Between Form and Sentiment: Hume’s Standard of Taste

In this article, our aim is to give an account of Hume’s way of establishing the conformity between objective and subjective aspects of judgments of taste. In this respect, we give a reading of his “On the standard of Taste” that is based on his more general theory of objectivity. We argue that his account of the relation between the sentiment of beauty and general rules of aesthetic evaluation is an extension of his association-based account of cognition and that he relies on the threefold structure of it to relate and combine the considerations of subjective sentiment with those of objective standards of beauty and that it is only because he allows a kind of sensible reflection that he can argue for the possibility of such a relation and combination