One person likes Britney, another likes Beethoven. One person can discern the notes and texture of a Merlot, another just enjoys a glass of red. But is taste purely subjective? For Hume, good taste was discerned by a good critic, who met certain criteria – a kind of virtue aesthetics (in place of virtue ethics). However, things are not quite that simple, writes Nick Zangwill.

In his essay "Of the Standard of Taste," Hume set himself a problem. He takes off from a "sentimentalist" view of taste, according to which “beauty and deformity . . . are not qualities in objects, but belong entirely to the sentiments.”