Bentham and the arts / edited by Anthony Julius, Malcolm Quinn and Philip Schofield.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of contributors -- List of figures -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Part I. Philosophy and sexuality -- 1. The Epicurean universe of Jeremy Bentham: Taste, beauty and reality -- 2. Not Kant, but Bentham: On taste -- 3. 'Envy accompanied with antipathy': Bentham on the psychology of sexual ressentiment -- Part II. Intellectual history and literature -- 4. Literature, morals and utility: Bentham, Dumont and de Staël -- 5. Jeremy Bentham's imagination and the ethics of prose style: Paraphrase, substitution, translation

6. 'Is it true? ... what is the meaning of it?': Bentham, Romanticism and the fictions of reason -- 7. More Bentham, less Mill -- Part III. Aesthetics, taste and art -- 8. Enlightenment unrefined: Bentham's realism and the analysis of beauty -- 9. Jeremy Bentham's principle of utility and taste: An alternative approach to aesthetics in two stages -- 10. From pain to pleasure: Panopticon dreams and Pentagon Petal -- 11. Bentham's image: The corpo-reality check -- Index

Bentham and the Arts considers the sceptical challenge presented by Jeremy Bentham's hedonistic utilitarianism to the existence of the aesthetic. Leading scholars from a variety of disciplines reflect on the implications of Bentham's radical utilitarian approach for our understanding of the history and contemporary nature of art, literature, and aesthetics more generally.

Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on June 30, 2020).

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