What is the true meaning of "De gustibus non est disputandum" (In matters of taste, there can be no disputes)

[i440BX]

I feel it is different of ugly someone that had the misfortune of having more chromosomes compared to some radical SJW/Antifa with coloured hair, ugly hairstyle, piercings, nose rings, tattoos embracing illnesses/disabilities instead of treating them.



I think in the second case these people purposefully are Aposematic* and they want to provoke disgust to everyone.
No wonder cigarette packs have colour brown on them, to try to deter smokers from buying it.




When I try to discuss that there exists an universal ugliness (genetic defects, SJW look, methhead) and personal tastes (Like I dont like my car being red), people respond to me that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and I should not judge tastes.
Anyone that knows a lot more psychology/philosophy/history than me, can you explain to me what the true meaning of this phrase was during the Roman Empire? I find it hard to believe Romans thought that you can't judge the looks of malformation.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

Anyone that knows a lot more psychology/philosophy/history than me, can you explain to me what the true meaning of this phrase was during the Roman Empire? I find it hard to believe Romans thought that you can't judge the looks of malformation.

It doesn't mean you can't judge someone for their tastes. It means that tastes are tastes and you'll never debate someone out of their aesthetic preferences.

By definition, I am the indisputable subject matter expert on the things that I like.

 

[Vect]

Firstly I think it better translates as "no accounting for taste", as in, by implication, not declaration, everything can be appreciated by a certain kind of person - and that it is pointless to try and explain why.

Secondly, and I'm using my own terminology here, you're confusing standards with convention, or standards of culture. The reason SJW hair looks awful is it's meant to be riotous and unconventional. It's meant to symbolize, however shallowly, defiance of restrictive expectation, embodying counter-culture, which heavily influences their taste. They invoke, in the aesthetic sense, disgust. The convention of the day governs one's sensibilities of beauty, and how these sensibilities are expressed, accounted for, or defied, and to what degree, based on your experiences and psychological makeup, is a spectrum of preferences that could be called taste. The distinction is convention of any given thing changes slowly, if at all, while personal taste changes all the time.

I think that in Rome, convention was dictated for example, by being clean-shaven, which is why most Roman statues of people have no facial hair. People who didn't shave were considered immature or upstarts. The male gods are an exception, either because their depictions were simply pinched from the Greeks or it was meant to represent their place out of time, I'm not sure.

I could write about my thoughts on it for days, but basically you're only ever judging ugliness against a widely understood cultural convention. One of the ways of disproving the concept of a universal perspective is to take another look at it while on a mind altering substance.

 

[shrot]

You can still judge someone for their tastes. The phrase implies that it is futile to argue someone out of their tastes.