Moral prejudice and aesthetic deformity: Rereading Hume's "of the standard of taste"

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59 (1):59-71 (2001)
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Abstract

Despite appeals to Hume in debates over moralism in art criticism, we lack an adequate account of Hume’s moralist aesthetics, as presented in “Of the Standard of Taste.” I illuminate that aesthetics by pursuing a problem, the moral prejudice dilemma, that arises from a tension between the “freedom from prejudice” Hume requires of aesthetic judges and what he says about the relevance of moral considerations to art evaluation. I disarm the dilemma by investigating the taxonomy of prejudices by which Hume justifies the true judge’s moralism. The result distinguishes Hume’s aesthetic and moral points of view while defending aesthetic moralism

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Michelle Mason Bizri
University of Minnesota

Citations of this work

Morality and Aesthetics of Food.Shen-yi Liao & Aaron Meskin - 2018 - In Anne Barnhill, Mark Budolfson & Tyler Doggett (eds.), The Oxford Handbook on Food Ethics. Oxford University Press. pp. 658-679.
Some questions in Hume's aesthetics.Christopher Williams - 2007 - Philosophy Compass 2 (2):157–169.

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