QuestionsIs beauty in the eye of the beholder?Taste has common principles: what varies from one man to another is degree, not nature
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?Tastes, but also judges

Taste has common principles: what varies from one man to another is degree, not nature

Burke, "On Taste"; the logic of taste; the standard of taste

Edmund Burke 1729 · 1797A society is an inheritance: reform it with care, do not redesign it on paper.
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What it claims

The standard of taste, like that of reason, is probably the same in all human creatures: one can reason about taste, and a wrong taste is a defect of judgment, not a different nature.

Why

Senses and imagination work the same way in everyone: tastes differ only in knowledge and degree.

The same idea through history
Francis Hutcheson1725Hutcheson had already held that beauty rests on a foundation common to all men, in spite of the variety of tastes. He explained it by an "internal sense". Burke starts from something else: the agreement of the senses, of the imagination, and then of judgment.David Hume1757Two years before Burke, Hume also looked for a standard of taste, in the agreement of qualified judges. The two texts ask the same question (can one reason about taste?) and do not answer it in the same way.
Edmund Burke1759In the second edition of his Enquiry (1759), Burke adds an Introduction on taste. He holds that there are principles common to all men, and that differences of taste are explained by knowledge, sensibility and attention.
In short

"Taste has common principles: what varies from one man to another is degree, not nature" is an argument by Edmund Burke (Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Introduction "On Taste" (added in 1759), 1759) on the question "Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?" (answer: tastes, but also judges). Its claim: The standard of taste, like that of reason, is probably the same in all human creatures: one can reason about taste, and a wrong taste is a defect of judgment, not a different nature. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P6). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Introduction "On Taste" (added in 1759)
Valid with an implicit premise

People often say there is no disputing about tastes. Burke notes that this "delicate and aerial faculty" is commonly supposed to be regulated by no standard. If taste had no fixed principle, he says, it would be absurd to lay down rules for caprice. So he asks whether there are principles on which the imagination is affected in the same way in everyone, sound enough to reason about. His answer: yes, and the differences we see come from degree (sensibility, attention) and from knowledge, not from a different nature. He does not say that everyone has the same taste. He says that the reader who likes a poor book and the reader who likes a great one are moved by the same springs, and that one knows less than the other.

P1The organs of sense are nearly the same in all men. The pleasure or pain that an object produces naturally and simply in one man, it produces in all: we agree that vinegar is sour and honey sweet.
P2The imagination creates nothing absolutely new: it only recombines what the senses have received. It is therefore pleased or displeased on the same principle as the senses, and the agreement between imaginations is as close as between senses.
P3What we call a difference of taste comes mostly from a difference in knowledge of the thing represented. That knowledge is largely accidental: it depends on experience and observation, not on the strength of a natural faculty.
P4For the rest, tastes differ in degree: either through a greater or lesser natural sensibility, or through a closer and longer attention to the object. The principles are the same, the degree is not.
P5Habits and circumstances can deviate a taste (one may prefer tobacco to sugar), but one goes on distinguishing the natural pleasure from the acquired one. These deviations do not destroy the common rule.
P6 · implicit premiseIf the senses and the imagination follow the same principles in all, and if differences of taste are explained by knowledge, degree and identifiable habits, then there is a common standard of taste, and a taste can be wrong.
So the standard of taste, like that of reason, is probably the same in all human creatures: one can reason about taste, and a wrong taste is a defect of judgment, not a different nature.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P6, the computer finds a case where the senses agree, the imagination follows the senses, the deviations are explained, and yet no common standard follows: a factual agreement does not yet give a norm.
Without the hidden premise P6, the first five premises describe agreements and deviations without saying that this is enough to ground a standard. With it, the conclusion follows. The weak point is in the premises themselves, which the objections attack (the universality of the senses, the "accidental" nature of knowledge).
Analogy. Two people look at two marble tables, one more polished than the other. They agree on what is smooth and on the pleasure it gives. They stop agreeing when the difference is very small: the marble polisher will judge better. He has no other sense than the others, he has more attention and habit. Taste, Burke says, works the same way.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Voltaire 1764 · attacks premise 1

Voltaire refuses that there is a beauty that pleases everyone in the same way. Ask a toad what beauty is: it will be his female, with her big round eyes and yellow belly. And from one country to another, the same tragedy, well translated, moves some and makes others yawn. If pleasures come from organs and each being has its own organs, nothing guarantees the agreement Burke asserts.

Burke replies
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Edmund Burke 1759 · Burke, in advance
Burke admits that custom and other causes have produced many deviations from the natural pleasures and pains that flavours bring. But, he adds, the power of distinguishing the natural relish from the acquired one remains to the very last. His example: the man who prefers tobacco to sugar knows that tobacco is not sweet and that habit alone has reconciled him to this pleasure.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Voltaire's toad speaks of species, and Burke says explicitly that he speaks of the human kind ("human creatures"). But Voltaire's second example is between human peoples. Burke treats this kind of case, in his text, through knowledge of customs, places and manners, which can be learned, not through a different nature of pleasure. It remains to be seen whether this answer is enough when the gap concerns what people find beautiful and not only what they know.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Voltaire: beauty varies with beings and peoples. Burke: under the variations the principles are common, and habit is recognised as habit. The basic disagreement remains: is the observed variety of tastes a deviation of habit, or proof that there is no common principle?
Immanuel Kant 1790 · attacks the conclusion

Kant admits that the judgment of taste demands the agreement of all, but he denies that rules can be drawn from it. There can be no objective rule of taste that determines by concepts what is beautiful. And the expected agreement is not an observed fact: it is demanded of others. To look in nature for principles of taste, as Burke does, is therefore to look in the wrong place.

a defender replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1790, after the author's death (1797).
David Hume defender of the argument · 1757 · Hume, same method, in advance
Like Burke, Hume follows a path of experience: since men's sentiments differ, he looks for a real agreement, that of qualified judges. For him these are questions of fact (good sense, delicacy of imagination, freedom from prejudice can be discussed like any fact). This path does not claim to determine the beautiful by a concept.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Hume and Kant write before and after Burke, and none of the three answers another. The question is whether principles observed in human nature can ground a demand ("one ought to agree") or only a forecast ("one will, in general"). Burke speaks of a standard; Kant says that this word asks for more than a fact.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Kant: no objective rule of taste, and the expected agreement is a demand. Burke and Hume: taste has principles in human nature, which experience makes known. The basic disagreement remains: can a standard be drawn from experience?
Pierre Bourdieu 1979 · attacks premise 3

Bourdieu holds that taste is not a natural gift: it classifies, and it classifies the classifier. The knowledge, attention and time needed to enjoy cultivated works are acquired through education and background. Burke's "degrees" are therefore not neutral: they mark social classes.

Burke replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1979, after the author's death (1797).
Edmund Burke 1759 · Burke, in advance
Burke writes that the principle of the knowledge that makes "differences of taste" is very much accidental: it depends on experience and observation, not on the strength or weakness of a natural faculty. He gives the example of the novice before a statue, who does not see its defects before he has seen better ones: his taste has not changed, his knowledge has.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Burke thus admits, before Bourdieu, that the share of knowledge in taste is acquired. For Burke it is a difference in knowledge that leaves the principle intact. For Bourdieu, unequal access to that knowledge makes taste an instrument of distinction, and the common standard a class standard. Burke does not speak of classes.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Burke: deviations come from knowledge and attention, which are acquired. Bourdieu: what is acquired is not acquired equally, and so-called good taste reflects a social position. The basic disagreement remains: is a standard based on knowledge universal, or the norm of one milieu?