According to Hume, some would argue that aesthetic taste is subjective. So many nations and cultures appreciate so many forms of art across the world––all with different rules and methods of judgement––that to define aesthetic taste as objective is illogical. For example, we in the West see (at least in Hume's day) the art of other cultures as "barbarous," but if we reversed the perspective we would "soon find the epithet of reproach retorted on us (41)." In the end, the arguing and raging about whose art is better than whose, etc, etc (and all those hot-tempered murders that might result, etc, etc) "All sentiment is right; because sentiment has reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, where a man is conscious to it, (42)" in connection to, "If they (the art) are found to please, they cannot be found to faults; let the pleasure, which they produce, be ever so unexpected and unaccountable (43)." This sentimental, hedonistic valuation of art has led us to create such literary marvels as most of the choices on Kindle and, of course, Fifty Shades of Grey. Hume prefers objectivity, and he states "those finer emotions of the mind are of a very tender and delicate nature." One must be careful and not stomp too hard around the sentimental critic when he is making a judgement, or else the review will be dreadful. Objectivity is cleaner, simpler, is steady.
If the judgement of good art versus bad is objective, it must have rules and regulations. Why can some people, also, judge it and some cannot? Hume says it comes down to a delicacy of imagination, and he likens it to a healthy or defective organ. "A man in a fever would not insist on his palate as able to decide concerning flavors. . . . In each creature, there is a sound and a defective state, and the former alone can be supposed to afford us a true standard of taste. . . .(44)" He claims later that this delicacy can be influenced by education in whatever he critiquing: "Where no comparison has been employed, the most frivolous beauties, such as rather merit the name of defects, are the object of his admiration (46)." (However, you can tell someone and compare and compare away, and teach and teach as much as you want, and they'll still prefer Twilight to "Araby" by James Joyce. Does it make sense? No.) Give a man a book, he reads lightly for a day; give him and teach him how to appreciate the book using the objective rules, he reads for a lifetime.
What then are the sources of variation in aesthetic judgement? Hume says the first is in the "different humors of particular men," or their personalities in modern-speak. Does one Extroverted-Sensing-Feeling-Judging male like a bright blue and soothing painting, while the more austere, phlegmatic Introverted-iNtuitive-Thinking-Perceiving shunt it aside and ask for something engineered and complex, like an M.C. Escher (and so it that modern understanding clashes with the Enlightenment)? The second variation is in the source of one's homeland and age. Someone who originates in ancient Mongolia and another in postmodern America will doubtless have different tastes in art. Hume adds that "A man of learning and reflection can make allowance for these peculiarities of manners. . . .(48)"
Art judged by sentiment alone would yield nothing but a smattering of paint randomly smeared, words scribbled aimlessly, and notes jarringly played. Some would try to improve, because of the whisper of the inner Muse, but would not know how to succeed. If they did succeed, because of some sort of genius––say, Shakespeare––they would have no adulation, because no one would have any way of knowing that they had created real art, since all was art. Objectivity is required.
David Hume, "Art as Object of Taste: David Hume," in The Nature of Art: an Anthology, ed. Thomas E. Wartenburg (Belmont: Thomson, 2007), et al.
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