S/P/61. 'Beauty - reason or sentiment?' Discuss.

This paper discusses David Hume’s position on aesthetics, and specifically his views on the respective roles of reason and passion/sentiment in criticism. The main difficulty for Hume is squaring his subjectivist position with the realisation that reason must have some role to play in analysing beauty. His solution is the formation of a ‘Standard of Taste’, and this essay argues that his arguments for such a standard run in to a number of problems.