4 - On consistency in one's personal aesthetics

Summary

This essay is a work in progress and therefore tentative for the usual reasons, and it is tentative also because my hope is to reveal a topic where, to the best of my knowledge, none has so far been noticed. I think it may be harder to persuade you that this is a good, rich topic than it is to answer the questions it yields. In fact, I might settle for attracting you to the topic even if I fail to persuade you of my answers to its questions.

Perhaps because of the influence of Cartesian epistemology, and also because of a temptation to model aesthetics on ethics, considerable attention has been given in modern aesthetics to what are called “interpersonal” matters. How are we to understand the fact that one person A has likes and dislikes that coordinate (or conflict) with the likes and dislikes of some other person B? Can we say that A is right or somehow superior to B, or is there no way of comparing the affective conditions of A and B so as to vindicate one and denigrate the other?

This concern is at least as old as Hume and his marvelous essay “Of the Standard of Taste,” wherein he takes up precisely the question of whether it is possible for something - a standard - to “confirm” A and “condemn” B.

I wish to introduce a different question, although one of the interests in this question may well be how it is related to the interpersonal questions.