Abstract

The purpose of this article is threefold. First, I would like to offer a brief but systematic survey of Hume’s main ideas in ‘The Standard of Taste’. Next, I wish to explore more thoroughly two most important topics, viz. the idea of Beauty nd the idea of a causal link between the work of art and the observer, supplemented by material from Hume’s other writings and mainly from the Treatise of Human Nature. Finally, I will venture to suggest as a hypothesis a comprehensively ‘aesthetic’ interpretation of Hume’s entire philosophy, with the inclusion of his seemingly independent epistemology. In particular the famous mechanism of belief, with its irritatingly obscure element of ‘feeling’ could, in my opinion, gain a more positive content if turned into a kind of ‘cognitive taste’.