• 1 Bentham’s exact quote is, ‘Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts an (...)
• 2 Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. J. H. Burns and H. (...)
• 3 On the use of ‘unnatural’ to indicate disapproval, see Jeremy Bentham, ‘Of Sexual Irregularities’ i (...)
• 4 I am going to use ‘irregular’ to describe this group of sexual practices—effectively any sexual pra (...)
• 5 I do argue this: see for example Tsin Yen Koh, ‘Bentham and the Pleasures of Cruelty,’ History of P (...)

1Jeremy Bentham famously said, or John Stuart Mill said for him, that if the quantity of pleasure gained from each were the same, push-pin would be as valuable as poetry.1 For Bentham, if not Mill, pleasure was pleasure was pleasure, and pleasure qua pleasure was a good. The value of pleasure depended only on quantitative measures: on the intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness of the pleasure, as well as its extent (if one considered the pleasure of more than one person), ‘fecundity’ (meaning in this case the tendency of the pleasure to be followed by feelings of the same kind) and ‘purity’ (the tendency of the pleasure not to be followed by feelings of the opposite kind).2 The kind of pleasure—whether it was an intellectual or sensual pleasure, refined or common, natural or unnatural, ‘higher’ or ‘lower’—did not enter into the measurement of its value.3 In fact, it could be argued that Bentham used ‘irregular’ (or what we might today call queer4) sexual pleasures as the archetypal example of sensual, common, (seemingly) unnatural, and lower pleasures, and that his defence of irregular sexual pleasures in his writings on sex and religion was a defence of all pleasure qua pleasure, and concomitantly a defence of what he called the ‘liberty of taste,’ or the right of an individual to determine their own pleasure.5

• 6 Gamaliel Smith [Jeremy Bentham], Not Paul, But Jesus (London: John Hunt, 1823), p. 394.
• 7 ‘Of Sexual Irregularities,’ p. 43.

2The corollary to the liberty of taste was the belief that every person was the best, or at any rate the only competent, judge of their own pleasure. As Bentham put it in the appendix to the first volume of Not Paul But Jesus (1823): ‘What every man knows…[is] that happiness, to be any thing, must be composed of pleasures: and be the man who he may, of what it is that gives pleasure to him, he alone can be judge.’6 A similar statement can be found in the unfinished essay ‘Of Sexual Irregularities’ (written in the 1810s): ‘Whether he be or not the proper judge, every man is in fact the judge, and to the purpose of his own conduct, the sole effectual judge, of what is agreeable or disagreeable to himself.’7

• 8 TSA, 74. On real and fictitious entities, see also Philip Schofield, ‘The Epicurean Universe of Jer (...)
• 9 TSA, pp. 74–79.
• 10 ‘Of Sexual Irregularities,’ p. 4.

4It would perhaps be more precise to say that this essay is about the relation of judgement to pleasure, taste and desire. Taste and desire are what Bentham called ‘fictitious entities,’ in contrast to ‘real entities’ such as pleasure and pain. The names of real entities refer to actually existing objects, objects ‘in relation to which assertions, grammatical propositions having more or less in them not only of meaning but of truth, are capable of being advanced.’8 The names of fictitious entities do not refer to actually existing objects; taken in themselves and separate from any relation to real entities, propositions with fictitious entities as their subjects are not capable of truth or meaning, but are ‘no better than a heap of nonsense.’ This is not to say that fictitious entities are nonsense, exactly; they are necessary for discourse, but have to be explicated in terms of real entities in order to be intelligible. Propositions with fictitious entities as their subject have to be paraphrased or otherwise explicated in terms of propositions with real entities as their subject.9 A taste for an object, for example, is ‘an aptitude or disposition to derive pleasure [from] that object.’10 The desire for the object arises from the same source, and any exposition of desire has to include a reference to pleasure. Bentham laid out the relation between pleasure, desire, and other psychological operations in A Table to the Springs of Action (1817):

• 12 TSA, p. 94.

5We might say, then, that taste is the disposition to derive pleasure from an object, and that the desire for the object arises from this taste. Desire operates on the individual as a motive to obtain the object. The concepts of taste, desire, and motive are all ‘intimately connected’ to pleasure and to one another.12

• 13 See for example Bentham’s discussion of the faculty of judgement in his ‘Essay on Logic’ in The Wor (...)
• 14 Philip Beauchamp [George Grote], Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion, on the Temporal Hap (...)
• 15 On the right of private judgement, see Jeremy Bentham, ‘A Fragment on Government,’ in A Comment on (...)

7What is judgement? Bentham uses at least two senses of the word: ‘judgement’ could be synonymous with ‘belief’ or ‘opinion,’ or it could imply that the belief or opinion in question was reached after some consideration—of a comparison of two or more objects, or of the relevant facts and arguments, for example.13 This quote from the Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion illustrates the latter: Bentham asserted that ‘in the natural state of things,’ which is one undistorted by religious belief, ‘a man assents to that which he thinks is supported by the best evidence—dissents from what appears to be refuted by the best evidence. Under such circumstances, there is nothing to guide his choice except the evidence.’14 The term ‘private judgement’ demonstrates both senses of the word: the ‘right of private judgement’ is the same thing as the ‘liberty of opinion,’ and entails both the right to believe as one does, and to judge (facts, arguments, circumstances, persons) as one does.15

• 16 I have in mind what may be called ‘propositional pleasures.’ I found helpful the summary of differe (...)
• 17 I am using ‘pleasure,’ ‘enjoyment’ and ‘satisfaction’ interchangeably, in the spirit of Bentham’s e (...)

8It seems uncontroversial to say that some pleasures, at least, involve judgement in the first sense of the word. That is, there are some pleasures regarding which to take pleasure in them entails the belief that they are good.16 I take pleasure in buying organic apples from my local supermarket because I believe organic apples to be better for health than the non-organic kind. I am pleased with my new electric car because I believe that electric engines are better for the environment than internal combustion engines. Moreover, the belief that X is good is at least in part responsible for my pleasure in X. My belief in the goodness of organic fruit grounds my enjoyment of the organic apples. My belief in the superiority of electric engines grounds my satisfaction with my new car.17 If all that is plausible, then it may be possible to change the pleasure by changing the belief. More specifically, it may be possible to introduce new facts that lead to a different judgement on the goodness of X, and so change the pleasure that one takes in X. Learning that organic apples are no better or worse for health than non-organic apples, for example, or that exchanging an old but serviceable car with an internal-combustion engine for a new electric car is worse for the environment, would take the shine off my pleasure in my apples or car.

• 18 I think it is fair to say that Bentham was concerned with consensual homosexual practices and by ex (...)
• 19 ‘Paederasty’ part 1. The last is not strictly in the essay on ‘Paederasty’: there is a passing ment (...)
• 20 ‘Paederasty’ part 1, pp. 391–96; see also ‘Of Sexual Irregularities,’ pp. 28–34 along the same line (...)

9Bentham’s writings on sex illustrate this relation between pleasure and judgement. In his unpublished essay on ‘Paederasty’ (written in the 1780s), for example, Bentham canvassed and refuted several arguments which had been put forward in support of legal penalties for sodomy.18 He identified four such arguments: that homosexual sexual practices were debilitating for their practitioners, which he attributed to Montesquieu; that homosexuality, if allowed to prevail, would threaten population, which was attributed to Voltaire; that male homosexuality would result in male indifference to women, and a consequent loss in the influence, status or rights of women; and that there was biblical precedent for the punishment of sodomy by death.19 It could be argued, if one were inclined to give Montesquieu, Voltaire and other adherents of similar arguments the benefit of the doubt, that any pleasure they took in the punishment of sodomy was grounded in the judgement that it had bad effects—for the practitioners, specific groups of people (such as women), or the whole human race. It might therefore be possible to change their opinion of sodomy and other irregular sexual practices if they were presented with evidence of the innocuousness of such practices. Bentham argued in general that there was no empirical or historical evidence to support any of the arguments above. To take them in turn: in the first place, Bentham pointed out that there was no historical evidence to support the belief that homosexuality weakened the health or strength of its practitioners. On the contrary, the evidence pointed to the opposite: the ancient societies in which paederasty flourished were the same societies often praised for producing a superior and warlike people.20

• 21 NPBJ, vol. 3, p. 30.
• 22 ‘Paederasty’ part 1, p. 396. Also see NPBJ, vol. 3, pp. 31–32 on unprolific sex: it might as well b (...)
• 23 ‘Of Sexual Irregularities,’ p. 25; see also NPBJ, vol. 3, pp. 31–36 on the evils of overpopulation. (...)

10In the unpublished third volume of NPBJ, Bentham remarked that the only two arguments for punishment which could ‘ran[k] under the principle of utility’ were the arguments regarding population and the status of women.21 In the essay on ‘Paederasty,’ Bentham argued that sexual preferences were unlikely to affect population in any way; it was rather the amount of subsistence available at any time that determined population numbers. In any case, male heterosexual desire tended to outstrip that needed for reproduction, and so population was unlikely to suffer until the desire of men for women was less than a hundredth part of that for other men.22 This argument was reproduced in ‘Of Sexual Irregularities,’ with the change that any reduction in population was beneficial, rather than detrimental, to people in general: ‘excess population’ tended to produce misery rather than happiness.23

• 24 ‘Paederasty’ part 1, pp. 398–401.
• 25 ‘Of Sexual Irregularities,’ pp. 34–42, NPBJ, vol. 3, pp. 36–40.
• 26 NPBJ, vol. 3, p. 38.

11As for the argument that giving male homosexual desire full rein might result in male indifference to women, Bentham thought this unlikely in the extreme. The argument might perhaps be allowed in a situation where there was no restraint on sexual desire whatsoever. The case was, however, that men and women in European countries lived under considerable sexual restraint, and the social (and economic) penalties for extramarital sex were much higher for women than for men. A reduction in male sexual attention might well be to the benefit of women in general. Nor was it likely to affect the desire for marriage or its value as an institution since there were other reasons for marriage, such as the desire to have children or to form alliances between families.24 Bentham put the case more strongly in ‘Of Sexual Irregularities’ and NPBJ vol. 3: the most that could be said of the argument about male indifference was that it was theoretically conceivable.25 There was no evidence from human nature, or from historical or present societies, that the influence for women was in any way diminished by tolerance for male homosexual desire—not even in Italy, where ‘the eccentric propensity prevails to such a degree as to be gratified not only without danger but without shame,’ and yet the influence of women is stronger than in Britain, and ‘the misery of overpopulation rages at the same time’ to a greater extent than in Britain.26

• 27 ‘Paederasty’ part 2, pp. 104–06; NPBJ, vol. 3, pp. 125–38.

12Last and least, even the argument from the biblical parable of Sodom and Gomorrah was susceptible of examination and refutation. In his notes to the essay on ‘Paederasty,’ and more expansively in a chapter devoted to this cause in NPBJ vol. 3, Bentham examined the relevant Bible verses and argued that the destruction of the cities was due not to homosexual sexual practices per se, but to a different set of aggravating circumstances, namely the use of violence, the number of people to be involved in the act, and the breach of hospitality on the part of the hosts.27

• 28 ‘Paederasty’ part 2, p. 94.
• 29 ‘Paederasty’ part 2, pp. 94–97.
• 30 ‘Paederasty’ part 2, p. 94. See also ‘Of Sexual Irregularities,’ p. 4.
• 31 ‘Paederasty’ part 2, p. 94.
• 32 ‘Paederasty’ part 2, p. 97.

14It may be here that the relation between judgement and pleasure breaks down. In the essay on ‘Paederasty,’ and all subsequent essays on the subject, Bentham pointed to ‘antipathy’ as the main motive for punishment. As he put it, ‘In this case, in short, as in so many other cases the disposition to punish seems to have had no other ground than the antipathy with which persons who had punishment at their disposal regarded the offender.’28 Antipathy could arise from a number of circumstances, including but not limited to sheer physical antipathy, the dislike of difference, and philosophical or religious asceticism.29 It was ‘but too natural’ to transfer one’s dislike of a practice to its practitioners.30 ‘Look the world over,’ Bentham observed, and ‘we shall find that differences in point of taste and opinion are grounds of animosity as frequent and as violent as any opposition in point of interest. To disagree with our taste [and] to oppose our opinions is to wound our sympathetic feelings and to affront our pride.’31 Our sympathetic feelings are especially wounded, and our pride affronted, in the case of people with tastes we cannot share. In the essay on ‘Paederasty,’ Bentham remarked on ‘an observation of Helvetius and, I believe, of Mr Voltaire’s, that if a person were born with a particular source of enjoyment, in addition to the five or six senses we have at present he would be hunted out of the world as a monster not fit to live.’32

• 34 Cf. the discussion of the political uses of prejudice in Lea Campos Boralevi, Bentham and the Oppre (...)
• 35 See note 1.
• 36 On taste, see for example Malcolm Quinn, ‘Jeremy Bentham on Liberty of Taste,’ History of European (...)

16Prejudice is opinion unsupported by fact.34 To return to the conception of judgement at the beginning of this section, we could say that prejudice results from a person not assenting to that which is supported by the best evidence. (The argument in the AINR is that religious belief distorts the process of judgement, in part by distorting what we consider to be evidence.) And to go back further, to the comparison between push-pin and poetry at the beginning of this essay, we might take another look at Bentham’s original quote: ‘Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either.’35 It is prejudice to insist that poetry is more valuable than push-pin, if push-pin gives more pleasure (this is often a prejudice in the name of ‘good taste,’ which is but the taste of a particular person or class).36 It is prejudice, similarly, to insist on the evils of homosexual and other irregular sexual practices in the face of evidence to the contrary. The pains and pleasures of antipathy are real, but the pains may be assuaged and the pleasures diminished if one changes the judgement on which the antipathy is grounded.

• 39 TSA, 93. See also the discussion of motive in IPML, pp. 96–100.

20The sentence quoted above is from the TSA, and follows a discussion of motive. Motive, like desire and interest, is a fictitious entity explicable in terms of pleasure and pain. On Bentham’s account, there are ‘motives to the will,’ which are motives to action, and ‘motives to the understanding,’ which strictly speaking are not, but contribute to the motive to action. Desire—that is, the desire for a particular good (a particular pleasure or exemption from a particular pain)—functions as a motive to the will. There are any number of motives to the understanding; a judgement that one has the means necessary to attain a good, for example, may enhance the value of the good by enhancing the probability of attaining it, and so enhance the desire for the good, and contribute to the motive to action.39

• 40 ‘Sextus,’ p. 51.

21The case above, however, is compatible with the notion that pleasure, or more precisely taste and so desire, is given. Bentham’s writings on sex do sometimes give the impression that pleasure is given, especially in the case of irregular sexual pleasures, which are not only good qua pleasure, but only good qua pleasure. In ‘Sextus,’ Bentham remarked that the sexual appetite should be considered a sixth sense, in addition to the usual five senses (and hence the title of the essay).40 The sexual appetite, then, should be considered as no less given, or natural, than the appetite for food or drink, and different sexual tastes should be considered as no less given, or natural, than different tastes in food and drink. As Bentham put it in NPBJ, vol. 3:

• 42 ‘Of Sexual Irregularities,’ p. 4.

22It may be ‘salutary’ for desire to be influenced by judgement, but the role of judgement so far has been limited to the cases in which pleasure follows judgement, or in which the judgement of means or other ‘motives to the understanding’ contribute to the strength or efficacy of a given desire. If pleasure is given, if there is no moral difference between different kinds of pleasure qua pleasure, and if there is limited room for judgement to influence pleasure, then to say that every person is a judge of her own pleasure is not to say very much at all—it is simply to say that every person follows her own pleasure, which may or may not be influenced by judgement in limited ways. To return to the case of sex, if the antipathy towards homosexuality (and other sexual irregularities) is not a product of specific and falsifiable claims about effects of homosexual practices, but is merely antipathy, a species of ‘the antipathy produced by difference of taste’42, then there does not appear to be much hope of changing it by appealing to judgement. It should be possible, in theory, to change a person’s opinion by presenting new facts and arguments to her, but this prospect appears not to be present in the case of pleasure. As Bentham put it in ‘Sextus’:

• 44 Hume, David, ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Mi (...)

23Bentham’s remarks on taste in the fine arts recalls the story of Sancho Panza’s kinsmen in Hume’s essay, ‘Of the Standard of Taste.’ The palates of his kinsmen were so fine as to be able to detect a trace of iron and leather in a hogshead of wine. They were initially ridiculed for their judgement, but vindicated when an iron key with a leather thong was later discovered after the hogshead was emptied.44 But there is often no there there, no feature or defect or excellence that proves the delicacy of a palate or the superiority of one’s taste—even allowing that greater discernment contributes to superior taste. The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not of; it is difficult to contradict Bentham’s assertion that ‘in the field of appetite—of physical appetite’—and especially of sexual appetite—‘no place can be found for any such discovery.’

• 45 IPML, p. 29-d.

24One response may be, so what? The principle of utility does not require any discrimination of taste; in fact, it scorns the distinction of ‘good’ from ‘bad’ taste, or any other judgement of taste, apart from that based on quantitative measures. It makes, or should make, no difference to me whether you prefer turtle or train oil, carrion or venison, as long as I am not required to share your taste; it makes, or should make, no difference to me if I detest your actions, so long as there is no real mischief from your actions, and I am not required to perform them. Bentham put it more directly in a footnote in the IPML: where actions create no real mischief, however detestable they may seem to be, it would be ‘very wrong in [us]’ to prevent them; ‘if nothing will serve you, but that you and he must needs be of the same mind, I’ll tell you what you have to do: it is for you to get the better of your antipathy, not for him to truckle to it.’45

• 46 IPML, p. 12.
• 47 TSA, pp. 91–92.

27The relation of interest to judgement could provide a clue to the labyrinth. Interest is closely related to pleasure; in the IPML, Bentham gave the following definition of interest: ‘[a] thing is said to promote the interest, or be for the interest, of an individual, when it tends to add to the sum total of his pleasures; or, what comes to the same thing, to diminish the sum total of his pains.’46 The TSA has a longer account of interest: a person is said to have an interest in any subject insofar as that subject is considered as more or less likely to be a source of pleasure or exemption from pain to her. She is said to have an interest in the performance of an act insofar as and in consequence of the act resulting in a particular good. And it is said to be in a person’s interest that the act should take place, insofar as it is supposed to result in good. ‘In the former case, interest corresponds to a single item in the account of good and evil: in the latter case it corresponds to a balance on the side of good.’47

• 48 Engelmann, Stephen G., ‘Imagining Interest,’ Utilitas 13.3 (2001), pp. 289–322.
• 49 Engelmann, ‘Imagining Interest,’ p. 302.
• 50 Engelmann, ‘Imagining Interest,’ pp. 293–94.
• 51 Engelmann, ‘Imagining Interest,’ p. 294 and passim.
• 52 Engelmann, ‘Imagining Interest,’ p. 299.

28What follows is inspired by Stephen Engelmann’s argument on the role of the imagination in the construction of interest. There are three things I would like to draw attention to in Bentham’s conception of interest.48 The first is that interest is a fictitious entity, to be cashed out in terms of pleasure and pain. The second and third are captured in Engelmann’s characterization of interest as ‘monistic and prospective’; interest, as quoted above, is a ‘balance’ of pleasure and pain.49 It is also future-oriented; as Engelmann argued, interest often seemed in Bentham’s writings to be a balance of present pleasures and pains, but was on closer reading composed of the expectations of pleasure and pain, or expectations and apprehensions in Bentham’s vocabulary. Hence, as Engelmann put it, ‘[w]hat first looks like a plurality of interests grounded in present experience and relations is always a prospective singularity: a ‘balance’ or sum of expectations and apprehensions of the future.’50 Expectations and apprehensions are produced by the imagination, in the context of the social and legislative environment, which includes both direct and ‘indirect’ legislation.51 The role of the imagination in the construction of interest explains the ‘slipperiness’ Hanna Pitkin criticized in Bentham’s account of interest, in the way it both moves towards and away from the ‘viscerality’ of pleasures and pains: interest appears to be connected to our everyday living, our present pleasures and pains, but is in fact the sum of expected pleasures and pains, which is to say ‘of imaginable, believable, futures.’52

• 53 The relationship of pleasure to desire is more ambiguous than mentioned here. See for example Laura (...)
• 54 TSA, pp. 98–99.

29There are a couple of parallels between desire and interest. The first and most obvious is that desire, like interest, is a fictitious entity, and so has to be explained in terms of pleasure and pain. This is not quite the same thing as saying that pleasure is reducible to desire, though it does establish a definite relation between desire and pleasure.53 Further, desire, like interest, has to be explained in terms of expected pleasure and pain. It is the desire for a good that functions as a motive for action, rather than the present pleasure itself.54 Desire anticipates pleasure, in this paradigm. The gap between desire and pleasure, or between the expectation of pleasure and pleasure itself, leaves room for judgement and the imagination to play a part in the construction of desire—in the creation of ‘imaginable, believable futures,’ grounded on past experiences of pleasure and pain, in the social and legislative environment.

• 55 AINR, p. 93.

30Desire does not depend on experience, especially if we take sexual desire as given, as appears to be the case in Bentham’s writings. But desire might perhaps be changed by experience, and so by judgement. As quoted above, Bentham defined judgement in the AINR as assenting to the belief or opinion supported by the ‘best evidence,’ and dissenting to that which appeared to be refuted by the best evidence. ‘Under the circumstances, there is nothing to guide [one’s] choice except the evidence.’ Evidence of what brings pleasure or pain, in a general way and in the particular case, comes from experience. Elsewhere in the AINR, Bentham argued that ‘all pleasure, and exemption from suffering, was the fruit of knowledge’; if one did not know how to pursue a particular pleasure, for example, then one would have to forgo it. The converse was also true: ‘[a]ll our knowledge with regard to pleasure and pain [was] derived from experience,’ and specifically through trial and experimentation. Therefore, ‘[a]ll useful knowledge…(that is, all which can be instrumental in multiplying the enjoyments and diminishing the sufferings of this life) consists in believing the modes of producing pleasure and avoiding pains to be, in each particular case, such as actual trial indicates.’55 There is room for judgement, then, to learn from experience not only about the means of pursuing pleasure (and avoiding pain), but also about what gives pleasure or pain.

• 56 As Engelmann put it in ‘Imagining interest’: ‘From much of Bentham’s discussion of penal law it wou (...)
• 57 See the editorial introduction in TSA, xii–xix. The additional material was not included in the pri (...)
• 58 TSA, p. 71.
• 59 TSA, p. 70.
• 60 TSA, p. 72.
• 61 With thanks to Philip Schofield and the Bentham Project at University College London for letting me (...)
• 62 TSA, p. 72.

31The social and legislative context is the landscape within which individual persons live and move and desire and dream.56 In his marginal notes for additional material composed for the TSA, Bentham distinguished between the roles and powers of the deontologist and the legislator.57 Both of them sought to promote the happiness of the community, and through the use of pleasures and pains.58 The deontologist did not have the power to create new interests, or motives to pursue those interests; her role was to show people where their interests lay, and her only means of doing so was by influencing public opinion.59 The legislator, on the other hand, had the power to create pleasures and pains through the use of rewards and sanctions, and so to create new interests and motives to pursue those interests.60 Legislation here includes both formal and ‘indirect’ legislation, the latter category encompassing a range of legislative, regulatory and policy measures, including the standardization of weights and measures, taxation, national identity tattoos and public education.61 We might add public opinion as well; discourse is not the instrument only of the deontologist, though it is her only instrument.62

• 64 See for example ‘The Harms of Smoking and Benefits of Quitting’ on HealthHub, a government-affiliat (...)
• 65 ‘Smoking Prohibition’ by the National Environment Agency, https://www.nea.gov.sg/our-services/smoki (...)
• 66 Chew Hui Min, ‘In Focus: Snuffing Out Smoking: Is This The Last Mile In Singapore’s Fight Against T (...)
• 67 Chow Wai Leng, ‘Smoking Prevalence in S’pore Population Dropped From 13.9% In 2010 To 10.1% In 2020 (...)

33In the last half century or so, the social and legislative landscape for smoking in Britain and elsewhere has changed, in part prompted by knowledge of the health and environmental effects of smoking. In Singapore, for example—as the country I know best, and where policy on smoking mirrors developments in the UK and US in this respect—it is uncontroversial that smoking cigarettes is bad for health.64 The government has banned smoking in a growing number of public places, including restaurants, bars, public transport facilities and vehicles, parks in public housing estates, playgrounds, and public beaches.65 The tax on tobacco was raised by 15 % in the 2023 budget, making Singapore one of the most expensive places to smoke a cigarette.66 The prevalence of smoking has decreased, from about 14 % of the resident population in 2010 to about 10 % in 2020.67 Arguably, then, changes in knowledge of the effects of smoking, and in the social and legislative landscape (in part as a result of changes in knowledge) have contributed to changes in individual judgements about smoking, and in the taste and so the desire for smoking.

• 68 Goh Yan Han, ‘S377A Officially Repealed After President Halimah Gives Asssent to Bill, The Straits (...)
• 69 Vanessa Lim, ‘CNA Explains: The History Of S377A And How Some Countries Have Repealed It,’ channeln (...)
• 70 Steven Dryden, ‘A Short History of LGBT Rights in Britain,’ bl.uk, https://www.bl.uk/lgbtq-historie (...)
• 71 ‘Attitudes Towards Same-sex Relationships Shift Towards Greater Inclusivity In Singapore,’ ipsos.co (...)

34The social and legislative landscape for sexual desire has changed too. In Singapore, for example—which does not quite follow developments in the UK and US in this respect—the law criminalizing sex between men was repealed in 2022.68 The law was an inheritance from the British colonial administration, and probably based on a similar colonial law in the Indian Penal Code, which was repealed in 2018.69 (That law might have been inspired, if not copied, from the very law criminalizing sodomy which Bentham protested in his writings. Sodomy was partially decriminalized in the UK in 1967.70) Social attitudes have changed too, which made possible the change in legislation: there is now greater acceptance of same-sex relationships, and a greater willingness to speak up against prejudice towards the LGBTQ+ community.71

• 72 Amia Srinivasan, ‘Does Anyone Have The Right To Sex?,’ London Review of Books 40, no. 6 (2018), htt (...)
• 73 Ibid.

36As mentioned above, Engelmann argued that Bentham both moved towards and away from the ‘viscerality’ of pleasure and pain. I think there is a similar movement, and similar ‘slipperiness,’ with regard to desire, even sexual desire. In this I take my cue from Amia Srinivasan’s essay on the ‘right to sex.’72 The question for Bentham is, I think, the same question Srinivasan poses to feminist writers: the question of how to honour individual desires, while allowing for a critique of the political formation of such desires. She points out that the first is not only an epistemic claim, but perhaps more importantly an ethical one; ‘a feminism that trades too freely in notions of self-deception is a feminism that risks dominating the subjects it wants to liberate.’73 In Bentham’s vocabulary, we might say that to deny that people are the best, or only competent, judges of their own pleasure risks opening the door to persecution and tyranny. Bentham thought that sexual desire was innate, but the argument does not rest on the pathology of sexual desire; the claim that we are judges of our own pleasure is as much an ethical and political one, that we should be free to choose our own pleasures. On the other hand, the insistence that pleasure be taken as given, that taste and desire should be taken as given, makes it harder to critique and perhaps change the social and political structures underlying the formation of our tastes and desires, and so makes it harder to address the evils of antipathy and hatred of difference.

• 74 See for example Levi Prombaum, ‘Robert Mapplethorpe: Framing a Sexual Revolution,’ guggenheim.com, (...)

37In the second section, I suggested that it was incumbent on us, as people with the means of doing so, to learn the facts and address our prejudices head on. Social and political structures are part of the social and legislative landscape, and ‘learning the facts’ could quite reasonably include learning about the social and political structures that underlie the formation of taste and desire, such as the influence of patriarchal structures and attitudes, for example, on conceptions of beauty. The knowledge that our desires are both ours and not quite ours—that judgement and the imagination play significant roles in the construction of desire, that we move in a specific social and legislative landscape (and not, for example, as abstract atomistic individuals)—might make possible the discovery of ‘a feature or defect or excellence’ that will change our conceptions of beauty. This, I assume, is the driving force behind photographic portrayals of non-conventional beauty—Robert Mapplethorpe’s portraits of male beauty, for example, or Jade Beall’s portraits of post-partum women, or arguably just about any example of art.74 What we find pleasure in depends on what we pay attention to—social and political facts, our own preconceptions, the taste of iron and leather in a cask of wine. As with the right of private judgement, we are the best or only judges of our pleasure, and we have a right and a duty to judge our pleasure.