Delicacy and Passion: Hume's Theory of Taste and the Ideologies of the Senses

Abstract:Like his influential predecessor Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Hume argues that aesthetic taste, unchanging over time, is rooted in sentiment rather than reason. This sensationalist doctrine, centering on the perceptual apparatus that we all share, might, at first glance, seem to democratize taste. But Hume is at pains to identify the rare attributes of a good critic. And although Dubos scorns the taste of critics in favor of le public, it turns out that his public, like Hume's good critics, is very much an elite. The real contrast between the two thinkers lies in their respective positions in conflicts between competing elites. In the Querelle de Homère, the Moderns, under the banner of reason, decry what they see as the irrational barbarism of the Homeric epics. Dubos's public, which, correctly in his view, continues to value Homer and other ancient authors, serves as a counterweight to such critics. In Hume's case, we need to carefully examine the relationship between the learned and the conversible worlds—that is, between intellectual and social elites. While Hume attempts to reconcile these two elites, he ultimately comes down on the side of the learned critics. In doing so, he subtly moves from a sensationalist to a rationalist theory of taste and derogates the conversible realm, a realm in which women rule as sovereigns but in which men of the world are also deficient in matters of taste.