JERROLD LEVINSON Artistic Worth and Personal Taste In this short article I explore two related themes, between which there is, I hope to show, a curious tension. The first is the fact of there being demon- strably better and worse artworks. The second is the undeniable importance of personal taste as regards preferences among works of art. What should be the relationship between what one as an individual prefers in the realm of art and what is objectively artistically superior? To what degree should the former be aligned with the latter? Might there be a conflict between these two apparent values, that is, on the one hand, one’s own taste in art and, on the other, what is truly better art? If there is such a conflict, in what way might it be resolved or reduced? i. better and worse in the domain of art i. For the purposes of this discussion, I am go- ing to assume the existence of better and worse in artistic matters and the consequent real interest that we have in informing ourselves about such differences and in being guided by them in our aesthetic lives. I believe I have made a strong case for this elsewhere, through a free reading and de- fense of Hume’s famous essay “Of the Standard of Taste.” 1 I there suggested that a Humean solu- tion to the problem of taste can only respond to skepticism about the status of ideal critics, those charged by Hume with embodying the standard of taste, by showing that there is, after all, some- thing special about ideal critics understood in a certain way, something about their relationship to the aesthetic sphere that makes it rational for any- one with an antecedent interest in the aesthetic dimension of life to attend to the recommenda- tions of and to strive to emulate such critics, and thus something special as well about the objects identified as truly superior through winning the convergent approbation of such critics. The pri- mary burden of a defender of a Humean solution to the problem of taste is to show, in a noncircu- lar and non-question-begging way, why a person who is not an ideal critic should rationally seek, so far as possible, to exchange the ensemble of artis- tic objects that currently elicit his or her approval and enjoyment for some other ensemble that is approved and enjoyed by the sort of person he or she is not. What needs to be explained is why critics of a certain sort are reliable indicators of what works are artistically best, in the sense of ones capa- ble of affording better, or ultimately preferable, aesthetic experiences. What I suggested was that that could only be done by putting the accent on the special relationship that such critics bear to works of unquestioned value, that is, masterpieces, whose identification is in turn effected, although defeasibly, by passage of the test of time. In my view, only some form of artistic-value-as-capacity theory, appropriately coupled to a set of master- works passing the test of time, in turn used to identify ideal critics, who then serve as measuring rods of such value generally, is adequate to resolv- ing the questions about aesthetic objectivity that Hume’s approach raises. On my proposal as to how to assemble the elements of Hume’s theory, there is an answer to the real problem, an answer that remains elusive on other readings of Hume’s essay. ii. I made three claims for my response to the real problem. First, it addresses the issue that Hume The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68:3 Summer 2010 c  2010 The American Society for Aesthetics