QuestionsIs beauty in the eye of the beholder?An internal sense of beauty: we do not choose what seems beautiful to us, but the basis is common
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?Tastes, but also judges

An internal sense of beauty: we do not choose what seems beautiful to us, but the basis is common

The internal sense of beauty; uniformity amidst variety

Francis Hutcheson 1694 · 1746We have a "moral sense" that approves of benevolence; the best action is the one that brings the greatest happiness to the greatest numbers.
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What it claims

Beauty depends on a sense, that is on a feeling, and not on a property that things would have with no one to perceive them; but this sense has a foundation common to all men, so that some judgments of taste are sounder than others.

Why

Beauty strikes us at once and without choice, like a sense, and this sense has a common basis that habit can deflect.

The same idea through history
Francis Hutcheson1725The version presented here. Hutcheson (then in Dublin) takes from Locke the theory of ideas coming from the senses and adds "internal senses": the sense of beauty and harmony, then the moral sense. He opposes the idea that taste comes only from habit or interest.
David Hume1757Hume keeps the idea that beauty lies in sentiment, not in things, and looks for a standard in the agreement of qualified judges.Edmund Burke1759Burke also holds that taste rests on principles common to all men, but without a particular "sense" of beauty.
In short

"An internal sense of beauty: we do not choose what seems beautiful to us, but the basis is common" is an argument by Francis Hutcheson (Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, Treatise I (1725), sections I and VI, 1725) on the question "Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?" (answer: tastes, but also judges). Its claim: Beauty depends on a sense, that is on a feeling, and not on a property that things would have with no one to perceive them; but this sense has a foundation common to all men, so that some judgments of taste are sounder than others. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P7). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, Treatise I (1725), sections I and VI
Valid with an implicit premise

Why do we find a facade, a face or a melody beautiful, without being able to decide it at will? For Hutcheson the answer is the same as for sight or hearing: we have a power of receiving certain ideas, and these ideas come of themselves. He calls it an internal sense, because it applies not to simple physical qualities but to order, proportion and harmony. He draws two consequences. Beauty is not a property that would exist without anyone to perceive it. But it is not capricious: this sense is the same in all, its object is what he calls uniformity amidst variety, and differences of taste are mostly explained by the association of ideas, habit and education.

P1The pleasure of beauty strikes us at first, without our needing to know the principles, proportions, causes or usefulness of the object. A more accurate knowledge does not increase that pleasure.
P2The ideas of beauty and harmony are, like other sensible ideas, necessarily pleasant and immediately so. No resolution of our own varies the beauty or deformity of an object.
P3A pleasure that comes without prior knowledge and that we do not choose belongs to a sense. This power of receiving perceptions of beauty and harmony is an internal sense: a passive power, which receives the idea of beauty from every object in which there is uniformity amidst variety.
P4All beauty has a relation to some perceiving power. But among men this sense is universal: there is an infinity of different forms that all have some unity, so that men may have different fancies of beauty while approving forms for the same reason.
P5The apparent diversity of tastes comes largely from the association of ideas (a dark wood recalls solitude or religion, a style of building recalls a hated cult). These pleasures and dislikes are ideas different from beauty, not other senses of beauty.
P6One can therefore be mistaken in matters of beauty: Hutcheson says that the Goth who, through education, takes the architecture of his country to be the most perfect is mistaken, even though what pleases him is indeed a beauty founded on uniformity amidst variety.
P7 · implicit premiseA natural sense, common to all and whose deviations are explained by causes foreign to it (association, habit, prejudice), provides a measure: one can judge better or worse according to whether these causes distort its exercise or not.
So beauty depends on a sense, that is on a feeling, and not on a property that things would have with no one to perceive them; but this sense has a foundation common to all men, so that some judgments of taste are sounder than others.

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 P7, the computer finds a case where a sense is immediate, involuntary, common to all, where its deviations are explained by habit, and yet no taste is sounder than another: all exercises of the sense are equal.
Without the hidden premise P7, the premises say that beauty is felt at first, that it has a common foundation and that taste can go wrong. One must add that this is enough to speak of a more or less sound judgment. Hutcheson illustrates it with the Goth, without stating it as a principle. This is the step an opponent may refuse: who will say which exercise of the sense is distorted?
Analogy. We do not decide that a fruit is sweet or that a sound is harmonious: the sense receives, it does not choose. Hutcheson points out that the pleasures of the external senses too are increased, diminished or counterbalanced by custom, education or interest, and that they are not held to be any less natural. For him the sense of beauty is in the same case: habit can deflect it, it does not take its place.

Objections

3

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

A
Archibald Alison 1790 · attacks premise 5

Alison disputes that a special sense and a single quality (uniformity amidst variety) are needed to explain beauty. For him, material objects move us mostly because they awaken in us, by association, ideas of agreeable emotions. Association is therefore not one more cause of error: it is the very substance of the pleasure of beauty, which explains the variety of tastes.

Hutcheson replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1790, after the author's death (1746).
Francis Hutcheson 1725 · Hutcheson, on association, in advance
Hutcheson knows this explanation. He writes that the association of ideas is a great cause of the apparent diversity of fancies in the sense of beauty, and that it makes people like or dislike objects for reasons other than their beauty or deformity. But he adds that these approbations and distastes are remote from the ideas of beauty, being plainly different ideas.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Hutcheson writes before Alison and does not target him. He treats association as a factor that adds to the sense of beauty without constituting it. Alison takes it for the principle of the pleasure itself. Both agree that association plays a large role; they differ on whether there remains, beneath it, a response of the sense to forms.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Hutcheson: association explains deviations, but there is a pleasure proper to forms that are united and varied. Alison: the pleasure of beauty is itself a pleasure of association. The basic disagreement remains: is there a common basis left once associations are removed?
Pierre Bourdieu 1979 · attacks premise 1

Bourdieu holds that the "immediate" pleasure of beauty is nothing like a natural sense. What seems to strike us at first, we learned early, in the family and at school, to the point of forgetting it. Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier: immediacy is the effect of long training, presented as a gift.

Hutcheson replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1979, after the author's death (1746).
Francis Hutcheson 1725 · Hutcheson, on education, in advance
Hutcheson gives the example of the Goth: education makes him believe that the architecture of his country is the most perfect, and even makes him hate Roman buildings. But what pleases him remains, says Hutcheson, a beauty founded on uniformity amidst variety. Education distorts judgment; it does not by itself create the pleasure of form.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Hutcheson admits the influence of education, but only as a distortion of the sense. Bourdieu makes it the source of taste and leaves no room for an independent natural basis. Each can send the other back to an empirical question: can pleasures of form be found that are independent of education?
Where the debate stands (our summary)Hutcheson: education deflects a natural sense. Bourdieu: education and class make the whole of taste. The basic disagreement remains: is there, beneath learning, a pleasure of forms that is not learned?
Voltaire 1764 · attacks premise 4

Voltaire does not believe in a common foundation of beauty. Ask a toad what beauty is: it will tell you it is his female, with two great round eyes coming out of her little head. If beauty changes with the species, it changes with peoples too, and uniformity amidst variety does not measure it.

Hutcheson replies
see the argument
Francis Hutcheson 1725 · Hutcheson, on other species, in advance
Hutcheson writes that all beauty has a relation to some perceiving power. Since we do not know the variety of senses that may exist among animals, we cannot say of any form in nature that it has no beauty: it may please some other perceiving power. His inquiry is confined to men.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Hutcheson thus accepts the toad, and keeps as universal only what holds for the human species. But Voltaire adds examples between human peoples. Hutcheson answers those elsewhere, with the proposition that men have different fancies of beauty while approving unity (P4). It remains to be seen whether this answer is not too wide to be put to the test.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Voltaire: beauty changes with beings and peoples. Hutcheson: this holds for other species, and among men the different forms all have some unity. The basic disagreement remains: is "unity" a criterion that can fail, or does it fit any form?