Hume notes that conventional wisdom maintains that de gmtibus non est disputandum, but were
someone “to assert an equality of genius and elegance between Ogüby and Milton”®^ her sentiment would be pronounced “absurd and ridiculous.” Truth and falsity, or at least appropriateness and inappropriateness, are properly predicated o f evaluative judgments. Wliat grounds correctness o f judgment is in some sense a social construction, a convergence o f evaluative judgment based on the attributes o f individuals who correct the defects o f their idiosyncratic experiential capacities by the employment o f reason. But Hume controversially also claims that certain non-aesthetic qualities have a specific fit to the fabric o f human minds, such that properly constituted judges will reliably attribute the same aesthetic qualities to the same cases. This uniformity o f human nature underpins Hume’s arguments for the objectivity o f aesthetic judgment. Such a thesis does not sit well with our modem
conceptions o f humanity. I will conclude tliis section with a discussion of Hume’s reliance on a uniform view o f human nature. But Hume is not so crude as to believe that aU persons have equal claim on the aesthetic facts o f the matter. Only certain “true judges” can claim to issue aesthetic judgments that are reliably taken to be true. It is their joint verdict which in some sense is the true standard o f taste.
Lilce Hutcheson, Hume holds that value relates to a sentiment that is common to all humans, though individuals possess it in varying degrees.^® That sentiment is normative in terms both o f the objects it picks out and the verdicts rendered of those objects. Because sentiment is possessed by all humans, moral and aesthetic judgements bind those capable o f making them. “... (T]he sentiments, which arise firom humanity, are not only the same in all human creatures, and produce the same approbation or censure; but they also comprehend all human creatures; nor is tliere any one whose conduct or character is not, by theit means, an object to every one o f censure or approbation.”^'* For Hume, the possession o f the
sentiment for value places humanity within a common perspective, internal to which evaluative judgments have objective validity.
Hume is notoriously triclcy on the standard o f correctness of judgment he offers, as the texts surveyed so far appear to sustain two independent models. One is an external standard, developed most thoroughly in “O f the Standard o f Taste,” and centering on the epistemic credentials o f “true” judges o f value. It is external in attempting to say something about the realm o f value from outside that realm. Tliis approach has the aims o f 1) supplying a criterion of truth and falsehood (or appropriateness and inappropriateness) for evaluative judgments by means of 2) specifying the epistemic qualifications o f those best suited to attribute value reliably, and thereby 3) providing an epistemic indicator o f value for the less qualified judges, by means o f which they might refine theit own sensibilities. The second standard is internal in that the verdicts o f true judges play a more strongly constitutive role in the attribution o f aesthetic qualities. This view is hinted at in “O f the Standard o f Taste”, but receives greater development elsewhere in Hume’s writing. Both internalist and externalist interpretations are antirealist, though realists have tried to reform the externalist Humean view to support their own positions. I examine the externalist position in this section, and take up the internalist reading in the following one.
5,3: Judgment and the Problem of Circularity
There are at least two significant problems with the externalist standard, the second much
more radical in its implications. The first is an apparent circularity in Hume’s specification. If the joint verdicts o f true judges constitute the standard o f taste, then their judgments will
indicate which objects exhibit certain qualities, for example, elegance. But true judges will not
be the only persons offering verdicts; others wkl suggest that the object in fact does not
exhibit elegance but awkward restraint. Whose judgment is better? How do we identify so-
called “true” aesthetic judges? True judges are those whose critical verdicts are correct at least most of the time. This answer appears on first examination to lead us into a
justificatory circle from which we have no escape. True aesthetic judges are identified by tlieir critical track records— that is, how often their judgments about artworks are correct. How are we, the less-than true, to know if any particular judgments are correct? Why, by asking a true judge, o f course. And now the circle is formed.
This circular account is held by a number of commentators to keep Hume’s aesthetic theory from getting off the ground at all.®^ In “O f the Standard o f Taste,” Hume takes up the project of finding a rule “by which the various sentiments o f men may be reconciled; at least, a decision, afforded, confirming one sentiment, and condemning another.”®^ Hume takes it as a datum that people often disagree on their valuing o f artworks; one finds powerful what another finds bombastic, and so on. His task is to spell out the characteristics that true aesthetic judges must possess in order to make correct judgments o f value, with the idea that we might resolve at least many o f such disputes by examining their epistemic credentials. Five characteristics are essential to the rare character that bestows the status o f true judge: “Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared o f all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable character; and the joint verdict o f such, wherever they are to be found, is the true standard o f taste and beauty.”^^ All this seems reasonable enough. But the worry o f circularity arises again when we consider how we are to determine if the necessary attributes are present in a candidate judge. For it seems that the only way to do that is by looking at the critical pronouncements she makes. Given that we are undecided about whether a melodic passage is monotonous or unified— indeed this is what we want the critic to clarify for us—we seem to be unable to assess the correctness o f the critic’s claim.
It is worth backing up here and pointing out that Hume sees his account as resolving a conflict in our thinldng about aesthetic judgments. On the one hand, Hume writes that
There is a species o f philosophy, which ,. .represents the impossibility o f ever attaining any standard o f taste. The difference, it is said, is very wide
between judgment and sentiment. All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself.... pSQo sentiment represents what is really in the object.... Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.^®
This view is a widespread common sense idea, which has gained philosophical support from non-cogniflvist theorists. It is important to note that Hume identifies this view but does not
identify with it. Altliough he will maintain that sentiment is centrally involved in the aesthetic
experience, he need not, and indeed does not, come out on the side o f the non-cognitivist. Hume wants to give equal consideration to the thought that we do have a real sense that some works are aesthetically better than others. In his words:
Whoever would assert an equality o f genius and elegance between OGILBY and MILTON, or BUNYAN and ADDISON, would be thought to defend no less an extravagance, than if he had maintained a mole-hih to be as high as TENERIFFE, or a pond as extensive as the ocean. Though there may be found persons, who give the preference to the former authors; no one pays attention to such a taste; and we pronounce without scruple the sentiment of these pretended critics to be absurd and ridiculous. The principle o f the naturd equality of tastes is then totally forgot, and while we admit it on some occasions, where the objects seem near an equality, it appears an extravagant paradox, or rather a palpable absurdity, where objects so disproportioned are compared together.^^
Hume wants to extract what is right in the former claim, without accepting die stronger claim, which is certainly not entailed by it. What is right, on Hume’s account, is that there is a subjective contribution to the location o f value. But that claim does not warrant the
conclusion that all value is merely a projection o f subjective preference, as Hume
underscores by way o f the reductio against the natural equality of taste.
Hume’s project in “O f the Standard o f Taste” is, given the premise that the spectator makes some constitutive contribution to the aesthetic features o f some object, together with the premise that there is something correct behind at least coarse-grained qualitative rankings o f artworks, to develop criteria for identifying correct aesthetic judgments. Appropriately,