Reflection 3: Good Taste

What does it mean to have good taste, and is this a meaningful ability?

            In order to be able to make a claim about whether or not someone’s artistic taste is good, we have to have some sort of standard of taste against which we can measure his or her claims. However, the nature of the beautiful, as shown through Hume, Kant, Dickie, and Mothersill, is such that it affects us each on an individual basis. Thus, with such a subjective basis for the judgment of beauty, it would appear that there can be no standard of taste. However, as Kant distinguishes, the judgments concerning the “beautiful” and the “good” are of two different kinds, and thus it may be possible to have a standard of good taste in such a manner that it is based not entirely on aesthetic judgment alone, but also in the application of reason.

            On the subjective nature of the beautiful, there seems to be little doubt among aestheticians. In typical empiricist fashion, Hume notes that I can only know what I find beautiful when I react to a beautiful object, and this alone cannot amount to evidence of my having good or bad taste. Someone whom society deems has “good taste”, i.e. a music critic, may react very positively to a trashy popular song and may loathe a particular symphony of Tchaikovsky’s, while someone who is deemed without taste may hate the pop song and love the symphony on first listen. All that we can know from these situations is that two people like different things; we are not entitled to draw a judgment about their taste from this evidence.

            Dickie hits upon this point when he attacks the notion that a ‘disinterested’ viewing is required to approach an artwork. He posits that there is always some ulterior motive or interest in the background of the viewing subject’s mind, whether it be an intent to view something considered art or to analyze the historicity of a particular work or to please a friend by going to a show. To the extent then that no viewer is truly disinterested when approaching artworks, the art critic is placed on the same level of judgment as the general public when confronted with art. And, if this is the case, then the critic’s judgments concerning artworks are as valid at face value as those of general viewers, and all of these judgments can only reflect the preferences of individuals.

            Mothersill, in her work, goes on to prove how there can be no laws formulated on the basis of aesthetic judgments because any law given either has no predictive value or it is entirely trivial. For instance, if I were to posit as a law of taste (admittedly mostly for myself) “All songs featuring Phil Collins are amazing,” then I would be expected to like any track presented to me which features Phil Collins. However, if I were to listen to a particular song from his latest album, I would most likely prove my law false. Alternatively, I could formulate my law such as to ensure truth, but this would come out in the circular fashion “All of Phil Collins’ songs that are like ‘In The Air Tonight’ are songs that I will like.” This defines the quality of the thing that I like about the song as the song itself, and thus my law only really says “I like Phil Collins’ ‘In the Air Tonight.’”

            On the grounds of purely aesthetic judgments, the standard of taste is impossible to find. However, the problem with aesthetic judgments is that they are always particular. As Kant notes, the beautiful is always a reaction to something that precedes other forms of judgment about that thing. All that can be legitimately said in an aesthetic judgment is “This is beautiful.” Any attempt to classify the “this” would require some movement of the understanding to combine the sensible intuition under a concept. The reaction to a beautiful painting precedes the recognition of the painting qua painting. Thus, if we make the statement “This is a beautiful painting,” then there is some conceptual notion of what a painting is which has been coupled with our recognition of some beautiful thing.

            Perhaps, then, this is the realm in which the standard of taste can exist. Hume notes this when he says that critics should have a full experience of the world in order to be able to judge works, and that the judgment of the worth of an artwork is of a different from the critics’ personal response to it. In the example of the critic who likes the pop song, the critic, as a well informed and well cultured individual, will have experienced many songs and will be able to form a judgment about what constitutes a “good” song, i.e. what best encapsulates the idea of music, and thus would be able to appreciate the Tchaikovsky while not necessarily liking it. Admittedly, the standard of taste still has a measure of subjectivity, but this is hard to escape since all communities have some measure of fluidity. At any rate, the standard of taste as appreciation for and criticism of the ‘essence’ of certain art forms provides a more intersubjective, and thus more real, standard of taste than the purely subjective reaction that is the aesthetic response.