“so great a noise

in the world”
locke ● cavendish ● hume ● vico
Bizzell & Herzberg

“Swift, somewhat unfairly, accuses the British

Royal Society of believing that everything is a
noun.”
Locke

First, One for the recording of our own thoughts.

Secondly, The other for the communicating of

our thoughts to others.
Locke

Common use regulates the meaning of words

pretty well for common conversation; but
nobody having an authority to establish the
precise signification of words, nor determine to
what ideas any one shall annex them, common
use is not sufficient to adjust them to
Philosophical Discourses.
Locke

Si non vis intelligi, debes negligi.

Locke

But I am apt to imagine, that, were the

imperfections of language, as the instrument of
knowledge, more thoroughly weighed, a great
many of the controversies that make such a
noise in the world would of themselves cease;
and the way to knowledge, and perhaps peace
too, lie a great deal opener than it does.
Locke

Si non vis intelligi, debes negligi.

Cavendish

and Sophistry before Truth; in Philosophy, Old

Authors before New Truths, and Opinions before
Reason; And in Orations, they preferr Artificial
Connexions, before Natural Eloquence: All which
makes them Foolish, Censorious, and Unjust
Judges.
Cavendish

whereas the Intention of an Orator, or Use of

Orations, is to Perswade the Auditors to be of the
Orators Opinion or Belief, and it is not Probable,
that Forcible Arguments or Perswasions can be
Contain'd in two or three Lines of VVords
Cavendish

and first imagining my Self and You to be in a

Metropolitan City, I invite you into the Chief
Market-place, as the most Populous place,
where usually Orations are Spoken, at least they
were so in Older times
Hume

There is a species of philosophy, which cuts off all hopes of success

in such an attempt, and represents the impossibility of ever
attaining any standard of taste. The difference, it is said, is very wide
between judgment and sentiment. All sentiment is right; because
sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always
real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the
understanding are not right; because they have a reference to
something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are
not always conformable to that standard.
Hume

A man in a fever would not insist on his palate as

able to decide concerning flavours; nor would one,
affected with the jaundice, pretend to give a verdict
with regard to colours. In each creature, there is a
sound and a defective state; and the former alone
can be supposed to afford us a true standard of
taste and sentiment.
Hume

He must conclude, upon the whole, that the

fault lies in himself, and that he wants the
delicacy, which is requisite to make him sensible
of every beauty and every blemish, in any
composition or discourse.
Conley

For Hume, to have good taste was to be a good

critic, and to be a good critic is to be fully
immersed in the empirical practices of a given
aesthetic field.
Conley

“Cultivation” for Hume, then, is not a vertical

process of moral purification but a series of
lateral moves through the material landscape of
aesthetic life—cultivation as accumulation
rather than ascension.
Conley

We can achieve this cut by expanding realm of

aesthetics to encompass not simply these kinds
of objects or those sorts of feelings or this type
of critic but the entire power and manner by
which bodies are linked to one another (subjects
and objects alike).
Hume

Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment,

improved by practice, perfected by comparison,
and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle
critics to this valuable character; and the joint
verdict of such, wherever they are to be found, is
the true standard of taste and beauty.
Vico

Philosophical criticism is the subject which we compel our

youths to take up first. Now, such speculative criticism, the
main purpose of which is to cleanse its fundamental truths
not only of all falsity, but also of the mere suspicion of error,
places upon the same plane of falsity not only false thinking,
but also those secondary verities and ideas which are based
on probability alone, and commands us to clear our minds of
them. Such an approach is distinctly harmful...
Vico

Again I say, this is harmful, since the invention of arguments is

by nature prior to the judgment of their validity, so that, in
teaching , that invention should be given priority over
philosophical criticism.

Nature and life are full of incertitude

Stewart

of snapping at the world as if the whole point of being and

thinking is just to catch it in a lie.
Vico

It is therefore impossible to assess

human affairs by the inflexible
standard of abstract right; we must
rather gauge them by the pliant
Lesbic rule, which does not
conform bodies to itself, but
adjusts itself to their contours. for that Work was like a Taylors Work to make Cloaths