The same Latin phrase flipped meaning across eras due to cultural change
Evidence
The modern age of cultural pluralism, however, precludes a single, authoritative standard for good taste. In Roman times, the Latin dictum de gustibus non est disputandum (“in matters of taste, there can be no disputes”) meant that there should be no disputes because good taste was so self-evident. Today the phrase has flipped to become a mantra of liberal openness: don’t bother fighting about aesthetics because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. With this, the definition of taste has shifted from “the proper identification of beauty” to a more neutral “propensity toward certain lifestyle choices.” The former Apple industrial designer Jony Ive wears Clarks Wallabees, listens to loud techno, and drives a white Bentley. John Waters adores 1950s B movies, trailer parks, and memorabilia from serial killers and leftist terrorist groups. We can conclude they have “different” tastes without judging one set better than the other. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 243
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Bourdieu’s work on taste as social distinction and to Annihilation of Caste-era arguments about how universalist-seeming standards shift. — connects to: Totalizing cultural analogy cannot account for genuine historical change — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 664; Colonial-era language mislabeled radical change as reform; Words shift meaning across historical periods and individual authors — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 362 (+11 more)
Broader Connections
- The word revolution originally meant cyclical return, not radical change
#exemplifies(0.95) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 21 - The word ‘civil’ shifted from civic to cultured behavior during the Renaissance
#exemplifies(0.92) — , Stephanie B. Martens - Civilization and…, 41 - Words shift meaning across historical periods and individual authors
#expands(0.90) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 362 - Word meanings shift slowly or fast based on social change
#expands(0.90) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2399 - Cultural meaning shifts with the social field it enters
#expands(0.85) - A shared ancestral word split meaning along pastoral-agricultural lines
#exemplifies(0.85) - The meaning of social class terms shifts with each nation’s history
#exemplifies(0.85) - Colonial-era language mislabeled radical change as reform
#exemplifies(0.82) - Fragmented cultural symbols now hold diametrically opposed meanings simultaneously
#expands(0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 727 - Stylistic features change meaning when they shift from symptom to cultural norm.
#exemplifies(0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 118 - Old religious symbols can be inverted to imagine a transformed society
#exemplifies(0.80) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 575 - Totalizing cultural analogy cannot account for genuine historical change
#complicates(0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 664 - A single visual object shifts meaning across shifting cultural codes.
#expands(0.78) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 801 - Translation constructs meaning anew rather than transferring finished meaning across languages.
#expands(0.72) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 855