Some Questions in Hume's Aesthetics

Abstract

The central problem posed in Hume's essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ concerns the mutual adjustment of two things: a skepticism about the correctness of tastes, and a belief that artistic productions genuinely differ in their merits. In response, Hume modifies the skepticism by proposing that the ‘joint verdict of true judges’ is the standard of taste. This article surveys three sets of issues in connection with this solution: the role of rules in grounding verdicts; the possibility of circularity in the judge-verdict relation; and the relevance of the judges’ verdicts to those that non-judges would or should make.