Anthony Julius, Malcolm Quinn and Philip Schofield, eds, Bentham and the Arts

Jeremy Bentham’s aesthetic thought has been given very little attention by scholars. The reason lies in two statements made by John Stuart Mill, which have been widely circulated as the final construction of Bentham’s utilitarian hedonism, especially in F.R. Leavis’s reading. In the first, Mill refers to the passage on push-pin and poetry, and has been understood as encapsulating Bentham’s stand on literature: Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences ...