TASTE

How we judge the meaning of cultural objects begins innocently enough: merely on one’s own taste. But upon further examination we are in fact delving into a mess of culture, sociology, economic status, and linguistic meaning. Rather than pretending I can contribute originally to this long studied topic, instead, I will examine the history and leading theories on what it is we mean when we discuss the thing we’re referring to when we use words like “taste” and “preference”.

I want to take a retrospective at the history of the study of taste beginning with David Hume in Of the Standard of Taste published in 1757 and moving up until the modern day. It is in fact the history of Western philosophy that underpins our ideas around the language of artistic judgment and personal preferences and this is inescapable if we are to work in the English language. I think it is underestimated just how much our native language itself shapes the way we think, since it is so full of meaning.

In Of the Standard of Taste, we have a very strange almost religious-adjacent book written in the middle of the 18th century. It is completely devoid of citations or evidence as I’m assuming is the practice of those days which relied on logical persuasion, and is written like a series of aphorisms. Let’s take a look.

“But though there be naturally a wide difference in point of delicacy between one person and another, nothing tends further to encrease and improve this talent, than practice in a particular art, and the frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty. When objects of any kind are first presented to the eye or imagination, the sentiment, which attends them, is obscure and confused; and the mind is, in a great measure, incapable of pronouncing concerning their merits or defects. The taste cannot perceive the several excellencies of the performance; much less distinguish the particular character of each excellency, and ascertain its quality and degree.”

So here Hume acknowledges the gap in taste that occurs between practitioners and consumers of cultural/artistic products. How could we ever communicate across such a gap?

I also find it interestingly how Hume repeatedly returns to the topic of morality in his treatise on taste, suggesting that moral alignment and taste are in the same realm:

“The case is not the same with moral principles, as with speculative opinions of any kind. These are in continual flux and revolution. The son embraces a different system from the father. Nay, there scarcely is any man, who can boast of great constancy and uniformity in this particular. Whatever speculative errors may be found in the polite writings of any age or country, they detract but little from the value of those compositions. There needs but a certain turn of thought or imagination to make us enter into all the opinions, which then prevailed, and relish the sentiments or conclusions derived from them. But a very violent effort is requisite to change our judgment of manners, and excite sentiments of approbation or blame, love or hatred, different from those to which the mind from long custom has been familiarized. And where a man is confident of the rectitude of that moral standard, by which he judges, he is justly jealous of it, and will not pervert the sentiments of his heart for a moment, in complaisance to any writer whatsoever.”

This article is a work in progress.

8.7.2025

Lee Beckwith

Bibliography:

Of the Standard of Taste, David Hume (1757)

Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant (1790)

Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, Mary Douglas (1966)

Art Worlds, Howard S. Becker (1982)

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Pierre Bourdieu (1984)

Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities, Grant McCracken (1988)

Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts, Kendall L. Walton (1990)

Fashion as Communication, Malcolm Barnard (1996)

JUDGMENT

One of the most important distinguishing factors of defining design as a practice distinct from others is the human use of judgment. Judgment takes a holistic view of all a human being’s experiences and culminates in decisions which can precede or overrule rational stepwise decision making. This is a mysterious and difficult to examine faculty that is also so critical to understanding how designers work. In this article I attempt to define judgment as it relates to design and review the best research and writing on this topic.

BODY

Perhaps the most uncomfortable fact of modern human beings is inhabiting a body. Here we critically encounter this fact as designers and examine what our modern cultural relationship to being embodied beings is.

These articles are a work in progress.

This project is a work in progress but I am working on an academic design magazine called “BODY”. The work is planned to have bi-annual publications in print format only, which will be for sale here. The topics will be academic articles on design. This is a mockup placeholder to express that concept for now as I build it up. First release is planned for Feb 2026.

SPACE

In artistic and musical traditions, space is a critical unifying factor that separates content from the background. The same musical line or typographic treatment makes an entirely different impact depending on the silence or space around it. Here, we examine the history of the definition of space in creative professions and how it can evolve our practice going forward as designers.