Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder? 美是主觀的嗎？

🔊Hume then pointed out that nobody believes this. Anyone who claimed that a forgotten versifier was the equal of Milton would be thought to defend “no less an extravagance, than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as Teneriffe.” We say that taste is personal, and we also say that some people have bad taste. A theory of beauty has to explain how both can be said.

接著休謨指出：沒有人真的相信這一點。誰要是宣稱一位被遺忘的打油詩人與彌爾頓平起平坐，人們會認為他所辯護的荒謬，「不亞於主張一個鼴鼠丘跟特內里費峰一樣高」。我們說品味是個人的事；我們也說有些人品味很差。一個關於美的理論，必須解釋這兩句話怎麼能同時說得出口。

🔊Hume’s answer begins with a story from Don Quixote. Two of Sancho Panza’s kinsmen were asked to judge a barrel of wine. One tasted it and pronounced it good, except for a slight taste of leather. The other agreed that it was good, except for a taste of iron. Everyone laughed at them. When the barrel was emptied, there was found at the bottom “an old key with a leathern thong tied to it.”

休謨的回答，從《唐吉訶德》裡的一個故事開始。桑丘・潘薩的兩個親戚被請去品評一桶酒。一個嘗了，宣布酒是好的，只是有一點點皮革味。另一個也同意酒是好的，只是有一點鐵味。大家都嘲笑他們。等到酒桶倒空了，人們在桶底發現了「一把舊鑰匙，上面繫著一條皮繩」。

🔊The pleasure of the wine was in the drinkers, but the leather and the iron were in the barrel, and some palates could detect them where others could not. Hume calls this delicacy of taste and holds that it can be trained. A true judge needs five things: “Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice.” The joint verdict of such judges, he says, “is the true standard of taste and beauty.” We find them, in practice, by the test of time: “The same Homer, who pleased at Athens and Rome two thousand years ago, is still admired at Paris and at London.”

酒帶來的愉快是在喝的人身上；但皮革與鐵是在桶子裡的，而有些人的味覺嘗得出來，有些人嘗不出來。休謨稱之為品味的「細膩」，並且主張它是可以訓練的。一位真正的評判者需要五樣東西：「健全的理智，結合細膩的感受，因練習而增進，因比較而完善，並且清除了一切偏見。」他說，這樣的評判者共同的裁決，「就是品味與美的真正標準」。在實際上，我們是用時間的考驗來找到他們的：「兩千年前在雅典與羅馬討人喜歡的同一位荷馬，今天在巴黎與倫敦仍然受人讚賞。」

🔊Kant thought Hume’s judges could not settle the matter, since an expert’s say-so does not make me feel anything. He looked more closely at what we mean. If I say “Canary wine is pleasant,” I am quite content to be corrected: “It is pleasant to me.” No one argues about that. If I say that a rose or a poem is beautiful, I mean more. I am not reporting a private sensation. In Kant’s words, “we believe that we speak with a universal voice, and we claim the assent of every one.” I expect you to see it too, and I think something is missing in you if you do not.

康德認為，休謨的評判者解決不了這件事；因為專家說了算，並不會讓我感覺到什麼。他更仔細地看我們到底是什麼意思。如果我說「加那利的葡萄酒很可口」，別人糾正我「是『對我來說』可口」，我完全沒有意見。沒有人為這個爭論。如果我說一朵玫瑰或一首詩是美的，我的意思就多了一些。我並不是在報告一個私人的感覺。用康德的話說：「我們相信自己是用一個普遍的聲音在說話，並且要求每一個人的同意。」我期待你也看得到；如果你看不到，我會覺得你身上少了點什麼。

🔊What entitles me to this, Kant argued, is that the pleasure is disinterested. Taste is “the faculty of judging of an object … by an entirely disinterested satisfaction.” I do not want to eat the rose, own it, or use it. Since my liking rests on nothing peculiar to my appetites or my situation, I suppose that it rests on what I share with every other mind. A judgment of beauty is therefore subjective, being a feeling and not a measurement, and it still makes a claim on everyone. It cannot be proved. I can only say “look again” and point.

康德論證說，使我有資格這樣要求的，是這份愉快是「無利害的」。品味是「藉著一種完全無利害的滿足……來評判一個對象的能力」。我並不想吃那朵玫瑰、擁有它，或使用它。既然我的喜歡並不建立在我的胃口或我的處境所特有的任何東西上，我就假定它建立在我與其他每一顆心共有的東西上。所以，一個關於美的判斷是主觀的，因為它是一種感受而不是一次測量；而它仍然對每個人提出了要求。它無法被證明。我只能說「再看一次」，然後用手指給你看。

🔊The two positions had been stated in China two thousand years earlier. Zhuangzi took the skeptic’s side and made it wider than Hume’s. Mao Qiang and Lady Li were the women that people thought most beautiful, he says. “Fish, seeing them, dived deep. Birds, seeing them, flew high. Deer, seeing them, ran away. Which of the four knows the true beauty of the world?” Human taste is the taste of one species.

這兩個立場，兩千年前在中國就已經被說出來了。莊子站在懷疑者那一邊，而且把它推得比休謨更寬。他說：「毛嬙、麗姬，人之所美也；魚見之深入，鳥見之高飛，麋鹿見之決驟。四者孰知天下之正色哉？」人類的品味，只是一個物種的品味。

🔊Mencius accepted the point about species and turned it around. Within one kind, he argued, natures are alike. “Mouths have the same preferences in flavors.” That is why the whole world follows the cook Yi Ya, who found out first what all our mouths enjoy. Ears are alike, and so the world follows the music master Kuang. Eyes are alike too: anyone who cannot see that Zidu is handsome “has no eyes.” Mencius’s interest was in morals, and he drew the conclusion that hearts must be alike as well. But the argument is Hume’s. Agreement in taste is evidence of a common human nature, and those who notice first what the rest of us will come to like are its experts.

孟子接受了關於物種的那一點，然後把它倒過來用。他論證說：在同一類之內，本性是相似的。「口之於味，有同嗜也。」這就是為什麼天下人都跟著廚子易牙走；他先發現了我們所有人的嘴喜歡什麼。耳朵是相似的，所以天下人跟著樂師師曠。眼睛也相似：誰要是看不出子都的俊美，就是「無目者也」。孟子關心的是道德，他得出的結論是：人心必定也是相似的。但這個論證就是休謨的論證。品味上的一致，是共同人性的證據；而那些先注意到「我們其餘的人終將喜歡什麼」的人，就是其中的行家。

🔊The oldest claim that beauty is in the object comes from the followers of Pythagoras. They found that two strings sound well together when their lengths stand in simple ratios: two to one gives the octave, three to two the fifth, four to three the fourth. Harmony, it seemed, was arithmetic made audible. The idea that beauty is proportion ruled Greek architecture and sculpture and returned in the Renaissance. Its best-known modern form, the claim that people prefer rectangles in the golden ratio of about 1.62 to 1, has not held up well. Gustav Fechner reported such a preference in 1876, and later experiments have found it weak or absent.

「美在對象身上」這個主張，最古老的版本來自畢達哥拉斯的追隨者。他們發現：兩根弦的長度成簡單的比例時，合在一起就好聽：二比一是八度，三比二是五度，四比三是四度。看起來，和諧就是聽得見的算術。「美就是比例」這個觀念，支配了希臘的建築與雕塑，並在文藝復興時回來。它最出名的現代形式，是「人們偏好長寬比約 1.62 比 1 的黃金比例長方形」這個主張；而它並沒有站得很穩。古斯塔夫・費希納在 1876 年報告了這樣的偏好；後來的實驗發現它很弱，或者根本不存在。

🔊Psychology has found other regularities. Infants a few months old look longer at the faces that adults rate as attractive. Faces close to the average of a population, and symmetrical ones, are preferred in many cultures. People also come to like shapes, tunes, and even nonsense words more simply through having met them before, which means that some agreement in taste is habit. The evidence supports neither extreme. Part of what we find beautiful comes with being human, part comes from what we have grown used to, and part depends on a trained eye.

心理學找到了別的規律。幾個月大的嬰兒，注視成年人評為有吸引力的臉，時間比較久。接近一個族群平均值的臉，以及對稱的臉，在許多文化裡都比較受喜愛。人們也會只因為以前見過，就比較喜歡某些形狀、曲調，甚至無意義的字；這表示品味上的一致，有一部分是習慣。證據兩個極端都不支持。我們覺得美的東西，一部分是生而為人就有的，一部分來自我們習慣了什麼，一部分取決於一雙訓練過的眼睛。

🔊“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is true in the sense that Hume and Kant both granted. Without a mind that feels, nothing is beautiful. The proverb leaves out that the eyes of beholders are built much alike, that an eye can be more or less acute, and that it can be educated. A teacher who shows a class how a poem works is trying to bring the students to hear something they did not hear before, and their preferences are left to them. If beauty were only private feeling, there would be nothing for the teacher to show.

「美在觀看者的眼裡」這句話，在休謨與康德都承認的那個意義上是真的。沒有一顆會感受的心，就沒有任何東西是美的。這句諺語漏掉的是：觀看者的眼睛，構造大致相同；眼睛可以比較敏銳或比較不敏銳；而且眼睛可以被教育。一位老師向全班說明一首詩是怎麼運作的，是想讓學生聽見他們以前沒聽見的東西；至於偏好，仍然由他們自己決定。如果美只是私人的感受，老師就沒有什麼可以指給人看的了。