Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
His life 1748: born in Spitalfields, London (wealthy Tory family) Prodigy, Latin with 3 1760-66: Oxford, Queen s College 1769: trained as lawyer and called to the Bar, but never practiced worked rather on social reform proposals
Disciples and friends his secretary James Mill, his son John Stuart Mill (utilitarian liberal political philosophers) his pupil John Austin Adam Smith: convinced by him on free interest rates Mirabeau and other leaders of the French revolution (honorary citizen of France), but critique of natural rights and violence
Social and legal reform task of jurisprudence: improving law criticism on Blackstone s Commentaries natural rights as nonsense censorial jurisprudence or science of legislation utilitarian philosophy: the greatest happiness of the greatest number 1823: Westminster Review with JS Mill ( Philosophical Radicals )
Utilitarianism By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or to diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose happiness. (Bentham)
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne The principle of utility recognises this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear to fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light. (Bentham)
Features of Utilitarianism felicific calculus ( hedonistic calculus ): 1. anticonventionalist and 2. universalist three aspects: 1. men desire only happiness, 2. scientific solution of disagreements (recurring to facts), 3. good legislation can produce coincidence between the interests of the individual and the interests of the community
Objections against Utilitarianism impracticable: no one knows all the consequences not intra-commensural amongst different people pleasure of malevolence pleasures can be manipulated whose interests are in question? (future generations)
Concrete reform proposals separation of church and state equal rights for women; right to divorce end of slavery abolition of physical punishment (including that of children) for free trade and in defense of usury supported inheritance tax and restrictions on monopoly power pensions and health insurance
Panopticon: to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners (Edmund Burke: spider in the web )
Morals reformed - health preserved - industry invigorated, instruction diffused - public burthens lightened - Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock - the gordian knot of the Poor-Laws are not cut, but untied - all by a simple idea in Architecture! Jeremy Bentham: The Panopticon Writings
A building circular... The prisoners in their cells, occupying the circumference The officers in the centre. By blinds and other contrivances, the Inspectors concealed... from the observation of the prisoners: hence the sentiment of a sort of omnipresence The whole circuit reviewable with little, or... without any, change of place. One station in the inspection part affording the most perfect view of every cell. Jeremy Bentham: Proposal for a New and Less Expensive mode of Employing and Reforming Convicts (London, 1798)
1970: Of Laws in General HLA Hart: Had it been published in his lifetime, it, rather than John Austin s later and obviously derivative work, would have dominated English jurisprudence. command theory, sovereignty inventor of the expression international law normative positivism: against common law thinking
Bentham on Common Law It is the judges that make the common law. Do you know how they make it? Just as a man makes laws for his dog. When your dog does anything you want to break him of, you wait until he does it, and then you beat him for it. This is the way you make laws for your dog: and this is the way judges make law for you and me. J Bentham: Truth versus Asshurst, in W Tait (ed), The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 1843, vol. V, 233-237, 235
Auto-Icon: as requested in his will, his body was preserved and kept on public display (now at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the University College, London) (wax head, present but not voting )