BENTHAM AND THE PLEASURES OF CRUELTY

This paper argues that Jeremy Bentham's writings on sex can be read as a condemnation of cruelty. Paying attention to cruelty highlights three features of his political thought: first, that the deprivation of pleasure was cruelty and, conversely, his defence of irregular sexual pleasures was a defence of the liberty of pleasure; second, that he condemned the pleasures of cruelty not as pleasures, but as the pleasures of tyranny; and third, that he offered a utilitarian defence of the liberty of pleasure - the principle of utility was the only political principle which could consistently avoid cruelty and result in beneficence.