The Sovereignty of Taste

Description

"Challenging prevailing trends toward aesthetic neutrality, James S. Hans argues that there is such a thing as good and bad taste, that taste is something one is born with, and that it is firmly rooted in the mechanics of biology.". "Taste is everything, Hans says, for it produces the primary values that guide our lives. Taste is the fundamental organizing mechanism of human bodies, a lifelong effort to fit one's own rhythms and patterns of the natural world and the larger community. It is an aesthetic sorting process by which one determines what belongs in - a conversation, a curriculum, a committee, a piece of art, a meal, a logical argument - and what should be left out. On the one hand, taste is the source of beauty, justice, and a sense of the good. On the other hand, as an arbiter of the laws of fair and free play, taste enters into more ominous and destructive patterns - but patterns nonetheless - of resentment and violence."--BOOK JACKET.

First Sentence

ON A DAILY BASIS, the most fundamental problem of human existence is that individuals are called upon to make choices with insufficient knowledge about the consequences.

Subjects