Note his subtitle: "A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste".
Apparently, no judgment of taste is innocent, meaning that everyone is some kind of snob.
The International Sociological Association named his "Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste" one of the 20th century's 10 most important works of sociology.
But, if that is so, then "the judgment of taste is based on concepts, for otherwise there could be no room even for contention in the matter, or for the claim to the necessary agreement of others".
Later in the century, Immanuel Kant's Critik der Urteilskraft (1790; "Critique of Judgment") introduced the ideas of a disinterested judgment of taste, the purposiveness of artistic form, and the difference between the beautiful and sublime.
Charles insists on addressing the notes; but he shows us how behind the notes are felt needs, requirements, laws of how things ought to be — a whole system of judgment, of taste, of meaning.
But, of course, "ugly" is a judgment of taste, and taste is just a strange old hobby, marginal and unrationalised, like Murphy, who, if he was staggering down Philpot Lane would probably rather die on his feet than take his ease on one of those granite anti-terrorist benches surrounding the most malignant proliferation of urban tissue that London has ever seen.
In his Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, named as one of the 20th century's 10 most important works of sociology by the International Sociological Association, he applied the notion of habitus to taste and attempted to undermine Kantian aesthetics which claimed that our notion of what is beautiful is not determined by social influences.
Nevertheless, he claimed that a flower should be classified as free beauty (where the judgment of taste is "pure") "because hardly anyone but a botanist knows what sort of thing a flower ought to be; and even he, though recognizing in the flower the reproductive organ of the plant, pays no regard to this natural purpose if he is passing judgment on the flower by taste".
What is a judgment of taste?
Sometimes one makes a judgment of taste on inductive grounds or on the basis of authority.
