Monday, February 14, 2011

Art From All Directions

The thing I like about Hume is: he back and forths. I think in our criticisms of Hume, it is easy to say "well, I don't know what he's saying-- first he says this, then he says that", or to accuse him of contradicting himself or to say his arguments aren't sound because he doesn't stick to one of them.

But I would argue that that is what is sound about Hume.

The problem with most thinkers is exactly the opposite of what one might complain about with Hume. Most thinkers are too extreme. Most thinkers defend their ideas too much. They become overstated or militaristic in their thinking in order to defend what was originally a reasonable and not too out-there idea.

This is not too say that Hume never makes out-there claims. The key in the wine analogy, for instance, seems rather sketchy (when do we discover the key in real life?). But that is part of his point. We might mock the people who really see beauty because we don't understand what they are perceiving that is flawed or beautiful in a piece. The hope is, I think, that through seeing them recognize flaws or beauty again and again we can confirm who to trust, but I don't think Hume is ignorant of the danger that the masses may never recognize the real discerner.

That is why it's so important that he goes back and forth. He is reflecting what he advocates. He is trying out every side of the issue in an attempt to get at the whole issue rather than to be the foolish wine taster who can only taste the grapes (or the foolish[?] critic who overlooks the oversentimentality in favor of the excellent brushstrokes). He is attempting to address every virtue and every vice of art, so that he can understand it as a whole.

3 comments:

  1. Yeah, he's a lot like Maimonides in that sense; he's willing to explain and extrapolate, while still acknowledging that it's not clear that there's a single, obvious truth to the matter.

    Another point is that most of Hume's best works were in dialogue form. In those, he would put words in the mouths of various characters and leave it up to the audience to figure out what his actual position was. So maybe when he's writing in essay form, he's still fluctuating, but it's a lot more obvious that he doesn't have his position worked out to the extent that someone like Kant might have.

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  2. I really like this response, Caitlin. I think I appreciate that about Hume too. I also found this thinking very interesting and well-supported. He does fit into his own notions of a seasoned taster by noticing all the points. I'm not sure I totally buy it, but it's a new lens to look through.

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  3. Caitlin,
    I do think you're right. Hume is not out to make outrageous claims. He is a moderate in that he wants to reconcile rationalism with "common sense" judgment.

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