In matters of taste, similarly, we are dependent on fashion, that is, on the social dissemination of actions and judgments until, later on, we know enough to pass aesthetic judgment on the thing itself. Thus, too, the necessity for the individual to transcend himself and thereby to attain a solid, stable, supraindividual orientation in matters of law, knowledge, and morality is first manifest as the force of tradition.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 268