Bentham (Political thinkers ; 5)

Politics & Social Sciences

Steintrager, James

Politics & Government

George Allen Unwin

First published in 1977 this volume challenges the accepted interpretations of Bentham's political thought and in particular the landmark criticism by John Stuart Mill and Elie Halévy, the author consulted the extensive manuscript collections left by Bentham to the University of London and the British museum in the preparation of this volume.

G. Allen and Unwin

What would happen if pleasure were made the organizing principle for social relations and sexual pleasure ruled over all? Radical French libertines experimented clandestinely with this idea during the Enlightenment. In explicit novels, dialogues, poems, and engravings, they wrenched pleasure free from religion and morality, from politics, aesthetics, anatomy, and finally reason itself, and imagined how such a world would be desirable, legitimate, rapturous―and potentially horrific. Laying out the logic and willful illogic of radical libertinage, this book ties the Enlightenment engagement with sexual license to the expansion of print, empiricism, the revival of skepticism, the fashionable arts and lifestyles of the Ancien Régime, and the rise and decline of absolutism. It examines the consequences of imagining sexual pleasure as sovereign power and a law unto itself across a range of topics, including sodomy, the science of sexual difference, political philosophy, aesthetics, and race. It also analyzes the roots of radical claims for pleasure in earlier licentious satire and their echoes in appeals for sexual liberation in the 1960s and beyond.

The Autonomy of Pleasure: Libertines, License, and Sexual Revolution (Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Columbia University Press

The Autonomy of Pleasure: Libertines, License, and Sexual Revolution

First published in 1977 this volume challenges the accepted interpretations of Bentham's political thought and in particular the landmark criticism by John Stuart Mill and Elie Halévy, the author consulted the extensive manuscript collections left by Bentham to the University of London and the British museum in the preparation of this volume.

Bentham: Bentham (Political Thinkers)

Reference

Routledge

Bentham

NCROL

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Steintrager, James. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Steintrager, James