Truth and Method/I.1.2Ai The transcendental distinctness taste

Taste - is it entirely subjective and arbitrary? Yet something, perhaps a work of art, may be said to be in good or bad taste. Who decides and on what basis? Gadamer maintains that, 'in the case of an aesthetic judgement, a supra-empirical norm is operative' (p39) Kant's attempt to justify critique in matters of taste, Gadamer asserts, leads him to deny 'taste any significance as knowledge. He reduces sensus communis to a subjective principle. In taste nothing is known of the objects judged to be beautiful, but it is stated only that there is a feeling of pleasure connected with them a priori in the subjective consciousness.' (p40)