Judgement and Taste - Hume and Kant

According to Hume and Kant aesthetic judgements exemplify taste.

By an aesthetic judgement is meant, simply, a judgement such as that sunset or vase of flowers is beautiful.

There are 2 crucial logical features of judgements which were identified by Hume and Kant, and these presuppose taste is:

1. 1.The condition of felt response. Aesthetic judgement rests fundamentally on a felt response to its object, and personal acquaintance with it (Kant). Aesthetic judgements cannot be passed second hand on objects. That aesthetic judgement presupposes personal experience of its object agrees with the plain fact that objects of aesthetic judgement must be sensory (works of art must exist in some medium or other).
   

2. 2.The absence of rules. Rules play no role in aesthetic judgement (Kant). An aesthetic rule would be a general proposition that enabled aesthetic judgements to be inferred on the basis of information about the formal, sensory, or other non-aesthetic properties of an object. What explains this? The explanation must make reference to the conditions of felt response and personal acquaintance.
   

Both Hume and Kant assert the importance, in a fully developedculture, of exemplary aesthetic objects; established models as Hume calls them, which serve as touchstones of aesthetic value.

AESTHETIC OBJECTIVISM

Aesthetic objectivism is the doctrine that aesthetic qualities are genuine properties which inhere in objects independently of the subject's awarenesss. (Sometimes A. Objectivism is called aesthetic realism).

According to aesthetic objectivism, aesthetic experience consists in acquiring knowledge of its object's properties through perception. Historically, aesthetic objectivism has been associated with rationalism. Rationalism looks on an idea such as beauty as a cognition (i.e. thought) of a real property shared by all beautiful objects; The property in question is identified with perfection.

AESTHETIC SUBJECTIVISM

Aesthetic subjectivism is the doctrine that aesthetic qualities do not inhere in objects and that what it is for an object to have some aesthetic quality is for it to produce a certain response in the subject. Historically aesthetic subjectivism is associated with empiricism. Empiricism, treating the mind as a passive container of sensory ideas, inclines to a view of beauty and other aesthetic qualities as simple semi-sensory ideas caused in the mind by certain combinations of perceptible features in objects.

Hume: beauty "is  no quality of things themselves; it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.".

ARGUMENTS FOR AESTHETIC SUBJECTIVISM

1. 1.The variation in tastes between different individuals counts in favour of subjectivism. The implication is that if tastes are different aesthetic qualities do not inhere in objects. The objectivist will counter that perhaps aesthetic qualities are elusive, and that observers have to meet special conditions to discern aesthetic properties in them (perhaps through the appropriate cultural background).
   

2. 2.Kant spells out that pleasure, like pain, is a felt response. It is not a cognitive state. Kant: "pleasure designates nothing whatsoever in an object" The idea that properties inhere in objects but necessarily generate an aesthetic (i.e. felt) response makes no sense.
   

3. 3.The objectivist's view is that cognition 'fits' reality, and this implies a distinction between reality and experience. But how well does this fit with aesthetic experience and judgement? The subjectivist will argue that it does not matter whether aesthetic experience puts us in touch with the real world, and the distinction in the aesthetic experience between how things are and how they merely seem is either non-existent, or very different to how it is in cognitive contexts.
   

Objections to Aesthetic subjectivism

Although a commonsensical approach, if aesthetic properties do not inhere in objects, what is to stop one person thinking an object is beautiful and another ugly? Subjectivism seems to imply that aesthetic judgements cannot be argued about; one simply states, "that (I consider that object) is beautiful" As Hume puts it, each individual should simply 'acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to relegate those of others'. This would amount to all out unqualified subjectivism, in which there is no logical difference between aesthetic taste and gustatory taste.

Unqualified aesthetic judgement brings a subject, who passes a judgement on an object, to a point where they are doing no more than reporting their own feelings. - their own mental state. This is tantamount to emotivism, as A J Ayer would express; 'such aesthetic words as "beautiful" and "hideous" are employed, as ethical words are employed, not to make statements of fact, but simply to express certain feelings and evoke a certain response. It follows that there is no sense in attributing objective validity to aesthetic judgements.'

Unqualified subjectivism clashes with common sense. It is our common sense view that 'the music is beautiful' means more than just the utterance reflecting or reporting the mental states of the speaker. Even if it pre-supposes 'I find that music beautiful', the statement aims to say something about the music, and not about oneself.

Because it contradicts common sense, unqualified aesthetic subjectivism is equivalent to scepticism inasmuch as that it denies the rationality of a kind of aesthetic judgement that common sense actually supposes to be rational.

Hume

Hume asserts that a standard of taste is at work in our aesthetic experiences. Accordingly, the standard of taste lies not in the object, but in the sensibilities of the subject. There are 5 key claims:

1. 1.There are certain relations 'which nature has placed between the form and the sentiment: some particular forms or qualities, from the original structure of the internal fabric, are calculated to please, others to displease'.
   

2. 2.The aesthetic sensibility of each individual varies in its quality and delicacy.
   

3. 3.As we agree that critics, having more refined delicacies, we defer to their judgement.
   

4. 4.A correct aesthetic judgement is one that issues from a delicate sensibility operating under ideal conditions.
   

5. 5.Aesthetic judgements do not identify certain properties inhering in object, nor do they simply report the subject's experiences. An object's possession of an aesthetic quality consists of it being 'fitted' to generate a certain response in us.
   

So Hume manages to achieve the idea that Aesthetic Judgement is in one sense subjective as it is in the sensibilities of the subject that it resides, and in another sense is a kind of objectivism inasmuch as there is an adherence to a standard of taste.

Objections to Hume

Why should I acquiesce to the judgement of the critic? I.e. why should his be a stronger claim than my own in the matter of aesthetic judgement? Hume appears to us only a causal factor in responding to this objection. That the object causes a judgement to be made by the critic with more delicately tuned sensibilities does not explain how anyone has grounds for a genuine judgement of the object.

Contemporary Accounts of the Aesthetic

SIBLEY

Sibley contends that aesthetic qualities are no more subjective than colours. Whereas being on a par with colours is the least subjective status that aesthetic qualities can get with Hume and Kant. This claim of Sibley's has been criticized on the grounds that in truth aesthetic disagreement is more extensive and different in kind to the disagreement about the colours of objects. So common experience appears to tell a different story. He also claims that taste involves a special kind of  perception.

HUNGERLAND

Hungerland rejects Sibley's claim that taste involves a special kind of perception and argues that aesthetic qualities are better compared to the aspects that Wittgenstein discusses (as exemplified by the famous duck-rabbit picture, or the looks that objects are said to have - as when one says of someone that 'she looks as if she could run a four-minute-mile'.

MEAGER

Ms Meager goes further in the direction of subjectivity by stating that aesthetic awareness is defined by an interest in having a certain sort of experience, and he rejects outright that aesthetic qualities are features of objects. However, she nevertheless she hangs on to the idea that the logical role of aesthetic judgements are descriptive, and so she says that the role of aesthetic judgements is to ascribe powers to objects - powers that induce experiences in us.

SCRUTON

Roger Scruton opposes all three views expressed above, and denies that aesthetic judgements are descriptive too, claiming that their logical function is, as Wittgenstein suggests, closer to that of gestures and exclamations. I.e. it is to put across or convey a certain kind of experience. On Scruton's affective theory we should not really speak of aesthetic qualities at all.

AESTHETIC REASONS AND JUSTIFICATION

There is a real distinction between judgements which are aesthetic and almost any other judgement. Most other judgements can be justified in one way or another. There are rules and criteria, or generalizations which offer a background to rational judgements, which don't occur in aesthetic judgements. But that is not to say that aesthetic judgement should be outside the area of reason. But if aesthetic judgements are to remain distinct from mere likings and preferences they must in some sense be open to justification.

This is tied up with how we see the job of the critic. The critic can be regarded as;

1. 1.Identifying the sources of a work's aesthetic qualities (an explanatory function).
   

2. 2.Determining what responses are appropriate (a normative function).
   

3. 3.Deepening and intensifying our aesthetic responses (the critic ' puts across' or conveys her own experience which has interest for us because of the critic's highly tuned sensitivities (Hume).
   

4. 4.The critic must provide an interpretation of the work and identify its meaning.