A antinomia do Gosto em Madame de Lambert

Abstract

Inserted into a tradition that has come to be called the Aesthetics of Sentiment, Madame de Lambert affirms that Taste is a kind of instinct that drag us, that leads us more securely than all reasoning. For the philosopher, Taste depends on experience and not on any conceptual consideration, it is not subordinated to rules of beauty, but to something indeterminate, even indeterminable. However, this character of Taste does not authorize its relativism. We start here from the tension in Madame de Lambert's aesthetic thought, namely: on the one hand, the defense of a subjectivity of Taste, linked to the adequacy of the object at the disposal of the perceptive organs about the model we do not know; on the other, the philosopher's search for the formulation of a critical response, for a universality of Taste that depends on the concept of accuracy of the senses. Thus, it is intended to identify the element indicated by Madame de Lambert to harmonize the tension created in her aesthetics. The philosopher's solution takes up this notion of accuracy of the senses that was valuable to aesthetic thought from the passage of the 17th to the 18th century, namely: the je ne sais quoi. To reconstruct the solution here, it will be necessary to articulate the texts Reflections on taste and Discourse on the delicacy of spirit and feeling with the work upon which these two texts orbit: New reflections on women. This way, it is possible to understand that, for Madame de Lambert, Taste is that je ne sais quoi that is felt and cannot be said, but that knows what is convenient and that makes us feel in each thing the measure that must be had.

KEYWORDS: Madame de Lambert; Taste; Je ne sais quoi.