After Taste. Critique of insufficient reason

Book excerpt: After Taste is an inquiry into a field of study dedicated to the reconsideration, reconstruction and rehabilitation of the concept of Taste. Taste is the category, whose systematic, historical and actual dimensions have traditionally been located in a variety of disciplines. The actuality and potential of the study is based on a variety of collected facts from readings and experiences, which materialize in the following features: One concept (figurative Taste), two thinking traditions (analytic and synthetic/continental) and three interrelated dimensions (systematic, historic and actual) are presented in three volumes. As such, the study presents a salient comprehensive companion for wider readership of humanities approaching conceptions of Taste for the first time. Moreover, After Taste is intended for anyone who hopes to make a further contribution to the subject. Since its appearance and apparently short triumph some 250 years ago, the concept of non-literary Taste remained the linchpin of aesthetic theory and practice, but also a category outreaching aesthetics. Taste as the personal unity of the production, theory and criticism of art and literature, which was still largely taken as a given in the eighteenth century, has meanwhile given way to a highly-differentiated art world, in which aesthetic discourse is placed in such a way that it can seemingly no longer have a conceptual or linguistic effect on general opinion making. The critical role of “Taste judges”, ratings and rankings in the feuilleton, politics and social media on the one hand and the responding search for new canons on the other have had a huge impact on the academic and popular discourse today. However, Taste’s impact on society is in fact all-encompassing and yet, without getting even close to the “magnetic North” of the academic compass. After Taste fills the gaps of systematic research by a comprehensive tracing of the emergence of the doctrines, discourses and disciplinary dimensions of Taste up to the peak of its systematic and historical trajectory in the eighteenth century and onwards into the present day. The guiding goal is a post-disciplinary rehabilitation of the contested category as a preparation for its productive usage in emerging academic and popular contexts. Three intertwined research hypotheses form the guiding goal of an overall study of the agencies of Taste, its institutionalizations and expert cultures: The (1) first part provides a missing systematic perspective on the concept of Taste as a key factor for understanding the human faculties, value theories and practices of valuating. The (2) second part traces the events at the peak of Taste’s systematic and historical trajectories up until the late eighteenth century and verifies the historiographical hypothesis about the instrumentality of Taste for the production, reception and distribution of culture. The (3) third part reconstructs the major moments in which the contested concept of Taste experiences its post-disciplinary rehabilitation, in preparation for its future productive usage in the academic and popular discourses and practices. It shows how the category of Taste became the foundation, legitimation and the catalyst for the emerging division of labour, faculties and disciplines, confirming the hypothesis of the immense impact and actuality of Taste in the contemporary world.