Psychology Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Taste: Taste in art refers to preferences or judgments about the aesthetic qualities and merits of artworks. It is influenced by cultural background, education, individual experiences, and exposure to different types of art. See also Art, Artworks, Aesthetics, Aesthetic experience, Aesthetic consciousness. _____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Hans-Georg Gadamer on Taste - Dictionary of Arguments
I 41 Taste/Gadamer: The history of the concept of taste follows (...) the history of absolutism from Spain (>Taste/Gracian) to France and England and coincides with the prehistory of the third estate. Taste is not only the ideal that sets up a new society, but for the first time this ideal of "good taste" is what has been called "good society" ever since. It no longer recognizes itself and legitimates itself by birth and rank, but basically by nothing more than the commonality of its judgments or, better, by the fact that it knows how to claim to be able to judge by the narrow-mindedness of its interests and the privacy of its preferences. Thus, the concept of taste undoubtedly refers to a mode of knowledge. It is under the sign of good taste that one is capable of distancing oneself from oneself and one's private preferences. Taste is therefore by its very nature not something private, but a social phenomenon of the first order. Cf. >Taste/Kant. I 42 The decisiveness of the taste judgement includes its validity. Good taste is always certain of its judgement, i.e. it is by its very nature a sure taste, an acceptance and rejection that knows no wavering, squinting at others and no searching for reasons. So the taste is more like a sense. It does not have prior knowledge for reasons. >Fashion/Gadamer, >Style/Gadamer. I 44 Thus taste is by no means limited to the beauty of nature and art, judging it by its decorative quality, but encompasses the whole range of morals and decency. Even the concepts of custom are never given as a whole or clearly defined in a normative sense. Rather, the arrangement of life by the rules of law and morals is an incomplete one, in need of productive supplementation. It requires the power of judgement to assess the concrete cases correctly. I 62 Taste/Art/Gadamer: It is (...) obvious that the concept of taste loses its meaning when the phenomenon of art comes to the fore. The standpoint of taste is secondary to that of the work of art. The sensitivity of choice that makes it up often has a levelling function in relation to the originality of the ingenious work of art. The taste avoids the unusual and monstrous. It is a superficial sense, it does not get involved in the original of an artistic production. Already the rise of the concept of genius in the 18th century shows a polemical point against the concept of taste. >Genius/Kant. I 90 Taste/Gadamer: (...) the unity of an ideal of taste that distinguishes and unites a society [is] characteristically different from what constitutes the figure of aesthetic education. Taste still follows a standard of content. What is valid for a society, what taste prevails in it is what determines the commonality of social life. Such a society chooses and knows what belongs to it and what does not. Even the possession of artistic interests is not arbitrary and universal for them, but what artists create and what society values belongs together in the unity of a lifestyle and an ideal of taste. Aesthetic education: The idea of aesthetic education, on the other hand - as we derive it from Schiller (>Aesthetics/Schiller) - consists precisely in no longer allowing a standard of content and in dissolving the unity of a work of art's belonging to its world. The expression of this is the universal expansion of the possessions that the aesthetically educated consciousness claims for itself._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Gadamer I Hans-Georg Gadamer Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik 7. durchgesehene Auflage Tübingen 1960/2010 Gadamer II H. G. Gadamer The Relevance of the Beautiful, London 1986 German Edition: Die Aktualität des Schönen: Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest Stuttgart 1977 |
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