As stated in the title, the paper reflects upon the importance of taste in David Hume and, particularly, Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy.
The paper starts by summarizing the importance of Aesthetics within the Scottish Enlightenment. Following the philosophy of Lord Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson, the paper posits that 18th century Scotland lived a platonic twist, where the good emerged as...
This paper aims to present a forgotten episode in the history of aesthetics by a study of Adam Smith’s aesthetic thought in relation to his moral philosophy. I address two historical problems. The first is with the gap in Smith scholarship. Smith was practically non-existent in standard accounts of British aesthetic history, but literature and fine arts were a long-meditated project for Smith....
Adam Smith allows us to think about the Industrial Revolution from a different perspective: not only as a driven by a technological change that transformed and dynamized production, but as a consequence of the sophistication of taste. New forms of consumption, associated with the principles of the human mind, can explain the Industrial Revolution from a consumption point of view.
