De Gustibus: Arguing About Taste and Why We Do It
Peter Kivy
Abstract
Sometimes it is obvious why someone would wish to persuade someone else of his belief, or bring her around to share his attitude. Sometimes, however, it is not. This book’s contention is that it is not obvious why we should wish to persuade others to share our ‘aesthetic’ beliefs or attitudes. But, furthermore, it seems clear that, nevertheless, we do so wish, as is made quite evident by the widespread existence, both past and present, of vigorous, persistent, and on occasion heated aesthetic disputation among commentators on the arts as well as among the general public. Thus it appears we are ... More
Sometimes it is obvious why someone would wish to persuade someone else of his belief, or bring her around to share his attitude. Sometimes, however, it is not. This book’s contention is that it is not obvious why we should wish to persuade others to share our ‘aesthetic’ beliefs or attitudes. But, furthermore, it seems clear that, nevertheless, we do so wish, as is made quite evident by the widespread existence, both past and present, of vigorous, persistent, and on occasion heated aesthetic disputation among commentators on the arts as well as among the general public. Thus it appears we are faced with a classic kind of philosophical dilemma. There seems no apparent reason why we should dispute about taste in the arts, and in beauty, yet ample evidence that we do. It is this philosophical dilemma that this book explores. The text is indebted to eighteenth-century philosophers, and particularly, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. For it is in the Enlightenment that the modern discipline of aesthetics and philosophy of art begins. The problem this book is engaged with here seems embedded in that formative period in the discipline.
Keywords:
aesthetic beliefs,
aesthetic disputation,
the arts,
philosophical dilemma,
taste,
beauty,
eighteenth-century philosophers,
Francis Hutcheson,
David Hume,
Immanuel Kant
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198746782 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198746782.001.0001 |
