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Full Idea
Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and science of music and poetry.
Gist of Idea
Prejudice apart, push-pin has equal value with music and poetry
Source
Jeremy Bentham (Constitutional Code I [1827], p.139), quoted by J.R. Dinwiddy - Bentham p.114
Book Ref
Dinwiddy,J.R.: 'Bentham' [OUP 1989], p.114
A Reaction
Mill quoted this with implied outrage, but Bentham was attacking public subsidies to the arts when he said it. It is a basic idea in the debate on pleasure - that pleasures are only distinguished by their intensity, not some other value.
| 20977 | Natural rights are nonsense, and unspecified natural rights is nonsense on stilts [Bentham] |
| 21003 | Only laws can produce real rights; rights from 'law of nature' are imaginary [Bentham] |
| 5271 | Prejudice apart, push-pin has equal value with music and poetry [Bentham] |
| 5934 | Of Bentham's 'dimensions' of pleasure, only intensity and duration matter [Ross on Bentham] |
| 3554 | Bentham thinks happiness is feeling good, but why use morality to achieve that? [Annas on Bentham] |
| 5901 | Is 'productive of happiness' the definition of 'right', or the cause of it? [Ross on Bentham] |
| 3777 | Pleasure and pain control all human desires and duties [Bentham] |
| 3778 | The community's interest is a sum of individual interests [Bentham] |
| 3779 | Unnatural, when it means anything, means infrequent [Bentham] |
| 3780 | We must judge a thing morally to know if it conforms to God's will [Bentham] |
| 3781 | The value of pleasures and pains is their force [Bentham] |
| 20280 | Large mature animals are more rational than babies. But all that really matters is - can they suffer? [Bentham] |