---
title: "054-hume-on-art"
aliases: 
tags: 
- podcast/philosophizethis
---

Tastemaker:
- strong sense
	- able to see and experience the art (i.e., not blind, deaf etc)
- delicate taste (perceptive of delicate sentiment)
	- should be able to see what makes a piece of art good
- practice
- free of prejudice
	- Nostalgia
	- Novelty
	- Complexity
	- And more
- comparison

There is something consistent about art. The greatest scientist may not be the greatest of all time, but the greatest artists are strangely timeless.

All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it.

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

A man in a fever would not insist on his palate as able to decide concerning flavours; nor would one, affected with the jaundice, pretend to give a verdict with regard to colours. 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 and sentiment. If, in the sound state of the organ, there be an entire or a considerable uniformity of sentiment among men, we may thence derive an idea of the perfect beauty; in like manner as the appearance of objects in day-light, to the eye of a man in health, is denominated their true and real colour, even while colour is allowed to be merely a phantasm of the senses.

Thus, though the principles of taste be universal, and nearly, if not entirely, the
same in all men; yet few are qualified to give judgment on any work of art, or establish their own sentiment as the standard of beauty.

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; and the joint verdict of such, wherever they are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty.

It is plainly an error in a critic, to confine his approbation to one species or style of writing, and condemn all the rest. But it is almost impossible not to feel a predilection for that which suits our particular turn and disposition. Such preferences are innocent and unavoidable, and can never reasonably be the object of dispute, because there is no standard by which they can be decided.