The approach adopted in this collection of essays – which originates in a seminar series prompted by Anthony Julius’s appointment at UCL as the first professor of law and the arts at the beginning of 2017 and held at UCL in the first half of 2018 – rather consists in contextualising Bentham’s views on aesthetics within his own philosophical system (in its linguistic and ethical dimensions in particular), locating them in relation to major theories of his time (Kant, Addison and Hume feature prominently, but one also comes across Helvétius, Rousseau or Dumont) and of Victorian times, and drawing parallels with later thinkers such as Freud or Nietzsche. We look at Bentham looking at something else: could it be a painting? Could he be watching a play? The question of Bentham’s personal enjoyment of the arts – or lack thereof – is not really addressed in the book, although references are made to Bentham owning Hogarth’s illustrations of Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, to his reading of Fénelon’s 1699 The Adventures of Telemachus as a source of inspiration for his panopticon and to the classical literary sources he turned to as evidence of public attitudes to homosexuality. The Not Paul texts and related writings can be read as an extended argument against the principle of asceticism as a political principle, and as a defence of common pleasures.Readers of Bentham and the Arts are greeted by a picture of the philosopher’s Auto-icon on the cover he sits on his chair as if he were part of an audience, his eyes averted from ours.

The principle of asceticism also enabled rulers to create the conditions of fear and social isolation, which encouraged obedience to their laws.

The principle of asceticism, as a principle which repudiated common pleasures, provided a ‘cloak’ for tyranny, in giving rulers a reason to establish laws which penetrated further into the everyday activities of men and women (than would have been justified under the principle of utility), and so enabled them to increase their power over their subjects. Bentham objected to the principle of asceticism because it could be used to provide practical and ideological support for tyranny. This paper argues that Bentham’s critique of the principle of asceticism was not only or primarily a religious one, but a political one. Paul, and the principle of asceticism he propagated. In the late 1810s, Jeremy Bentham wrote a set of texts entitled Not Paul, But Jesus, arguing against the religious authority of St.

Not Paul, But Jesus by Jeremy Bentham