Journal Article: Utilitarianism and the Concept of Authorial Autonomy in Early 19th Century England

Utilitarianism and the Concept of Authorial Autonomy in Early 19th Century England is a journal article for “Economic & Political Weekly” by Malini Bhattacharya. The article attempts to show that  “authorial autonomy,” or literary freedom, similar to Utilitarian logic, developed in response to the overall development of capitalism and the ideological needs of the bourgeoisie. Bhattacharya brings forth a large amount of background evidence in support of her argument. Bhattacharya begins by explaining the effect of the market economy on reading and the selling of literary material. With the end of the “Licensing Act of 1662,” printers no longer were forced to limit themselves to twenty master printers, thus beginning a steady increase in an already competitive market. Following this in the early 19th century, Libel Laws and taxes on newspapers began to dissipate, allowing for an overall growth of newspapers their consumers, their main consumers being those of a lower social standing.

Following her short summary of printing laws, Bhattacharya goes into detail explaining the role of the bourgeoisie as the leaders against feudalism, but cites the Reform Act of 1832 as ushering in a separate major class entity; the proletariat. Following Bhattacharya’s explanation of class divide & struggles comes her explanation of Utilitarian beliefs and contradictions. Bhattacharya explains the belief of “naturalistic” and “rationalistic” tendency taken on Utilitarians, which is taken to mean natural forces of the mind vs. rational forces of the mind. This idea if eventually warped according to Bhattacharya as reason is slowly taken to mean commonsense, contradicting the fundamental idea of naturalism and rationalism taken by Utilitarians. Bhattacharya then relates this contradiction to the “paradoxical situation” that the bourgeoisie found themselves in, having taken a shift from liberalism to conservatism.

The article was a fairly dense due to some of the language choices, and Bhattacharya seemed to go away from the original idea at times, speaking more on Utilitarian views than the bourgeoisie and authorial autonomy, but it was still a very informative article. And the long excerpts on Utilitarianism are not at all a bad thing for me, as I’ve spent a good amount of time studying the Utilitarians and this offers new insights for me. I’ll likely use this article as a way to look into the culture and the other events taking place alongside Utilitarians and other ethical philosophers. Unfortunately I found after fully reading and working out a response that the article was published in 1982. In the future I’ll use more recent journals.

Bhattacharya, Malini. “Utilitarianism and the Concept of Authorial Autonomy in Early 19th Century England.” Economic & Political Weekly 17.31 (1982): n. pag. Web. 7 Apr. 2017.