In this chapter we consider the place of the imagination in Hume's approach to aesthetics, and how it explains artistic creativity, audience receptivity and the origin of the particular kind of value associated with such terms as ‘beauty’ and ‘the sublime’. Most of Hume's remarks in this area are made about literature, with references to painting, music and architecture only fleeting and, in the estimate of some, inconsequential. Hume uses the term ‘literature’ broadly to include poetry, comedy, tragedy and eloquence; sometimes even history falls under the heading as well, although, as we shall see in the next chapter, historical writing bears a different relationship to the imagination that effectively distinguishes it from literary works more narrowly conceived. Since the majority of Hume's examples are drawn from various poetic forms – lyrical, dramatic, pastoral and epic – my consideration of his aesthetics will focus on these, and, following Hume, I shall use the terms ‘literature’ and ‘poetry’ interchangeably. In principle, however, there is no reason why his views on imagination and literature cannot be applied mutatis mutandis to other art forms as well.

We begin with an overview of the main features of Hume's philosophical aesthetics before showing how the productive power of the imagination underlies and informs his approach. The poet exploits the productive imagination to create artificial fictions, or a ‘poetical system of things’ (T 1.3.10.6/SBN 121) as Hume describes it, which, through the manipulation of language and application of techniques, creates a fanciful world of ideas that the audience is enticed to enter and take as real. The imagination is the source of both poetic creativity, in the shape of literary genius, and aesthetic receptivity that allows an audience to experience the pleasure that writers bring about; when refined, this is what, in the tradition of the eighteenth century, Hume calls ‘delicacy of taste’. Literary fictions are artificial and an audience does not believe in the existence of the objects to which they ostensibly refer but is persuaded by them for the pleasure the work brings.

To be successful in achieving their effects, however, poets must procure an easy transition among the ideas in the imagination, which is only possible by creating a poetical system that gives the appearance of reality.