Of the Standard of Taste

Overview

About twenty-five pages, a short essay by David Hume from Four Dissertations, published in 1757, addressing a genuine philosophical problem Hume sets himself rather than a purely rhetorical one. Hume’s own philosophy holds that beauty is no quality in things themselves but a sentiment in the mind, a position that seems to make all tastes equally valid since sentiments simply differ from person to person without any external property in the object to adjudicate between them.

Yet, as Hume observes, no one who has actually read both authors seriously believes that Ogilby writes as well as Milton. Rather than abandoning either his sentimentalist premise or his own confident literary judgment, Hume threads between them, arguing that while sentiment itself cannot be argued with directly, some sentiments are the product of better instruments than others. He describes the qualifications of a true judge, delicacy of imagination, practice, comparison, freedom from prejudice and good sense, and takes the joint verdict of such critics across time as the standard, allowing for the unavoidable differences of temperament and of age.

What happens

Stating the problem. Hume opens by stating his central problem directly: his own sentimentalist philosophy holds that beauty is no quality in things but a sentiment in the mind, which seems logically to make all aesthetic tastes equally valid, and yet this conclusion conflicts sharply with the ordinary, confident conviction that some poets and works are genuinely better than others.

Relocating the standard. Hume resolves this tension by arguing that while sentiment itself cannot be argued with directly, since it expresses the mind’s own response rather than a claim about external fact, some sentiments are nonetheless produced by better instruments than others, relocating the actual standard for judgment from the object onto the quality of the judging mind itself.

The qualifications of a true judge. Hume describes in detail the specific qualifications required of a true judge of taste, delicacy of imagination allowing fine discrimination, extensive practice comparing many works, freedom from personal prejudice, and sound general good sense, a criteria set intended to distinguish genuinely qualified critical judgment from merely strongly held opinion.

Allowing for differences of temperament and age. Hume acknowledges that even the most qualified critics will not achieve perfect uniform agreement on every specific judgment, allowing for unavoidable differences of individual temperament and of historical age that mean the standard of taste operates as a general tendency rather than a mechanism producing identical verdicts from every qualified judge.

The joint verdict as standard. Hume proposes that the accumulated joint verdict of qualified critics across time, rather than any single judgment or any purely objective external property, constitutes the actual working standard of taste, a solution that preserves his sentimentalist premise while still explaining why some critical judgments carry genuine, lasting authority.

How to read it

Read Hume’s essay as a genuine philosophical problem-solving exercise rather than a straightforward defense of either pure relativism or objective aesthetic standards; Hume takes seriously both his own sentimentalist premise and the ordinary conviction that some critical judgments are better than others, and works carefully to reconcile rather than simply choose between them.

Pay close attention to how Hume’s move, distinguishing the validity of sentiment itself from the quality of the instrument producing it, avoids simply smuggling back objective beauty into a philosophy that had already ruled it out; the standard he proposes remains located in judging minds rather than in any external property of objects.

Notice how specifically Hume’s portrait of the true critic, delicacy, practice, comparison, freedom from prejudice, good sense, functions as a genuinely testable and learnable set of qualifications rather than a vague appeal to good taste; this specificity is central to what makes his proposed solution more than mere assertion.

Consider Hume’s allowance for unavoidable differences of temperament and age as a genuinely important qualification on his overall argument; the standard of taste he proposes operates as accumulated tendency across qualified judges rather than a mechanism guaranteeing perfect agreement, a nuance worth weighing against any oversimplified reading of his solution.

Read this essay alongside Hegel’s Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics to compare two quite different philosophical approaches to beauty and critical judgment, Hume’s empiricist grounding of taste in qualified sentiment against Hegel’s more systematic historical account of beauty’s development through successive artistic forms.

Questions it raises

• Does Hume’s solution, relocating the standard of taste onto the quality of the judging mind rather than any external property of the object, successfully reconcile his sentimentalist premise with confident critical judgment, or does this move ultimately smuggle back in something resembling objective standards through the qualifications of the ideal critic?
• How persuasive are Hume’s specific qualifications for a true judge, delicacy of imagination, practice, comparison, freedom from prejudice, good sense? Do these criteria actually succeed in distinguishing genuinely better critical judgment, or could they themselves be applied inconsistently or subject to their own kind of bias?
• What does Hume’s example, contrasting Ogilby unfavorably with Milton, actually demonstrate? Does the near-universal agreement about this particular comparison generalize to more genuinely contested aesthetic judgments, or does Hume’s argument work better for extreme cases than for closer, more genuinely debatable comparisons?
• How does Hume’s allowance for unavoidable differences of temperament and age affect the overall strength of his proposed standard of taste? Does acknowledging these differences appropriately qualify an otherwise overreaching claim, or does it risk undermining the standard’s practical usefulness?
• Given that Hume proposes the joint verdict of qualified critics across time as the actual standard, how should this standard handle cases where such critics have historically disagreed, or where later critical consensus has reversed earlier judgments? Does the standard remain coherent under these conditions?
• How does Hume’s essay compare to more contemporary debates about aesthetic relativism and critical authority? Does his eighteenth-century solution to reconciling subjective sentiment with genuine critical standards still hold explanatory power for how people actually discuss and evaluate art and literature today?