Art Fights: The Persistence of Controversy in Modern Aesthetics

Abstract

It seems the “diversity in judgment” to which Hume refers is more the rule than the exception, that our “contrary sentiments” about aesthetic matters are inevitable and controversy endemic to the field of the arts.¹ Indeed, Hume’s standard of taste does not just happen to evade us in certain instances; rather, where taste is involved, we necessarily seek out—and inevitably fail to find—the grounds for universal assent. This much has already been argued. As I discuss below, Kant, in his critique of empiricist aesthetics, identified the standard of taste as fundamentally elusive, sought every time we make a claim about beauty.² What is less obvious in Kant’s articulation of the thesis is that the nature of this collective search is essentially contentious. For it is not shared taste, a common standard, that unites dissenting voices, but the fact of dissent itself and the fact of controversy: we fight about art, therefore “we” are.

The general principles of taste are uniform in human nature: Where men vary in their judgments, some defect or perversion in the faculties may commonly be remarked; proceeding either from prejudice, from want of practice, or want of delicacy: and there is just reason for approving one taste, and condemning another. But where there is such a diversity in the internal frame or external situation as is entirely blameless on both sides, and leaves no room to give one the preference above the other; in that case a certain degree of diversity in judgment is unavoidable, and we seek in vain for a standard, by which we can reconcile the contrary sentiments.

David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste” (1757)