The Journal of Aesthetic Education

Toward the end of “Of the Standard of Taste,” Hume summarizes what it means to be “a true judge in the finer arts.” He says: “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.”¹ Throughout the essay, he also claims that his position is commonsensical and naturalistic—that is, notwithstanding the diversity of opinion among critics, there is a “structure of the mind . . . naturally calculated to give pleasure,”² that the “general principles of taste are uniform in human nature,”³ that the foundation of good taste lies in “the common sentiments of human nature.”⁴ Hume is essentially right about what it means to be a good critic. Good critics need strong cognitive skills to develop sound arguments. They need to be perspicacious in discerning the finer sensuous details in artworks. They need to be thoroughly practiced in the art of their choice. They need a broad knowledge of their field in order to make salient and significant comparisons, which, in turn, will place their subject matter in its proper thematic and historical contexts. And finally, perhaps most difficult of all, they need to perform their acts of criticism, if not with an innocent eye, at least as free as possible from those prejudices that would distort or deform the object of their criticism. This last criterion, I have often thought, might be a moral criterion in the sense that Hume is suggesting that criticism requires a sense of fair play, insofar as you imaginatively place yourself in the audience for which the work was intended.

Hume’s position is fundamentally sound; however, it’s incomplete. So, I’d like to add another criterion to Hume’s five: given the structure of the mind, as we know it today, the “common sentiments” of human nature are not equally distributed. Thus, women are naturally disposed to be educated as art critics and therefore are more likely to excel in art criticism [End Page 88] than men. At first blush, this proposition may appear both outrageous and preposterous. One could immediately point out that the historical record reveals, perhaps as a result of a natural disposition in men or more likely because of a prejudice against women, that the majority of critics—indeed, the great critics, in fact—have been men. As I will try to show, however, there exists sound scientific evidence to support my claim. One source of evidence comes from evolutionary biology, more specifically Darwinian and neo-Darwinian ideas on sexual selection. The other source of evidence comes from evolutionary psychology, more specifically the differences between male and female brains and minds.⁵

Now, before I go on to make my argument, let me be clear that I am not arguing that every woman who is educated in art criticism would be a better art critic than any man. That would be a preposterous claim. My claim that women would make better critics than men is a probabilistic one, that is, given what we currently know to be a woman’s general nature, she is more likely to be a better critic than a man.

My argument will, in spirit and in some detail, be similar to the argument made by the evolutionary biologist Helena Cronin in a piece she wrote for the Guardian. In that piece she is discussing the notion that women in general do not perform outstandingly well in the sciences and mathematics. Although the mean scores on standardized mathematics examinations for men and women are essentially the same, nevertheless, “In the US, even in the top 1% of mathematical ability, only one woman to eight men makes a career in maths, engineering, or science; the other seven choose medicine, biology, law or even the humanities—typically to work with, and help, people.”⁶ Even though politics or oppression of some sort should never be ruled out, the reasons for these differences, Cronin says, run deeper than mere male domination. Unsurprisingly, she says the roots of these differences lie in our evolutionary history. They are: 1. Men...