Page 19 - Contemporary Cultural Theory

UTILITARIANISM

they literary genres or religious doctrines, can be treated as commodities
for sale in the market place (and this is as factually true of market
society as are any of Macpherson’s own postulates) to lead us to the
conclusion that each man (and woman?) is entitled to whatever cultural
pleasures they may please, for so long as they are practically procurable
in the cultural market place. Thus each man (and woman?) becomes
his (or her?) own church or court.
If this is indeed the logic of cultural utilitarianism, it is nonetheless
not one which the early utilitarian philosophers chose to embrace
with any great enthusiasm. Obliged by general utilitarian principles
to insist that “the principles of taste be universal, and nearly…the
same in all men”, Hume, for example, hurriedly proceeded to the
qualification that: “The organs of internal sensation are seldom so
perfect as to allow the general principles their full play… They either
labour under some defect, or are vitiated by some disorder; and by
that means excite a sentiment, which may be pronounced erroneous”. 26
All preferences may be equal, then, but some (cultural) preferences
are more equal than others. Now, the possibility of defect or disorder
in the organs of internal sensation is clearly one which threatens the
logical credence of any utilitarian system. If the individual’s natural
capacities are either physically or mentally defective, then there is no
good reason at all to suppose that the free exercise of such capacities
will lead either to the greatest happiness of that individual or to that
of the greatest number of other individuals. Which is why utilitarianism
typically discounts such defects and disorders as, to use a contemporary
phrase, not statistically significant. Except in the matter of “taste”, of
course.
The problem is that Hume wishes to assert the desirability of that
natural equality which capitalist society promotes in opposition to
feudalism, and that he wishes nonetheless to secure the continued
existence of certain enduring standards of taste: “Whoever would
assert an equality of genius and elegance between Ogilby and Milton…it
appears an extravagant paradox, or rather a palpable absurdity, where
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objects so disproportioned are compared together”. That asymmetry
between capitalist production for profit on the one hand, and cultural
and social reproduction on the other, which we noted earlier, is thus
inscribed within the deep structures of Hume’s text. This internal
contradiction, this inner tension, is not, however, a necessary
consequence of the logic of utilitarianism itself. It is perfectly possible

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