Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

taste In aesthetics, ‘taste’ generally refers to the capacity to discern the aesthetic features of objects, especially beauty. As such, it played a central role in eighteenth-century aesthetic thought, but is no longer much used except in the broad sense of aesthetic preference. Early writers on the subject, like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, thought that aesthetic judgement depended on a special ‘inner sense’ akin to the moral sense, in which they also believed. Later writers, like Kant, were content to explain our capacity for aesthetic discrimination as the special operation of our ordinary cognitive faculties. Those who speak of taste as a form of aesthetic perception or intuition mostly agree that it is some sort of inner feeling that enables us to judge whether or not an object is beautiful or sublime, or whatever. This is usually identified as a highly distinctive feeling of satisfaction or pleasure. Sometimes it is spoken of as an aesthetic emotion, as when Clive Bell wrote that ‘the starting point of all systems of aesthetics must be the personal experience of a peculiar emotion’ (1914, p. 6). Another commonly held view is that it is necessary to adopt the correct aesthetic attitude in order to experience this feeling. This is usually characterized as one of disinterestedness in which we contemplate the object without regard to its possible use, its moral significance or ... log in or subscribe to read full text