Abstract

This paper distinguishes two components of experience, the subjective and objective, and connects them to the distinction between “individual” and “social” epistemology. These elements, it is then proposed, shape Hume’s approach to knowledge and belief and, by extension, his treatment of taste. The paper con- cludes by distinguishing “philosophical criticism” from “vulgar criticism”; the former reflects Hume’s place in the eighteenth-century “science of man,” while the latter connects him to a tradition that makes aesthetics closer to an art criticism.