Byron, Polidori, and the Epistemology of Romantic Pleasure

Abstract

Pleasure in Romanticism provided the very basis of moral theory. Locke not only insisted that all action is directed towards pleasure and the avoidance of pain (Foot 83), but he also linked pleasure with good, and pain with evil.¹ Jeremy Bentham believed so strongly in the motivating force of pleasure that he went so far as to invent a means of calculating it, his infamous felicific calculus. Immanuel Kant linked pleasure with self-interest and mere empirical knowledge, and this meant not only that pleasure was potentially selfish, but also that, unless it could be universally shared, it was not knowledge. Pleasure could be a form of knowledge only when it was apprehended in terms of purposiveness (Kant 68). The pleasurable sensation of beauty could become knowledge only if one thought of its sensuousness as if it were designed, without assuming any actual designer. By linking form with purposiveness, the inescapably subjective feelings of pleasure could be transformed into necessary and shareable knowledge. Kant thus made pleasure central to his moral theory, stipulating that feeling good could often be at odds with moral knowledge.