Everyone knows people in differ in tastes, even the most narrow-minded individuals.
This difference in taste, however, is even greater than it appears.
Anything that disagrees with our customs or tastes we call barbarous, though this is obviously a two-way road, which Hume finds highly arrogant and self-conceited.
General discourse is usually the same, and the differences will lie in the details - people will agree that elegance, propriety, simplicity and spirit are great in writing, while other qualities are not. However, when they look at it more closely, people will find themselves disagreeing with their peers about what these qualifiers mean and how they relate to the text in specificity.
This is opposite to the state in other things (“in all matters of opinion and science”), where the difference is found in generals and usually appears as more vast than it is.
An explanation of the terms people use usually ends the quarrel: people find that really they meant the same thing, just using different words for it.
Those who found morality on sentiment tend to comprehend ethics under the observation that people are more different than they appear in taste. These people will say that in all that regards conduct and manners, the difference is even greater than it would seem at first sight.
The correlation between the values applauded and the vices condoned by “poets and other artists whose works are chiefly meant to please the imagination” is attributed to “plain reason” (common sense?), which prevents the kind of disagreements abstract sciences tend to have.
Hume then says that the reason we all agree on what things are good and bad is because of the language we use. The connotations of words like “wise” are good, while the connotations of “fraud” are bad, so when translating them, regardless of what our moral outlook on them might be, the translator will also translate the sentiment (?)
There’s no wrong way to feel (sentiment can’t be wrong), since it references nothing beyond itself - and is always real, whenever anyone is feeling it.
This doesn’t stand true for judgements - there may be many judgements about one thing, yet only one of them is just and true.
In the case of feelings (or sentiment), this won’t be the case. One thing can make different people feel many different ways, and all of them will be right. However, of the judgements that thing might inspire, but one will be correct.
And the difficulty, he says, is in ascertaining which one is just and true.
Apparently he’s trying to figure out the relation between form and sentiment, which may be compromised entirely should any undue thought or experience occur.
Authority or prejudice may make an author popular temporarily, but lasting popularity fame is only achieved through creating something universally experienced as great.
Taste can only be ascertained by healthy people
Delicacy is when the organs are so fine as to be able to distinguish every minute detail in the chaos of taste, for example.
With practice, people can get better at distinguishing the minute details of things - beauties and blemishes of an art piece, and with said practice they will be able to make these judgements more fairly (I think?)
Every work needs to be considered in itself, with the context appropriate, but with no prejudice.
The speech of an orator has to take its audience into consideration, and a future critic must take into account the audience this speech was targeted to just as well as the speech itself.
Why is he throwing shade at the poets? Why can’t poets undertake such a delicate work? seems a bit mean but whatever
Now saying that though the principles of taste are universal and the same in all men, very few are actually qualified to give judgements or establish their opinions as the standard.
People who don’t know better can’t notice the smaller details in works (good or bad) and thus have impaired judgement.
Learned people are easy to distinguish by the soundness of their understanding and the superiority of their faculties above the rest of mankind.
Sometimes tastes are simply irreconcilable, through no fault of either party, for instance, age can change what people appreciate, and that isn’t exactly an objective fault for someone to have.
There is no standard which can decide whether one genre is better than another, whether one aspect of writing is more important than another.
Some things cannot be excused through shifting values, however.
We can’t relate to a character that we, through our lens of morals, perceive as a bad person.
People shouldn’t be judged based on their religious beliefs.