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Notes Thus, Hume blocks the conclusion that all taste is equal by distinguishing between two points of
view that we can adopt toward any person, object, or action. We can respond from the point of
view of our own self-interest. But this response is prejudiced and often produces “a false relish”
(EPM, 173). Or we can respond from the general point of view, a reflective evaluation that is not
motivated by self-interest. The general point of view is influenced by myriad beliefs about the
object and its context. For example, believing that something is rare greatly magnifies our pleasure
(S, 224). Where self-interest might make me jealous of your new home and will interfere with the
sentiment of beauty, a reflective response will allow me to appreciate its construction and design.
For Hume, normative conflicts can only be resolved by moving to a properly informed general
perspective, with “just conclusions drawn, distant comparisons formed, complicated relations
examined, and general facts fixed and ascertained” (EPM, 173). The essay on taste defends this
position and outlines a theory of how critics can place themselves in such a position:when any
work is addressed to the public, though I should have a friendship or enmity with the author, I
must depart from this situation; and considering myself as a man in general, forget, if possible, my
individual being and my peculiar circumstances. A person influenced by prejudice, complies not
with this condition; but obstinately maintains his natural position, without placing himself in that
point of view, which the performance supposes (SOT, 276–77).
Hume also invokes the operation of a sympathetic sentiment. Since sympathy plays an important
role in his moral theory (T, 577; EPM, 225), he must include it in his aesthetic theory if he is to
sustain the close ties he posits between morals and aesthetics. The general point of view takes
notice of pleasure that the object is fitted to bring to other people. The idea of their benefit generates
sympathetic pleasure, increasing the sentiment of approbation (T, 364–65).
However, the claim that almost all judgments of beauty involve some element of sympathy becomes
harder to maintain in cases of fine art. It is not clear how the appreciation of a sonnet or melody
involves an idea of the value it has for others. Hume frequently talks as if artistic beauty is entirely
a question of formal design. Hume seems to think that the utility of some art is the pleasure it
affords (e.g., with poetry), as if he advocates an early art-for-art’s-sake position. But the fact that
a poem pleases someone else does not encourage sympathetic approbation for the poem.
Hume may have an answer to this difficulty. He hypothesizes a connection between form in art
and the appearance of utility. He offers examples of basic design in painting (T, 364–65) and of
“unharmonious” literature (EPM, 224). Reading begins with impressions of dark shapes arranged
in lines on white pages. Readers silently associate the printed text with aural ideas (the voice of a
human speaker). Through imaginative association, literary forms have expressive human characters
that elicit sympathetic pleasure and pain. Because Hume does not operate with assumptions about
the uniqueness of fine art, his theory cuts across the distinction between fine art and rhetoric.
Good design and eloquence are beautiful and desirable in all artifacts and speech, not merely in
fine art (E).
Where appropriate, the refined taste of a good critic will weigh the relative contributions of all
aspects of the object of taste. Formal design is a contributing excellence and not the sole focus of
aesthetic discrimination. To arrive at a proper moral judgment, “all the circumstances and relations
must be previously known; and the mind, from the contemplation of the whole, feels some new
impression of affection or disgust, esteem or contempt, approbation or blame” (EPM, 290). Aesthetic
discrimination works in the same way (EPM, 291). In some situations, a single inharmonious
element can upset the beauty of the whole. Hume discusses such cases in “Of the Standard of
Taste.” But then what of tragic literature, in which sympathy produces ongoing unease? How can
there be an impression of approbation for a tragic play? Hume addresses this problem in “Of
Tragedy.”
In the wake of reader-response criticism, Hume is frequently challenged for not making enough
allowances for the legitimate differences that readers bring to the same piece of writing. No two

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