Abstract
The argument contained in Burke’s Introduction on Taste added to the second edition of his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (hereafter Enquiry), has led some interpreters to draw the conclusion that it is a ‘reply’ to David Hume’s 1757 essay ‘Of the Standard of Taste’. However, this chapter hopes to show, on the one hand, that a first glance at the Introduction—where Hume’s essay is not even mentioned—does not reveal any obvious relation to ‘Of the Standard of Taste’. On the other hand, a first reading of the Introduction fails also to show in what sense the thesis Burke defends is even substantially different from the one previously advanced by Hume. For Burke’s essay is devoted to argue for a thesis that sounds quite similar to the one Hume defends in his essay, namely, that aesthetic judgements can be settled by appealing to matters of fact.
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- 1.
Burke’s Introduction on Taste was first published in the 1759 edition of his Philosophical Enquiry: Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. The 2nd ed. With an Introductory Discourse Concerning Taste, and Several Other Additions (London, 1759). References to Burke’s Introduction on Taste will be to Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. James T. Boulton (London: Routledge, 1958) [hereafter PE].
- 2.
In the introduction to his edition of Burke’s Inquiry, Boulton thinks it ‘reasonable to suppose that the ‘Essay on Taste’ was intended as a reply to Hume;’ PE, p. xxx. Hume’s ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ was first published in David Hume, Four Dissertations. I. The Natural History of Religion. II. Of the Passions. III. Of Tragedy. IV. Of the Standard of Taste (London: A. Millar, 1757). Except when a specific reference to the Four Dissertations is required references to Hume’s essays ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ and ‘Of Tragedy’ will be will be parenthetically indicated in the text respectively as E-ST and E-OT and followed by the page numbers of the following edition: David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1987). References to the essay ‘Of the Study of History’ [hereafter E-SH] are also to Miller’s edition. References to Hume’s correspondence will be to David Hume, The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols., ed. J. Y. T. Greig (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932) [hereafter HL] and David Hume, New Letters of David Hume, ed. Raymond Klibansky and Ernest Campbell Mossner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954) [hereafter NHL]. References to Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature shall be indicated parenthetically in the text as follows: T 1.2.3.4/SBN 34 referring, in order, to the following editions: David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature: A Critical Edition, 2 vols., ed. David F. Norton, Mary J. Norton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007) [hereafter T] and David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. with text revised and notes by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1978) [hereafter SBN].
- 3.
Noel Carroll, “Hume’s Standard of Taste,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43 (1984): 181–94.
- 4.
Alexander Gerard, An Essay on Taste (London: Printed for A. Millar in the Strand, A. Kincaid and J. Bell in Edinburgh, 1759).
- 5.
The ‘Select Society’ was an important learned society of the Scottish Enlightenment, founded in 1754 by Allan Ramsay and designed to foster the sciences, arts and manufactures in Scotland. The Society held its meetings in Edinburgh every Wednesday between November and August from 1754–1764. Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Allan Ramsay, Henry Home (Lord Kames) were some of its distinguished members. In a 1755 letter to Ramsay, Hume discloses the effervescence surrounding the activities of the Society: ‘[The society] has grown to be a national concern. Young and old, noble and ignoble, witty and dull, laity and clergy, all the world are ambitious of a place amongst us, and on each occasion we are as much solicited by candidates as if we were to choose a Member of Parliament…’. The chief feature of the Society, according to Hume, ‘is a project of engrafting on the Society a scheme for the encouragement of arts and sciences and manufactures in Scotland, by premiums partly honorary, partly lucrative.’ In the same letter Hume reminds Ramsay that ‘A premium, I remember, is promised to the best discourse on Taste and on the Principles of Vegetation (HL 1: 219–21).’ That Hume might have been one of the judges awarding Gerard’s essay is reported in Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 283. For an account of the activities of the ‘Select Society’, see R. L. Emerson, “The Social Composition of Enlightened Scotland: The ‘Select Society of Edinburgh,’ 1754–1764,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 114 (1973): 291–330.
- 6.
The play in question—Agis—was finally produced by Garrick in 1758. John Home, Agis: A Tragedy. As it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane (London: Printed for A. Millar, in the Strand, 1758).
- 7.
The fact has been reported in the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle, January 21, 1829, and is reproduced in John Hill Burton, Life and Correspondence of David Hume: From the Papers Bequeathed by His Nephew to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Other Original Sources, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1846), 1:420n.
- 8.
The target group was clearly identified in one of the most infamous pamphlets against Douglas: ‘the prime supporters of these devilish, hellish stage-plays, and of all other wickedness in the place, being the idle, loose, useless catives falsely called nobility and gentry, and especially those called judges and lawyers, to the great disgrace of their birth, educations, offices and employments…’ John Haldane, upholsterer in Edinburgh, The Players Scourge: Or a Detection of the Horrid Prophanity and Impiety of Stage-plays, and their Wicked Supporters… ([Edinburgh ?], [1757]), 2–3.
- 9.
John Witherspoon, A Serious Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Stage. Being an Attempt to Show, that Contributing to the Support of a Public Theatre, is Inconsistent with the Character of a Christian (Glasgow: Printed by J. Bryce and D. Paterson, 1757), 50–51.
- 10.
Adam Ferguson, The Morality of Stage-plays Seriously Considered (Edinburgh, 1757), 8.
- 11.
See for instance The Immorality of Stage-plays in General, and of the Tragedy Called Douglas, in Particular (Edinburgh, 1757), 4.
- 12.
See William Wilkie, The Epigoniad; a Poem (Edinburgh: Printed by Hamilton, Balfour, & Neill, 1757).
- 13.
Remarks upon the Play of Douglas, in a Letter by a Gentleman to his Friend in the Country (Edinburgh, 1757), 1.
- 14.
That the dedication was part of a carefully conceived ‘scheme’ to promote John Home’s tragedy is well attested in Hume’s correspondence. Consider for instance the letter he wrote to William Mure of Caldwell: ‘Pray, whether do you pity or blame me most, with regard to this Dedication of my Dissertations to my Friend, the Poet? I am sure I never executed any thing, which was either more elegant in the Composition, or more generous in the Intention: Yet such an Alarm seiz’d some Fools here (Men of very good Sense, but Fools in that Particular) that they assaild both him & me with the utmost Violence; and engag’d us to change our Intention. I wrote to Millar to suppress that Dedication: Two Posts after I retracted that Order. Can any thing be more unlucky, than that in the Interval of these four days, he shou’d have open’d his Sale, & dispos’d of 800 Copies; without that Dedication, whence, I imagin’d, my Friend wou’d reap some Advantage, & myself so much Honor. I have not been so heartily vexd at any Accident of a long time. However, I have insisted that the Dedication shall still be publish’d.’ (HL 1:242–3).
- 15.
David Hume, Four Dissertations (London: Printed for A. Millar, 1757), v–vi.
- 16.
The Monthly Review, May 1757, 426, emphasis added.
- 17.
Idem at 427, emphasis added.
- 18.
Idem at 429.
- 19.
Though Hume seems to have really believed the play to be as good as he said it was and that the natural partiality to his friend was tempered by some objective fact about the aesthetic worth of Douglas. Consider what he writes to Adam Smith in this respect: ‘I can now give you the Satisfaction of hearing, that the Play [i.e. Douglas], tho’ not near so well acted in Covent Garden as in this Place, is likely to be very successful: Its great intrinsic Merit breaks thro all Obstacles. When it shall be printed (which will be soon) I am perswaded it will be esteem’d the best; & by French Critics, the only Tragedy of our Language. This Encouragement will, no doubt, engage the Author to go on in the same Carrier. He meets with great Countenance in London: And I hope will soon be render’d independent in his Fortune.’ (HL 1 : 246)
- 20.
John Hawkesworth, A Letter to Mr. David Hume, on the Tragedy of Douglas, it’s [sic] Analysis. And the Charge against Mr. Garrick. By an English Critic (London: Printed for J. Scott, 1757).
- 21.
John Hawkesworth, A Letter to Mr. David Hume, 6.
- 22.
In the preface to the 1759 edition of the Enquiry, Burke says ‘I have sought with the utmost care, and read with equal attention, every thing which has appeared in public against my opinions’, PE 3.
- 23.
See e.g. Boulton’s ‘Introduction’ to his edition of Burke’s Enquiry. PE, xxix.
- 24.
Carroll, “Hume’s Standard of Taste,” 186.
- 25.
Carroll seems to be unaware that Hume did take into consideration such apparent counterexamples to his theory of aesthetic sense. In the essay ‘Of Tragedy’—published also in 1757 as part of the Four Dissertations—he undertakes to give an explanation of the ‘unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions, that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. The more they are touched and affected, the more are they delighted with the spectacle; and as soon as the uneasy passions cease to operate, the piece is at an end (E-OT, 216).’ The case of conceptual art might seem more intractable for historical as well as for conceptual reasons. However, Hume would still dispute that a work of art could fail to elicit any feeling. In T 2.2.8.4/SBN 373 he claims: ‘I believe it may safely be establish’d for a general maxim, that no object is presented to the senses, nor image form’d in the fancy, but what is accompany’d with some emotion or movement of spirits proportion’d to it.’ The maxim, he contends, applies even to the most abstract objects: ‘[e]very part, then, of extension, and every unite of number has a separate emotion attending it, when conceiv’d by the mind (idem.).’
- 26.
Interpreters of Hume have traditionally given a strong interpretation to what have been called the ‘subordination thesis’, namely, the claim that ‘[r]eason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions’ (T 2.3.3.4). The strong thesis is that Hume’s sentimentalism precludes any important role for reason in the formation of empirical beliefs and moral and aesthetic judgements. This strong sentimentalist reading has been recently (and in my opinion successfully) challenged. See, for instance, David Owen, Hume’s Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). See also David Fate Norton, “David Hume”: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).
- 27.
For a more detailed account of this claim, see Dario Perinetti, “Le Tournant humien,” in Philosophies de la connaissance, ed. Robert Nadeau (Paris: Vrin, 2009).
- 28.
In point of fact our contemporary sense of ‘objectivity’ is a post-Kantian and a particularly nineteenth-century creation. In the early modern period, the place and function of ‘objectivity’ was taken up by ethically laden norms such as ‘impartiality’ or ‘disinterestedness’. See Lorraine Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” and Peter Dear, “From Truth to Disinterestedness in the Seventeenth Century,” Social Studies of Science 22, no. 4 (1992). For an account of the emergence of the contemporary conception of ‘objectivity’ as an epistemic norm, see Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007).
- 29.
On the importance of stability for Hume’s epistemology, see Louis E. Loeb, Stability and Justification in Hume’s Treatise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
- 30.
Lord John Maclaurin, Apology for the Writers against the Tragedy of Douglas. With some Remarks on that Play (Edinburgh, 1757), 4.
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Perinetti, D. (2012). Between Knowledge and Sentiment: Burke and Hume on Taste. In: Vermeir, K., Funk Deckard, M. (eds) The Science of Sensibility: Reading Burke's Philosophical Enquiry. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 206. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2102-9_14
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