QuestionsIs beauty in the eye of the beholder?Push-pin is as good as poetry
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?It is all relative

Push-pin is as good as poetry

Push-pin or poetry; pleasure as the only measure of the arts

Jeremy Bentham 1748 · 1832The good is the greatest happiness of the greatest number: pleasures and pains can be calculated.
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What it claims

Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with music and poetry; if it gives more pleasure, it is more valuable. If poetry deserves preference, it is because it gratifies those who are most difficult to please.

Why

The value of an art is measured by the pleasure it gives; any other ranking among the arts is fanciful.

The same idea through history
Jeremy Bentham1789In the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham holds that pleasure is the only good. Push-pin applies this principle to the arts.
In short

"Push-pin is as good as poetry" is an argument by Jeremy Bentham (Bentham, The Rationale of Reward, 1825, book III, ch. 1, 1789) on the question "Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?" (answer: it is all relative). Its claim: Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with music and poetry; if it gives more pleasure, it is more valuable. If poetry deserves preference, it is because it gratifies those who are most difficult to please. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Bentham, The Rationale of Reward, 1825, book III, ch. 1
Valid with an implicit premise

Push-pin is an English children's game of pushing pins. Bentham writes that, prejudice apart, it is of equal value with music and poetry. His idea comes from his principle of utility: whatever is useful is so because it gives pleasure, so the value of the arts is measured by the amount of pleasure they yield. Any ranking that adds another kind of superiority (the nobility of poetry, the depth of music) is for him fanciful. He even notes that everybody can play push-pin, while poetry is relished only by a few. If poetry deserves to be preferred, it is only because it gratifies those who are most difficult to please. Bentham is speaking here of the value of the arts, not of "beauty"; yet his thesis places him among those for whom there is no beauty in itself: only each person's pleasure counts.

P1The utility of these arts, of amusement and curiosity, the value they possess, is exactly in proportion to the pleasure they yield. What is useful is so because it is a source of pleasure.
P2Every other species of preeminence which may be attempted to be established among them is altogether fanciful.
P3 · implicit premiseIf two activities give the same pleasure, they have the same value; if one gives more, it has more value (the principle of utility applied to the arts).
P4Everybody can play at push-pin; poetry and music are relished only by a few. The game of push-pin is always innocent.
Therefore, prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with music and poetry; if it gives more pleasure, it is more valuable. If poetry deserves preference, it is because it gratifies those who are most difficult to please.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds a case where two activities give the same pleasure and yet do not have the same value: for instance if one also judges the quality of the pleasure, or the quality of the work.
The argument is valid with the hidden premise P3. P1 and P2 say that only the amount of pleasure counts. P3 turns it into a rule of comparison. P4 adds that push-pin is open to all. Objections target P1 (is pleasure the only measure?) and P2 (is there not another superiority?).
Analogy. You spend a great evening on a video game; your friend takes as much pleasure in reading poems. Who had the better evening? For Bentham, neither: equal pleasure, equal value. Saying poetry is "worth more" would be prejudice.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

David Hume (the critic and taste) 1757 · attacks premise 2

Hume writes that whoever would assert an equality of genius and elegance between Ogilby and Milton, or Bunyan and Addison (a mediocre author and a great one, each time), would be thought to defend an extravagance, as if he maintained that a molehill is as high as Teneriffe, or a pond as extensive as the ocean. So there are differences of value in matters of taste.

a defender replies
Jeremy Bentham defender of the argument · 1825
Bentham writes, in the same passage, that if poetry and music deserve to be preferred before a game of push-pin, it must be because they are calculated to gratify those individuals who are most difficult to be pleased. The criterion remains pleasure, but that of the most demanding.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: this reply is written without aiming at Hume, and Hume's text is older than Bentham's. Hume looks for a competent judge; Bentham accepts that the most demanding count, but makes them no standard: all pleasures remain equal in principle. The debate is still open.
Immanuel Kant (the pleasant and the beautiful) 1790 · attacks premise 1

Kant distinguishes the pleasant, where each can say "it pleases me", and the beautiful, where it would be laughable to say "beautiful for me": whoever calls a thing beautiful requires the same feeling from others. Beauty is therefore not measured by each person's mere pleasure.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Bentham in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Bentham, whose text appeared in 1811 (in French) and 1825, did not answer this passage of the Critique of Judgment. For him there is only pleasure, and the claim of the beautiful to hold for everyone is a prejudice. Kant would answer that this claim is precisely what distinguishes the judgment of taste.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: disagreement on what a judgment of taste is. For Kant it claims universality; for Bentham it expresses a pleasure. The debate is open.
John Stuart Mill (higher pleasures) 1861 · attacks premise 3

Mill, raised on Bentham's ideas, corrects: it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. Pleasures differ not only in quantity but in quality, as judged by those who know both.

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1861, after the author's death (1832).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Bentham died in 1832 and did not reply. Moore argued in 1903 that Mill, in admitting quality, abandoned his hedonism (see mill-plaisirs-superieurs). The disagreement is about whether pleasures can be ranked without leaving hedonism.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the Bentham-Mill debate is one of the most famous in utilitarianism. It remains open.