Thomas Reid and the Theory of Taste

Some explanation for turning to the work of ation of the equally newly defined "fine arts." Thomas Reid when considering eighteenthTaste is first of all a form of critical judgment century theories of taste may be in order. There and a mark of distinction to which a cultivated has been a marked increase in the interest in individual aspired. That, for example, is its role Reid's work in recent years. Keith Lehrer's book in the work of Balthasar Gracian, whose Art of on Thomas Reid' was followed by a number of Worldly Wisdom5 helped to disseminate the articles assessing Reid's theory of perception term. Throughout the eighteenth century, essays and his relation to such current topics in philosoon taste are concerned to identify those qualities phy as epistemological naturalism, nativist that will distinguish the cultivated appreciator theories of mental operations, and the nature of of poetry and painting from less-cultured diletconsciousness. Some of this work has an indirtantes and the vulgar who have no taste. Pope ect bearing on aesthetics. Theories of percepskewers the whole cult of taste in a well-known tion, in particular, relate to theories of taste and passage from his "Epistle to Burlington": "What reassessments of the nineteenthand twentiethbrought Sir Visto's ill-got wealth to waste?/ century theories of aesthetic perception. Two Some daemon whispered 'Visto! Have a taste."' recent books on Reid, Roger Gallie's Thomas As a result, taste, in all of its primary eighteenthReid: Ethics, Aesthetics and the Anatomy of the century theories, is essentially a moral theory. Self2 and Nicholas Wolterstorff's Thomas Reid A person of taste, on the order of the "man of and the Story of Epistemology3 substantially sensibility," was sought; but just as sensibility is add to the current level of interest. Still, Reid is threatened by sentimentality, so taste is threatnot and should not be considered a major conened by waste and excess. Bad taste is a moral tributor to the tradition of essays on taste that failing. The alternative to that eighteenth-century spanned the eighteenth century. His importance approach, Kantian disinterestedness, does not rests, rather, on suggestions that anticipate some begin to emerge until the end of the century, in forms of romantic aesthetics and simultaneously spite of hints as early as the work of the third on his revival of themes that were contested in earl of Shaftesbury.6 Until Kant sharply distinthe early stages of the rationalist and empiricist guishes taste and aesthetic judgment from both emphasis on experience as the only basis for moral and theoretical judgment, the whole point epistemological and moral judgment. Reid of taste was to learn to exhibit correct-and should be viewed as a philosopher whose work publicly approved-judgments in the arts, is at once conservative, even reactionary, in its morals, and religion. own right but whose challenges to what had David Hume, who relies most heavily on senbecome received opinion also open new possitiment in his own theory of taste, offers a partial bilities for epistemology and value theory. alternative to the dominant theories of taste as "Taste" is the most important critical term either an internal sense or neoclassical rules, but prior to the emergence of "aesthetics" in Kant's since sentiment must be criticized and guarded Critique of Judgment.4 As a critical focus, "taste" against enthusiasm and excess, as Shaftesbury emerges from sixteenthand seventeenth-century had already maintained, Hume's theory of taste considerations of the conditions for appreciremains essentially moral. Archibald Alison