Aesthetic Taste and Moral Sentiment in Hume and Mengzi

Abstract: I examine Hume’s and Mengzi’s reliance on aesthetic and moral taste in their sentiment-based theories of virtue. Their views on taste seem to conflict. In his essay “Of the Standard of Taste,” Hume observes that people’s taste sentiments appear to vary, but he seeks a standard that can reconcile them. In contrast, relying on the uniformity of aesthetic taste, Mengzi argues that humans, by nature, share a universal taste toward morality. I argue that the apparent contrast in the two philosophers’ views originates from their attending to different aspects of taste and sentiments for their different theoretical goals. For an empirical account of aesthetic evaluation, Hume observes the ordinary phenomena of taste, people’s varied particular sentiments; he then investigates their initial causes in the mind to establish a reliable standard. Mengzi takes cases of uniform taste to imply the same mental cause of moral taste, which is the cornerstone of people’s moral self-cultivation. Relying on the sentiments for moral distinction and cultivation, both Hume and Mengzi reach similar conclusions: they recognize a practical standard, rather than empirical rules, in those who have achieved excellence in their aesthetic and moral taste, and suggest that the ultimate standard of taste is the natural constitution of the human mind.