What is taste?
I’m sure that, at some point during your life, you’ve said to someone: “Wow, you have good taste!” Whether you’re talking about clothes, design, or food, we have a tendency to judge others based upon our own likes and aesthetics.
If you’re a Spotify user, you can even create a “Blend” with a friend, which meshes your liked songs with theirs and then gives you a compatibility score based on how similar your music tastes are.
Hugh Blair, an 18th century rhetorician, was extremely interested in the idea of taste. His ideas of taste relate most to writing and speaking, and he has specific opinions about the “correctness” of taste. Blair claimed that when practicing exercise and reason, a person develops “taste-delicacy,” which relates to the five senses. The more correct your taste, the more fine-tuned your logic and judgment.
However, Blair’s arguments rely on an objective taste that is absolutely correct. Obviously, this isn’t the case. Just because I really like my music, doesn’t mean I have elite taste in music. I can respect others’ opinions while still disagreeing with their taste. In my eyes, taste is personal and individual. Blair likely wouldn’t agree:
Taste, in the sense in which I have explained it, is a faculty common in some degree to all men. Nothing that belongs to human nature is more general than the relish of beauty of one kind o other; of what is orderly, proportioned, grand, har monious, new, or sprightly. In children, the rudiments of Taste discover themselves very early in a thousand instances; in their fondness for regular bodies, their admiration of pictures and statues, and imitations of all kinds; and their strong attachment to whatever is new or marvellous. The most ignorant peasants are delighted with ballads and tales, and are struck with the beautiful appearances of nature in the earth and heavens. (1052)
No matter if it’s music or philosophy or rhetoric, I think it’s important to ask: Who decides what is good taste? Is it something harmless, like opinions on music, or is it something that could potentially lead to racism or classism? Is the good taste equitable and accessible?
Sorry, Hugh!
