The big idea: You call a sunset beautiful and a rubbish heap ugly, easily, every day. But stop on one word: where is the beauty?
Two places it could be
- Out there in the sunset, the way its brightness is
- Or in you: 'beautiful' is really a report on the pleasure it stirs up
This is the oldest puzzle in aesthetics: is beauty in the object, or in the taste of the person looking? 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' picks the second — but it may go too fast.
Beauty in the OBJECT
- Beauty is a real feature of the thing itself
- The sunset would be beautiful with no one there
- Problem: people disagree wildly about what's beautiful
Beauty in the BEHOLDER
- 'Beautiful' reports a pleasure the thing causes in you
- No viewer, no beauty
- Problem: then is ANY judgement as good as any other?
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Say beauty is 'in the eye of the beholder' and a worrying conclusion seems to follow.
The flattening worry: If beauty is just the pleasure something happens to give me, then when you love a song I find dull, neither of us is right or wrong — we simply feel different.
Where that leads
- A scribble would be exactly as good as a masterpiece, as long as someone somewhere enjoyed it
- That can't be right: we clearly think some judgements of beauty are better than others
- So 'it's all just opinion' proves too much
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One philosopher found a clever middle path between 'beauty is in the object' and 'it's all just opinion'.
Hume: a standard of taste: David Hume agreed that beauty is a response in us, not a property sitting in the object. But he denied this makes all taste equal. Some people are simply better judges.
What makes a better judge
- They have wide experience of art
- They can compare
- They aren't blinded by prejudice
- They notice fine detail others miss
The standard of taste: Where these good judges agree over time, we get a standard of taste. So beauty is in the beholder — but in the trained beholder, and their shared verdict is our best guide.
Go further — higher-level insight: Spot the neat move. Hume keeps two truths at once. He does it by shifting the standard from the OBJECT to the best JUDGES. Naming that shift — from a standard in the thing to a standard in expert response — is a top-band point.
What's true in 'eye of the beholder'
- Beauty is a response, not a hidden property
What's true in 'some art really is better'
- Not all responses are equal
Checkpoint — Hume: In one line: beauty is a response in us, but experienced, unprejudiced judges are better, and their shared verdict is a standard of taste.