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Unit 20: David Hume-Of Essay Writing ...

readers will respond with the same associations of ideas. So how can Hume hypothesize a Notes
convergence of critical response? As a criticism of Hume, this reply backfires. Hume concedes,
“each mind perceives a different beauty” (SOT, 268). But he recognizes an even more radical
problem. He admits that every stable object is really a “fiction” posited by the operations of
imagination and sentiment. We always “bestow on the objects a greater regularity than what is
observed in our mere perceptions” (T, 197). However, this philosophical grasp of the situation has
no practical effect in making anyone skeptical of the existence of houses, trees, and books. It does
not detract from the truth and falsity of what we ordinarily say about them. Novels and plays and
paintings are not special cases. Admitting that they call for complex operations of imagination
does not differentiate them from other objects and should not count against the possibility of
critical judgment.
The crux of the problem is the difference between saying that Hamlet is a play by William
Shakespeare and saying that Hamlet is a flawed play. The former claim expresses a matter of fact;
the latter expresses a normative judgment. Both stem from complex imaginative associations. The
presence of imaginative thought poses no special problem for the convergence of evaluative
discrimination. The problem is how sentiment, as the source of value, is subject to principled
dispute. Hume directly confronts this problem in “Of the Standard of Taste.”
20.4 Hume’s Essay on Taste

Hume tells us that “Of the Standard of Taste” was written in some haste and exists only to permit
publication of other essays (HL 2, 253). On the advice of Philip Stanhope, Hume removed “Of the
Immortality of the Soul” and “Of Suicide” from a planned volume of new essays. His publisher
informed him that the resulting volume was too slim to print, bind, and sell. Hume then brought
the book to an acceptable length by penning a new essay, “Of the Standard of Taste.” Hume made
nearly two hundred editorial corrections over the subsequent twenty years and multiple editions,
the majority of which involve punctuation. He never altered his argument. The essay is his last
word on any topic in “criticism.”
Hume reminds us of the radical difference in kind between matters of fact and the pronouncements
of sentiment. Verdicts of sentiment lack a truth-value. So it is surprising to find him endorsing the
position that many judgments of taste are “absurd and ridiculous” (SOT, 269). Small differences
affect taste, yet most people notice only “the grosser and more palpable qualities of the object”
(SOT, 278). Only judges with a more refined taste will respond to the “universal” appeal of
superior art. Because refinement demands considerable practice, such critics are few in numbers.
It is tempting to read Hume’s argument as a move away from his signature subjectivism and
toward some brand of normative realism. But a careful reading of the text reveals that nothing is
said to deny his earlier support for subjectivism and there are no direct endorsements of realism.
The standard of taste should provide rules for “confirming one sentiment, and condemning another”
(SOT, 268). It must explain why the sentiments of some critics are better and worse, not which are
true and false in any absolute sense. This explanation is accompanied by closely associated criteria
for identifying good critics: “Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice,
perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable
character” (SOT, 278).
After several stabs at identifying the standard of taste, Hume identifies it as the consensus or
“joint verdict” of “true critics” (SOT, 278–79). But it does not follow that the same set of critics will
serve as the standard for every work of art. Different critics are better or worse at evaluating
different kinds of things, so the critical pronouncements of better critics invalidate the claims of
unqualified critics.
Hume ultimately grants that even the best critics will fail to elicit universal agreement with their
verdicts. Yet he sticks to his motivating insight, borrowed from Hutcheson, that sentiment is the

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