguish the taste of leather and of iron accurately. There is a truth to which their claim refers, and the delicacy of their claim is supported by that truth, even for those who cannot experience it. Note that nothing in the story suggests that the education of the other wine tasters extends to their being able to taste the iron and leather once it is pointed out, nor should it. That would be antithetical to the point of the story. It is not a story about acquiring an educated palate. The existence of the key illustrates just what Hume claims it does: subjective judgments can be verified by other, empirical
evidence. The problem for “Of the Standard of Taste” is to determine what is available to play the role of the key when there is no key present, and that is the role of the criteria of good critics and the consequent agreement among them once they have been identified.
There is a further point that Gracyk overlooks, however. Sancho’s kinsmen are considered fools by the critics who laugh at them. There is a point here about what delicacy of taste refers to and why it is important, and it goes back to the initial disagreement that I pointed out at the beginning of my commentary. Hume does not need to prove that there is such a thing as delicacy of taste or that it depends on the imagination. To have followed his arguments on the reliance of taste on sentiment and on beauty as a sentiment is to recognize that there must be such thing as delicacy, since sentiment always depends, to begin with, on an impression. What Hume must demonstrate is that delicacy of taste in either of its forms (and they need not be distinct) can provide part of the solution to the problem he has set himself – to demonstrate the real possibility in some cases and the theoretical possibility in all cases of a standard of taste. Sancho’s kinsmen have a way to demonstrate that they are not fools and to put an end to the laughter. Literary critics and art critics have a similar way to point to the delicacy of their taste, first by
being able to discern the empirical support for their critical credentials (an empirical fact, as Peter Kivy pointed out more than thirty years ago ) and then by confirming their judgment by being able to point to other critical characteristics and the widespread agreement of those judges who have all of those characteristics. Sancho’s kinsmen may still turn out to be buffoons (as Sancho himself remains, up to a point), but they have a way to establish their credentials as wine tasters provided they share enough delicacy of taste with other wine tasters. And those who laugh take a risk if they do so. They need not be able to taste the iron and leather to think it wise not to laugh.
While I basically agree with Gracyk on the requirement for delicacy (who wouldn’t), I will add just a few additional comments before considering his conclusions. ‘Delicacy’ has tended to become the central characteristic of the authoritative critic in much recent commentary. Gracyk is surely correct to link it to the imagination, not just as delicacy of imagination but also as a form of imagination. But delicacy by itself is not enough. As Peter Kivy pointed out, what is important about the characteristics of the good critic is that the characteristics transfer the question of a standard from one that has no answer because of its subjectivity to one that can be considered empirically. That is even more true of being widely acquainted with what has gone before so that one can make comparisons and having a good eye or ear (good sense) so that one can see or hear what is going on.
Delicacy’ is only one of a set of criteria as Hume uses the term, and it is not essentially metaphorical. It is the capacity to make fine discriminations that others may be unable to make. That presents a problem for making delicacy the most important characteristic of the good critic. Only the most ardent partisans of a distinct aesthetic attitude think that too much knowledge detracts from critical ability, and only the most politicized post-modernist thinks that a lack of prejudice is a detriment to clear apprehension, but there are several ways that delicacy can work negatively, and Hume was aware of them. For one thing, too much delicacy may lead to not being able to see the forest for the trees. Eighteenth-century critics made fun of the pedants and antiquarians who spent all of their time correcting texts without ever actually reading them. Connoisseurs were objects of fun for being overly finicky. More importantly, however, for a system based on pleasure and pain as the fundamental sensations, delicacy can cause pain as well as pleasure – both sensually and aesthetically. Really high notes make my head ache; for a true musician, I am sure that too many false notes can do the same thing. Hume treats the problem by distinguishing delicacy of taste from delicacy of passion. “Delicacy of taste has the same effects as delicacy of passion: It enlarges the sphere both of our happiness and misery, and makes us sensible to pains as well as pleasures, which escape the rest of mankind.” Hume tries to protect delicacy of taste from that problem by acknowledging that taste involves more than just delicacy. Delicacy of taste is preferable for two reasons: we can be more selective in our tastes, more in control, and the pleasures, while rarer, are more refined. Neither selectivity nor refinement is a matter of delicacy alone. One must incorporate critical judgment. One element of that judgment is sentimental. It depends ultimately on pleasure. But the other element is empirical. Since the latter cannot be inferred directly from empirically testable impressions themselves (Hume’s fact/value distinction in some form), one is led back to critics and the need for a standard of taste. Only in combination are the characteristics of the true critic an empirical guide to which critics one should look to for consensus. Once the standard has been identified, one can look to it as a basis both for selectivity and guidance. I may either avoid atonal music in my concert going, or I may study it further in the hope, which may not be realized, of coming to enjoy it.
Gracyk thinks that delicacy of imagination can explain why some enjoy what others do not, but “it must do so in a way that does not render all taste into something problematically subjective” [Gracyk, 12]. This caveat can be read with two different emphases – either on ‘problematic’ or ‘subjective’. Certainly, one can agree that there are problematically subjective instances of taste – “I know what I like.” But if the emphasis shifts to ‘subjective’, so that the subjectivity of taste would make all taste problematic, then I, for one, emphatically disagree, and I think that Hume must as well if he is to be consistent. Not all judgments of taste are equal; some can be condemned and some confirmed. But it is not their subjectivity that condemns or confirms them. It is the additional factors that enter into the judgment – the quality
of the critic, the moral sentiments that are raised in addition to whatever judgment of beauty is present, and the truth of ideas as opposed to ideas that reflect superstition or error. Hume takes a lot of this for granted in a short essay intended to counter both the realists about beauty (Reid) and “anything goes” subjectivism (Mandeville). But I think it is all to be found in the Treatise.
Gracyk’s example of music that is too subtle is admirably developed with respect to subtlety. Some things are surely too subtle to deserve praise. But that does not affect delicacy of taste or the imagination. The one person who gets a musical joke also gets the pleasure. That does not make him a better critic, however. He simply has a more particular musical knowledge in this instance, and that entitles him to recognition of delicacy of taste in this instance. He is exactly like Sancho’s kinsmen who have a way to verify their delicacy of taste with respect to wine (or at least this wine that is acknowledged to be good), but who may fail miserably in selecting the wine to go with each distinct course of a meal. The problem, to say it one last time, is that one slides much too easily into treating “Of the Standard of Taste” as a treatise on taste itself – which it is only indirectly. I give Hume full credit for knowing what he is arguing. His associationist psychology may be limited (though I don’t think that makes it wrong), but he has no sorities problem. Hume cannot and does not expect the standard of taste to correct the imagination as Gracyk seems to suppose when he writes: “When it operates at the more subtle end of the spectrum of associative prompts, imagination is just as ‘innocent and ‘blameless’ – that is, just as resistant to correction through practice, lack of prejudice, and so on – as the variations in personal temperament that Hume recognises as an insurmountable obstacle to agreement in taste” (Gracyk,13). Of course it is innocent and blameless. It just is not expected to provide correction in such instances and it does not provide a standard.
Roger Shiner, in this respect, like Thomas Reid, James Beattie, and Alexander Gerard before him, is guilty of refuting what Hume never doubted and missing entirely what is valuable in his aesthetic theory, to paraphrase Kant. A standard of taste, Hume holds, is needed if we are to be guided in our taste; and as a good eighteenth-century enlightenment philosopher, Hume acknowledges that we need such guidance. A standard of taste may guide us by educating us, as whole individuals (not just as narrow specialists with a specialist’s knowledge and enjoyment), in what to consider. I had to be educated to read Joyce’s Ulysses carefully because my teachers insisted it would be worth it, and I didn’t want to be considered an ignoramus. Or a standard of taste, upheld by reliable critics, may lead us to understand tastes that are not, and may never be, our own. I doubt that I shall ever enjoy atonal music, but a standard of taste leads me to acknowledge both the critical acumen of those who do and in that sense to appreciate what I do not enjoy. I think atonal music both important and worthwhile, which surely is an aesthetic judgment. Hume
convinces me that the pure subjectivity of beauty and taste, which we rather misleadingly call aesthetics, need not turn our critical judgments into subjective utterances of the early positivist variety (‘x is beautiful’ means I approve of x) or exempt them from meaningful discussion and defense. Hume may not have all of aesthetic theory right, but he gives us a useful place to start over after trips into the dead ends of aesthetic realism and aesthetic psychologism.
Dabney Townsend
PO Box 915
Pooler, GA 31322
dabney.townsend@armstrong.edu
Reply to Townsend
By Ted Gracyk
I am honored that Dabney Townsend was willing to offer such a thorough critique of my efforts to make some sense of ‘delicacy’ in David Hume’s aesthetic theory. A point by point reply to Townshend would involve an answer nearly the length of my essay, so I will concentrate on a few central points. First, we agree on some important points about Hume’s philosophy. We agree that ‘Hume is not much of a skeptic’. I think we are in agreement that readers are tempted to project current meanings of terminology back onto Hume, but that we must resist this natural impulse. Furthermore, we agree that the philosophical vocabulary that became current in the twentieth century does not map neatly onto Hume’s texts. Nonetheless, our methodological assumptions are otherwise different enough that it is not surprising that our readings of Hume’s aesthetic theory differ, too. Second, there is the closely related question of what it means to look for Hume’s aesthetic theory. On this matter, we appear to part company, as I appear to construe ‘aesthetic’ more narrowly than does Townsend. Third, we disagree about the intended lessons of the wine tasting example that Hume employs in the essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’.
Townsend has done more than anyone to demonstrate the extent to which ‘there is a substantial aesthetic material embedded in Hume’s major philosophical works’. Viewing the essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ from this perspective, it is not surprising that Townsend treats that essay as a focused addendum to a larger theoretical enterprise, for Hume’s doctrine of taste has been worked out elsewhere, in great detail. The present forum is not the place to examine the details of Townsend’s larger project, but it is important to note that, like the majority of Hume scholars, Townsend regards Hume’s Treatise as the foundation stone of the interpretive edifice. Although it is the norm, this approach rejects Hume’s explicit request to proceed otherwise. In the Advertisement affixed to the beginning of the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume ‘desires that the following pieces may alone be regarded as his philosophical sentiments and principles’. If we respect Hume’s wishes and place our focus here (and in relevant essays published after the Treatise, such as ‘Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion’), we have many references to taste but we do not have much in the way of an aesthetic theory.
Suppose we concentrate on the second Enquiry as Hume’s mature position on taste. While I risk a slight overstatement in saying so, Hume’s numerous references to ‘taste’ and ‘beauty’ in the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals tell us a great deal about Hume’s view of human virtue and of character evaluation—of our taste for moral beauty—but next to nothing about the nature and reception of beauty as an aesthetic category for inanimate objects. There is little to be found on the topic of art beyond the observation that great poets have a rare and valuable talent to move the passions. However, even there it is human genius that is the proper object of esteem; Hume offers no real explanation of how the poetry is aesthetically admirable. It is certainly not an ‘aesthetic’ explanation in the sense of offering a theory that could be extended to explain why we have a taste for inanimate natural objects and scenes that lack utility, such as rainbows and sunsets—unless, perhaps, the sentiment that approves of rainbows is a spontaneous, inchoate recognition of the general utility of a specific weather pattern. Although non-moral taste is treated as
epistemologically parallel to moral taste, Hume’s second Enquiry assigns no real purpose to this non-moral operation of sentiment, or at least nothing akin to the purpose (in the moral case) of regulating human behavior and coordinating our social interactions for our mutual benefit. (There is an interesting suggestion, in the example of the young tree, that aesthetic judgments of nature involve anthropomorphization of natural phenomenon.) The problem, in brief, is that the second Enquiry offers little more than the bare assertion of a parallel between moral and non-moral taste. Given Hume’s purposes in explaining morals, he has no reason to explore the disanalogy that would lay out an aesthetic theory as such.
Backtracking to the Treatise, which Townsend regards as the crucial text for understanding Hume’s theory of taste, we gain precious little additional detail about Hume’s thoughts about non-moral beauty. So although I concede that Hume’s theory of taste is presented in its greatest detail in the Treatise, I do not see how that concession undercuts the view that the essay on taste is a better starting point for working out Hume’s aesthetic theory. For example, I do not share Townsend’s confidence that Hume’s major works explain how anything is ever ‘both beautiful and morally ugly’ unless, following the Treatise, we are talking about something that is both morally ugly and has a pleasing appearance of usefulness with respect to its design. People can possess this combination of properties. The mushroom cloud of a powerful bomb blast might also fit the bill. However, it is not clear that the opposition can, on balance, hold for a novel or painting on the Humean model. The difficulty is one noted by Townsend: ‘Hume … does not have recourse to a Kantian distinction between the aesthetic and the practical’. Once the Humean judge moves beyond an initial, superficial response, an artwork’s beauty is tied up in its power to affect audience behavior and therefore an evaluator’s sentiment will reflect the her understanding of which actions are encouraged and discouraged by that artwork. We do not have to read the closing paragraphs of Hume’s essay on taste in order to see that he would not hold Virgil’s Aeneid in high esteem if it promoted viciousness of character. What it less clear from the major works is his theory of how we hold it in high esteem beyond its promotion of desirable moral character.
I grant that there is some sense in which we can say that we have located a philosopher’s aesthetic theory when we locate a theory of beauty. With Hume, we find the word ‘beauty’ applied more frequently to human character than to the perceptible appearance of inanimate objects. Again, my point is that a taste theory that says so little about perceptual appearances is just barely a contribution to aesthetics. Therefore, had Hume never written his essay on taste, I question whether later philosophers would regard Hume as any more important than Jeremy Bentham when it comes to aesthetics. (I note that Bentham’s name does not appear in the index of either of two major reference works on aesthetics that I have handy for consultation at this moment.) Even with the essay on taste in hand, we receive limited insight into a Humean aesthetic for the non-literary arts. These points are relevant, in turn, to Townsend’s assertion that ‘atonal music [is] both important and worthwhile, which surely is an aesthetic judgment’. As presented in the Treatise and Enquiries, Hume’s theory of taste may support the judgment that atonal music is
both important and worthwhile on ‘moral’ grounds, as assigning merit to certain composers and audiences, rather than to the music. In light of Hume’s principle that ‘practice in a particular art’ will reveal, with time, the degree to which difficult works are ‘naturally fitted to produce’ approbation and disapprobation in unprejudiced listeners who possess strong sense and delicate sentiment, it is not clear that atonal music is aesthetically good art. It is historically important art, but that is not the same thing. The twentieth century offers us many important and worthwhile artworks within the sphere of anti-aesthetic art. But that admission is not, in the normal sense, an aesthetic judgment.
For these reasons, I do not agree that it is ‘something of a red herring’ to ask whether Hume regards imaginative association as at work in every exercise of taste. In the wake of Joseph Addison, this line of inquiry relates Hume directly to eighteenth-century aesthetic theory that is not merely an addendum to moral and political theory.
We may seem to be far off track from my article and Townsend’s reply, but I think that these prefatory remarks are relevant to understanding our different interests in exploring Hume’s version of Sancho’s story about the wine cask and the key. Townsend approaches it with the conviction that Hume’s major works have already furnished us with pretty much all that we need to know about Hume’s account of taste and sentiment. I approach it with no such conviction, and therefore I am intrigued by Hume’s statement that he is prepared ‘to give a more accurate definition of delicacy’ of imagination. I take it that he does not think that either he or others have adequately done so. He provides his version of the Don Quixote story about the key, then he says, ‘The great resemblance between mental and bodily taste will easily teach us to apply this story’. The two kinsmen have just demonstrated a delicacy of bodily taste, which is taste in the literal sense. Something like the key is needed in the case of mental taste, which is taste in the metaphorical sense and which is involved in the evaluation of art. Townsend rightly observes that the kinsmen will be laughing stocks unless they produce the key; he then observes, ‘the key only supports their claim because of the nature of their claim—that they can distinguish the taste of leather and of iron accurately’. As such, he thinks that the presence of the key furnishes ‘a truth to which their claim refers’. For Townsend, Hume’s primary task in this essay is ‘to determine what is available to play the role of the key when there is no key present’. Townsend contends that the critical
credentials of Hume’s true judges play that role.
I see two problems with Townsend’s appeal to the credentials of a true judge. First, this line of analysis runs afoul Hume’s of own description of the key. Hume tells us that identification of ‘general rules or avowed patterns of composition is like finding the key with the leathern thong’. Rule-governed patterns are like the key in the case of delicacy of imagination, rather than the credentials of those who possess the requisite delicacy. Second, the critical credentials of a Humean true judge are precisely what generates the need for the ‘key’ on any particular occasion. Since the operation of delicacy cannot be the empirical fact that functions as the key when the possession of delicacy is being called into question, Townsend proposes that ‘other critical characteristics’ become the empirical support or truth that demonstrates accuracy when delicacy is in question. However, to return to the central analogy in the case of the two kinsmen, suppose that the villagers do not dispute the kinsmen’s accuracy in identifying a medium level of tannins, floral overtones, and a red color. These ‘other’ credentials are hardly likely to convince the
village folk that they are right about the presence of two other tastes that are defects in the otherwise good wine. By analogy, suppose a critic finds subtle flaws in an artwork that is otherwise widely esteemed, where this critic’s negative sentiment arises from the way that the work stimulates her imagination. She might be the only critic who reacts with this criticism; Hume’s version of Sancho’s story has it that each of the two kinsmen independently identifies a different flaw, such that they do not agree with each other about the defect in the wine. Why would the years of practice, lack of prejudice, and strong sense of the critic validate a response that no one else shares? Yet, Hume says, ‘Though the hogshead had never been emptied, the taste of the one was still equally delicate, and that of the other equally dull and languid: But it would have been more difficult to have proved the superiority of the former, to the conviction of every by-stander’. In the parallel case of delicate mental taste, the artwork will inspire the true judge to engage in a sequence of imaginative association that results in vivacious associations that others do not make. To
prove the superiority of this exercise of mental taste, the critic will have to show that it follows an established pattern of imaginative association, so that it is not a wild, capricious association. But the specifics of this pattern will generally elude critics in the more subtle cases, and thus, as I put it, particular cases of non-moral taste are often ‘problematically subjective’ in Hume’s account. (Townsend is right to say that this ambiguous phrase is intended to receive emphasis on ‘problematic’ rather than ‘subjective’.)
Despite our differences, I admire Townsend’s articulation of the important methodological and interpretive disputes that have grown up around Hume’s limited and scattered writings on aesthetic theory. I concede that adopting his perspective on Hume resolves some of the issues that I see in Hume’s aesthetics, but I cannot fully endorse that perspective.
REFERENCES
Hume, David [1757] (1987) ‘Of the Standard of Taste’, in Eugene F. Miller (ed.), Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, rev. ed., Indianapolis: Liberty Press: 226-49.----- [1751] (1998)
An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp, Oxford: Oxford University Press ----- [1748] (1999)
An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ----- [1739-40] (2007)
A Treatise of Human Nature: A Critical Edition, Vol. 1, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Townsend, Dabney (2001)
Hume's Aesthetic Theory: Sentiment and Taste in the History of Aesthetics, London and New York: Routledge.
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