Taste earns status only when proven anchored to a life history

Evidence

If appraisers are willing to provide high status based on our taste, they want to be careful that those tastes have been legitimately acquired. Authentic taste should be anchored in an individual’s specific life journey. To the philosopher Walter Benjamin, the authenticity of a thing requires a “testimony to the history which it has experienced.” In a world where everything is available for purchase, individuals can always develop tastes for the express purpose of gaining status. Impostors abound. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 267

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Great taste requires bounded originality beyond copying what one ought to like — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 256; Perceived authenticity of a thing heightens its aesthetic value — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 265; Taste manifests only through social activity filtered by status value — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 245 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Taste registers historical experience because the individual is itself a historical product #expands (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 167
• A life’s success can be measured by unbroken appetite for living, not by achievement #complicates (0.80)
• Tastes encode a whole choice of being rather than sexual or physiological facts #corroborates (0.75)