Utilitarianism and the Art School in Nineteenth-Century Britain

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Malcolm Quinn

The mid-nineteenth century saw the introduction of publicly funded art education as an alternative to the established private institutions. Quinn explores the ways in which members of parliament applied Bentham’s utilitarian philosophy to questions of public taste. The study offers a new reading of utilitarianism and assesses the extent to which it presented a viable solution to issues of cultural policy in nineteenth-century Britain.

Readership

Philosophy, History of Art and History of Education

Contents

Introduction
1 'Reading Reynolds With Bentham’: the Idea of the Art School in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain
2 ‘Prejudice Aside’: Jeremy Bentham’s Moral Economy of Taste
3 ‘Directing the Art of the Country’: Henry Cole’s Laws of Public Taste
4 The End of the Experiment
5 Taste Between Ethics and Aesthetics
6 The Return of Adam Smith

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