Teoria estetyczna w nauce Hume’a o naturze ludzkiej

The article deals with the problems of aesthetics found in two works of David Hume: Treatise of Human Nature and Of the Standard of Taste. Both works, being complementary to each other, give the epistemological grounds for the theory aesthetics. On the basis of Hume’s Treatise I show the epistemological frame of the theory, compare two principal kinds of reasoning (demonstrative and metaphysical), and sketch the possibility of judgments concerning beauty. The conception of beauty developed in the work equals it with utility and place the phenomenon in the sphere of social relations. The conception is further compared with another one, fully explained in the later work Standard of Taste. The procedure allows of the critical analysis of the whole conception of aesthetics with special reference to the category of beauty and to aesthetic judgments.