Bentham on Utility and Cultural Value

Quinn's article is one of four in a special edition of the journal Revue d’études benthamiennes on the topic of 'Bentham, Pleasure and Cultural Value' that was edited by Quinn, who also wrote an introduction. Other articles in this special edition are by Jean-Pierre Cléro, Tsin Yen Koh and Carrie Shanafelt. The articles analyse the relationship of pleasure to cultural value in Bentham’s philosophy, particularly as this concerns questions of aesthetic judgment. An obstacle to the analysis of the relationship of pleasure to cultural value in Bentham’s thought, is that, aside from his consistent opposition to distinctions of good and bad taste, Bentham had very little to say about culture and aesthetics. Nonetheless, taken together, the four articles in this special edition offer a robust framework for understanding this issue. The key elements of this framework are Bentham’s opposition to the elitism of good taste (Quinn), his recourse to creative means to express this opposition through ribald humour and the burlesque (Koh), his reimagining of existing cultural forms such as the novel and theatre through a utilitarian lens (Shanafelt) and, finally, the question of whether there is a philosophical basis on which we can discuss the possibility of a Benthamite aesthetics, on the other side of Bentham’s opposition to distinctions of taste (Cléro).