CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Katai, Lili |
|---|---|
| Title | Can Critics Create a Standard of Taste? Hume, Bourdieu, and Nehamas on the Role of Critics |
| Summary | This thesis explores whether art critics can create a standard of taste by which artworks can be evaluated. The question is examined through the lens of three thinkers: David Hume, Pierre Bourdieu and Alexander Nehamas. Art criticism is generally associated with the cultural elite: criticism tends to be inaccessible to those outside of academic and artistic circles due to its specialized language, highly academic institutions with which it is associated, and due to its history, where people from privileged backgrounds shaped discourse in the art world. One might worry that a standard of taste that critics establish would only be a reiteration of the norms and values of the elite. I argue that instead of creating a standard, art critics can open the dialogue about art to wider audience by emphasizing the importance of personal engagement with artworks and how these experiences connect us to other people. To do so, this thesis introduces David Hume’s work Of the Standard of Taste and critically evaluates the role of critics it presents through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s work Distinction. To show that elitism and social power is not all there is to art criticism, I introduce Alexander Nehamas’s ideas from his book Only a Promise of Happiness. Finally, I argue that Alexander Nehamas’s theory of art critics exemplifies an approach to art criticism where critics do not have to create a standard of taste. Instead, art critics can promote diverse interpretations and evaluations, allowing for a more democratized understanding of taste where no standard prevails. |
| Supervisor | Cathy Mason |
| Department | Undergraduate Studies BA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/katai_lili.pdf |
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