1.

The Judgment of Taste

What is a judgment of taste? Kant isolated two fundamental necessary conditions for a judgment to
be a judgment of taste—subjectivity and universality (Kant 1790/2000). Other conditions may also
contribute to what it is to be a judgment of taste, but they are consequential on, or predicated on,
the two fundamental conditions. In this respect Kant followed the lead of Hume and other writers in
the British sentimentalist tradition (Hume 1757/1985).

1.1 Subjectivity

The first necessary condition of a judgment of taste is that it is essentially subjective. What this
means is that the judgment of taste is based on a feeling of pleasure or displeasure. This
distinguishes judgments of taste from empirical judgments. Central examples of judgments of taste
are judgments of beauty and ugliness. Judgments of taste can be about art or nature.

This subjectivist thesis would be over-strict if it were interpreted in an “atomistic” fashion, so that
some subjective response corresponds to every judgment of taste, and vice versa. Sometimes one
makes a judgment of taste on inductive grounds or on the basis of authority. But these cases
indirectly rely on judgements made on the basis of subjective responses. A more holistic picture of
the relation between response and judgment would preserve the spirit of the subjectivist doctrine
while fitting our actual lives more accurately. The subjectivist doctrine needs to be refined in order to
deal with the cases of induction and authority. But it must not be abandoned. The doctrine is
basically right.

However, it is not obvious what to make of the subjectivity of the judgment of taste. We need an
account of the nature of the pleasure on which judgments of beauty are based.

Beyond a certain point, this issue cannot be pursued independently of metaphysical issues about
realism, for the metaphysics we favor is bound to affect our view of the nature of the pleasure we
take in beauty. In particular, we need to know whether or not pleasure in beauty represents
properties of beauty and ugliness that things possess. If not, does it involve the cognitive faculties
that we deploy in understanding the world, as Kant thought? Or is it not a matter of the cognitive
faculties, but a matter of sentimental reactions, which are schooled in various ways, as Hume and
others thought? These are very hard questions. But there are some things we can say about the
pleasure involved in finding something beautiful without raising the temperature too high.

Kant makes various points about pleasure in the beautiful, which fall short of what we might call his
“deep” account of the nature of pleasure in beauty, according to which it is the harmonious free play
of the cognitive faculties, of imagination and understanding. According to Kant’s “surface” account of
pleasure in beauty, it is not mere sensuous gratification, as in the pleasure of sensation, or of eating
and drinking. Unlike such pleasures, pleasure in beauty is occasioned by the perceptual
representation of a thing. (In contemporary terms, we would put this by saying that pleasure in
beauty has an intentional content.) Moreover, unlike other sorts of intentional pleasures, pleasure in
beauty is “disinterested”. This means, roughly, that it is a pleasure that does not involve desire—
pleasure in beauty is desire-free. That is, the pleasure is neither based on desire nor does it produce
one by itself. In this respect, pleasure in beauty is unlike pleasure in the agreeable, unlike pleasure in
what is good for me, and unlike pleasure in what is morally good. According to Kant, all such
pleasures are “interested”—they are bound up with desire. This is discussed in section 3 below. This
is all important as far as it goes, but it is all negative. We need to know what pleasure in beauty is, as
well as what it is not. What can be said of a more positive nature?
1.2 Normativity

In order to see what is special about pleasure in beauty, we must shift the focus back to consider
what is special about the judgment of taste. For Kant, the judgment of taste claims “universal
validity”, which he describes as follows:

… … if [someone] pronounces that something is beautiful, then he expects the very same satisfaction
of others: he judges not merely for himself, but for everyone, and speaks of beauty as if it were a
property of things. Hence he says that the thing is beautiful, and does not count on the agreement of
others with his judgment of satisfaction because he has frequently found them to the agreeable with
his own, but rather demands it from them. He rebukes them if they judge otherwise, and denies that
they have taste, for he nevertheless requires that they ought to have it; and to this extent one cannot
say, “Everyone has his special taste”. This would be as much as to say that there is no taste at all, i.e.
no aesthetic judgment that could make a rightful claim to the assent of everyone. (Kant 1790, 5:
212–213 [2000: 98]; see also 2000: 164–166–139)

Kant’s idea is that in a judgment of taste, we demand or require agreement from other human
beings in a way we do not in our judgments about the niceness of Canary-wine, which is just a
question of individual preference. In many cases, in matters of taste and beauty, we think that
others ought to share our judgment, and we blame them if they don’t. This is because the judgment
of taste has this aspiration to universal validity that it seems “as if [beauty] were a property of
things”.

Now, if the above quotation were all that Kant had to say by way of elucidating the judgment of
taste, then he would not have said enough. For the following question is left hanging: why do we
require that others share our judgment? We might want others to share our judgment for all sorts of
strange reasons. Maybe we will feel more comfortable. Maybe we will win a bet. And if we say that
they ought to judge a certain way, we need to say more. In what sense is this true? What if someone
cannot appreciate some excellent work of art because they are grief-stricken? What if it would
distract someone from some socially worthy project? Of what nature is this “ought”?

We can recast the point about how we ought to judge in austere terms by saying that there is a
certain normative constraint on our judgments of taste, which is absent in our judgments about the
niceness of Canary-wine. The most primitive expression of this normativity is this: some are correct,
others incorrect. Or perhaps, even more cautiously: some judgments are better than others. We do
not think that something is beautiful merely to me, in the way that we might say that some things
just happen to give me sensuous pleasure. Of course, we might well say “I think X is beautiful”,
because we wish to express uncertainty, but where we judge confidently, we think of our judgment
as being correct. And that means that we think that the opposite judgment would be incorrect. We
assume that not all judgments of beauty are equally appropriate. “Each to their own taste” only
applies to judgments of niceness and nastiness, which Kant calls “judgments of agreeableness” (see
Kant 1790, 5: 212–213, 291–292 [2000: 97–98, 171–172]).

Of course, some people just know about food. There are experts and authorities on making delicious
food and in knowing what will taste good (Kant 1790, 5: 213 [2000: 98]). But what these people
know is what will taste pleasurable to a certain kind of palate. In a sense, some things just do taste
better than others, and some judgments of excellence in food are better than others. There is even a
sense in which some are correct and others incorrect. Still, this is only relative to “normal” human
beings. There is no idea of correctness according to which someone with very unusual pleasures and
displeasure is at fault, or according to which the majority of human beings can be wrong. (Kant says
that judgments of agreeableness have “general” but not “universal” validity; 1790, 5: 213 [2000:
213].) But in the case of judgments of taste or beauty, correctness is not hostage to what most
people like or judge. We may say that it is a mistake to use much salt or sugar but that is only
because it swamps the flavors that are enjoyed by most people.

To say that a judgment of taste makes a claim to correctness might seem merely to shift from the
problematic “ought” that is involved in a judgment of taste to a problematic “correctness” or
“betterness”. This may be inevitable. We are dealing with a normative notion, and while some
normative notions may be explainable in terms of others, we cannot express normative notions in
non-normative terms.

In some cases, the correctness of a judgment of taste may be impossibly difficult to decide. We may
even think that there is no right answer to be had if we are asked to compare two very different
things. But in many other cases, we think that there is a right and a wrong answer at which we are
aiming, and that our judgments can be erroneous. If we do not think this, in at least some cases,
then we are not making a judgment of taste—we are doing something else.

It is true that there is a popular idea that is sometimes expressed by saying that no judgments of
taste are really better than others. People sometimes say, “There is no right and wrong about
matters of taste”. Others express a related thought by saying that beauty is “relative” to individual
judgment or preference, or that it is “socially relative”. Such skeptical views have some following
outside the academy, as well as in certain of the humanities. Many even express distaste for the idea
that judgments of taste have a normative claim, as if that would be uncouth or oppressive. However,
if we are describing our thought as it is, not how it ought to be, then there is no getting away from
the fact that normativity is a necessary condition of judgments of taste or beauty. Two points should
embarrass the skeptic: firstly, people who express anti-normativist skeptical views are merely
theorizing. In the case of judgments of beauty, anti-normativist skepticism is out of step with
practice, especially their own practice. As with moral relativism, one can almost always catch a
professed skeptic about judgments of beauty making and acting on non-skeptical judgments of
beauty—for example, in their judgments about music, nature and everyday household objects
around them. Skeptics do not practice what they preach. Secondly, one thing that drives people to
this implausible skepticism, which is so out of line with their own practice, is a perceived connection
with tolerance or anti-authoritarianism. This is what they see as attractive in it. But this is upside-
down. For if “it is all relative” and no judgment is better than any other, then relativists put their own
judgments beyond criticism, and they cannot get it wrong. Only those who think that there is a right
and wrong in judgment can modestly admit that they might be wrong. What looks like an ideology of
tolerance is, in fact, the opposite.

Some so-called “experimental philosophers” have questioned the thesis that judgments of taste
aspire to correctness on the basis of empirical evidence about those who make judgments of taste
(Cova & Pain 2012). But it is not clear that the empirical evidence cited supports that skeptical thesis.
For the evidence is just that that the experimental subjects tick boxes that ask directly about
correctness in judgment. But in psychological experiments there is a requirement of opacity of the
point of an experiment to the experimental subjects (Hughes 2016). Furthermore, people often wax
philosophical in a way that is out of step with their actual conceptual practice. For example, some
beginners in introductory moral philosophy classes inconsistently claim that all moral views are
equally correct, and that it is very bad to think otherwise. People who think in a certain way may be
defective in self-knowledge, just as those who take part in social rituals may not be able to describe
those rituals (see Zangwill 2019 for critical discussion). We should also bear in mind that the skeptical
thesis would also be very surprising given that it departs from not just centuries but millennia of
reflection on our aesthetic lives. The answers to questionnaires about correctness in judgment do
not reveal the deep nature of people’s thoughts.

1.3 Recasting Normativity

In the normative claim of judgments of taste, as formulated above, other people do not figure in the
account. This is an austere explanation of what Kant meant, or perhaps of what he ought to have
meant, when he said that the judgment of taste claims “universal validity”, by contrast with
judgments about the niceness of Canary-wine. Given this account, we can explain the fact that we
think that others ought to share our judgment. They ought to share it on pain of making a judgment
which is incorrect or inappropriate. And this would be why we do in fact look to others to share our
judgment; we do not want them to make incorrect judgments. It seems that Kant’s reference to
other people in characterizing the normativity of judgments of taste has dropped out of the picture
as inessential.

However, it is not clear whether Kant would go along with this, for he characterizes normativity in a
way that ties in with his eventual explanation of its possibility. Kant expresses the normative idea in a
very particular way. He writes:

[we] demand such assent universally (Kant 1790, 5: 214 [2000: 99])

And Kant says that the judgment of taste involves

its validity for everyone. (Kant 1790, 5: 212 [2000: 97])

By contrast, Kant thinks that although we sometimes speak as if our judgments of the agreeable are
universally valid (“Lamb tastes better with garlic”), in fact they are not: judgments of the agreeable
appeal only to most but not to all people (Kant 1790, 5: 213 [2000: 98]).

However, the austere characterization attempts to catch a more basic idea of normativity—one that
might serve as the target of rival explanations. In order to explain how subjectively universal
judgments are possible, Kant has a complicated story about the harmonious interplay of the
cognitive faculties—imagination and understanding—which he thinks constitutes pleasure in beauty
(Kant 1790, 5: 219 [2000: 104]). This “deep” account of pleasure in beauty is highly controversial and
not particularly plausible (see Budd 2001). But we can see why Kant gives it. For Kant, the normative
claim of the judgment of taste has its roots in the more general workings of our cognitive faculties,
which Kant thinks we can assume others share. Thus, we have the beginnings of an explanation of
how such a pleasure can ground a judgment that makes a universal claim. However, Kant does not
have much to say about the nature of the “universality” or normativity that is being explained by
such a speculative account of pleasure in beauty. It is no accident that Kant phrases the obligation in
interpersonal terms, considering where he is going. And it is no great fault on his part that he does
so. But for our purposes, we need to separate what is being explained from its explanation. For if
Kant’s explanation does not work, we want to be left with a characterization of the normativity he
was trying to explain. We need to separate Kant’s problem from his solution, so that the former is left
if the latter fails. There may be alternative solutions to his problem.

1.4 Normativity and Pleasure

As described, normativity attaches to judgments of taste themselves. What does this imply
for pleasure in beauty? Since judgments of taste are based on responses of pleasure, it would make
little sense if our judgments were more or less appropriate but our responses were not. The
normative claim of our judgments of taste must derive from the fact that we think that
some responses are better or more appropriate to their object than others. Responses only license
judgments which can be more or less appropriate because responses themselves can be more or less
appropriate. If I get pleasure from drinking Canary-wine and you do not, neither of us will think of
the other as being mistaken. But if you don’t get pleasure from Shakespeare’s Sonnets, I will think of
you as being in error—not just your judgment, but your liking. I think that I am right to have
my response, and that your response is defective. Someone who thinks that there is, in Hume’s
words, “an equality of genius” between some inferior composer, on the one hand, and J. S. Bach, on
the other, has a defective sensibility (Hume 1757 [1985: 230]). Roger Scruton puts the point well
when he says:

When we study [the Einstein Tower and the Giotto campanile] … our attitude is not simply one of
curiosity, accompanied by some indefinable pleasure or satisfaction. Inwardly, we affirm our
preference as valid…. (Scruton 1979: 105)

This is the reason why we demand the same feeling from others, even if we do not expect it. We
think that our response is more appropriate to its object than its opposite. And, in turn, this
is why we think that our judgment about that object is more correct than its opposite. The
normativity of judgment derives from the normativity of feeling.

But how can some feelings be better or worse than others? To answer this question, we need to ask:
how far does the normativity of judgments of taste inhere in the feeling itself? The realist about
beauty will say that the feeling has normativity built into it in virtue of its representational content;
the feelings themselves can be more or less veridical. Pleasure in beauty, for example, has as its
object the property of beauty; we find the beauty pleasurable. A Humean sentimentalist will
probably say that normativity is something we somehow construct or foist upon our pleasures and
displeasures, which have no such content. And Kant has his own account, which appeals to cognitive
states that are not beliefs. The issue is controversial. However, what we can say for sure is that it is
definitive of pleasure in beauty that it licenses judgments that make claim to correctness. Beyond
this, there will be theoretical divergence.

This normativity is definitive of the judgment of taste, and is its second defining characteristic, which
we should add to the fact that it is based on subjective grounds of pleasure or displeasure.