Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham (born February 15, 1748, London, England—died June 6, 1832, London) English philosopher, economist, and theoretical jurist, the earliest and chief expounder of utilitarianism.

Early life and works

At the age of four, Bentham, the son of an attorney, is said to have read eagerly and to have begun the study of Latin. Much of his childhood was spent happily at his two grandmothers’ country houses. At Westminster School he won a reputation for writing Greek and Latin verse. In 1760 he went to Queen’s College, Oxford, and took his degree in 1763. In November he entered Lincoln’s Inn (see Inns of Court) to study law and took his seat as a student in the King’s Bench division of the High Court, where he listened with rapture to the judgments of Chief Justice Lord Mansfield. In December 1763 he managed to hear Sir William Blackstone lecture at Oxford but said that he immediately detected fallacies that underlay the grandiloquent language of the future judge. He spent his time performing chemical experiments and speculating upon the more theoretical aspects of legal abuses rather than reading law books. On being called to the bar, he “found a cause or two at nurse for him, which he did his best to put to death,” to the bitter disappointment of his father, who had confidently looked forward to seeing him become lord chancellor.

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Philosophy 101

Bentham’s first book, A Fragment on Government, appeared in 1776. The subtitle, Being an Examination of What Is Delivered, on the Subject of Government in General, in the Introduction to Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries, indicates the nature of the work. Bentham found the “grand and fundamental” fault of the Commentaries to be Blackstone’s “antipathy to reform.” Bentham’s book, written in a clear and concise style different from that of his later works, may be said to mark the beginning of philosophical radicalism. It is also a very good essay on sovereignty. Lord Shelburne (afterward 1st marquess of Lansdowne), the statesman, read the book and called upon its author in 1781. Bentham became a frequent guest at Shelburne’s home. At this period Bentham’s mind was much occupied with writing the work that was later published in French in 1811 by his admirer Étienne Dumont and entitled Théorie des peines et des récompenses. This work eventually appeared in English as The Rationale of Reward (1825) and The Rationale of Punishment (1830). In 1785 Bentham started, by way of Italy and Constantinople, on a visit to his brother, Samuel Bentham, an engineer in the Russian armed forces; and it was in Russia that he wrote his Defence of Usury (published 1787). This, his first essay in economics, presented in the form of a series of letters from Russia, shows him as a disciple of the economist Adam Smith but one who argued that Smith did not follow the logic of his own principles. Bentham held that each individual was the best judge of his own advantage, that it was desirable from the public point of view that he should seek it without hindrance, and that there was no reason to limit the application of this doctrine in the matter of lending money at interest. His later works on political economy followed the laissez-faire principle, though with modifications. In the Manual of Political Economy (1800) he gave a list of what the state should and should not do, the second list being much longer than the first.

Mature works

Disappointed, after his return to England in 1788, in the hope of making a political career, he settled down to discovering the principles of legislation. The great work on which he had been engaged for many years, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, was published in 1789. In this book he defined the principle of utility as “that property in any object whereby it tends to produce pleasure, good or happiness, or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.” Mankind, he said, was governed by two sovereign motives, pain and pleasure; and the principle of utility recognized this state of affairs. The object of all legislation must be the “greatest happiness of the greatest number.” He deduced from the principle of utility that, since all punishment involves pain and is therefore evil, it ought only to be used “so far as it promises to exclude some greater evil.”

The fame of his writings spread widely and rapidly. Bentham was made a French citizen in 1792, and in later life his advice was respectfully received in several European countries and the United States. With many of the leading figures of these countries Bentham maintained an active correspondence. The codification of law was one of Bentham’s chief preoccupations, and it was his ambition to be allowed to prepare a code of laws for his own or some foreign country. He was accused of having underestimated both the intrinsic difficulties of the task and the need for diversity of institutions adapted to the tradition and civilization of different countries. Even so, Bentham must be reckoned among the pioneers of prison reform. It is true that the particular scheme that he worked out was bizarre and spoiled by the elaborate detail that he loved. “Morals reformed, health preserved, industry invigorated, instruction diffused” and other similar desiderata would, he thought, be the result if his scheme for a model prison, the “Panopticon,” were to be adopted; and for many years he tried to induce the government to adopt it. His endeavours, however, came to nothing; and though he received £23,000 in compensation in 1813, he lost all faith in the reforming zeal of politicians and officials.

In 1823 he helped to found the Westminster Review to spread the principles of philosophical radicalism. Bentham had been brought up a Tory, but the influence of the political theory of the Enlightenment served to make a democrat of him. As far back as 1809 he had written a tract—A Catechism of Parliamentary Reform, which was, however, not published until 1817—advocating annual elections; equal electoral districts; a wide suffrage, including woman suffrage; and the secret ballot. He supported in principle the participation of women in government and argued for the reform of marriage law to allow greater freedom to divorce. He drafted a series of resolutions based on the Catechism that were introduced in the House of Commons in 1818. A volume of his Constitutional Code, which he did not live to complete, was published in 1830.

After Bentham’s death, in accordance with his directions, his body was dissected in the presence of his friends. The skeleton was then reconstructed, supplied with a wax head to replace the original (which had been mummified), dressed in Bentham’s own clothes and set upright in a glass-fronted case. Both this effigy and the head are preserved in University College London.

Bentham’s life was a happy one. He gathered around him a group of congenial friends and pupils, such as the philosopher James Mill, father of John Stuart Mill, with whom he could discuss the problems upon which he was engaged. His friends, too, practically rewrote several of his books from the mass of rough though orderly memoranda that Bentham himself prepared. Thus, the Rationale of Judicial Evidence, 5 vol. (1827), was put in its finished state by John Stuart Mill and the Book of Fallacies (1824) by Peregrine Bingham. The services of Étienne Dumont in recasting as well as translating the works of Bentham were still more important.

Legacy

Bentham was less a philosopher than a critic of law and of judicial and political institutions. Unfortunately, he was not aware of his limitations. He tried to define what he thought were the basic concepts of ethics, but the majority of his definitions are oversimple or ambiguous or both, and his “felicific calculus,” a method for calculating amounts of happiness, as even his warmest admirers have admitted, cannot be used. As a moralist and psychologist, Bentham has similarly appeared to be inadequate; his arguments, though sometimes elaborate, rest too often on insufficient and ambiguous premises. His analyses of the concepts that used to describe and explain human behaviour are too simple. He seems to have believed both that people are completely selfish and that each person ought to promote the greatest happiness, no matter whose. Not even the formula of which he made so much, “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” possesses a definite meaning.

Given all this, it should be noted that the publication in the second half of the 20th century of Bentham’s previously unknown manuscripts did much to enhance his reputation as a philosopher of law. His Victorian editor, Sir John Bowring, had cut from Bentham’s work much that was both original and well argued. The more up-to-date scholarship of Bentham specialists revealed a more rigorous and systematic thinker than the legendary muddled utilitarian that Bentham had appeared to be to earlier generations.

As a critic of institutions Bentham was admirable. In his Rationale of Judicial Evidence (1827) he described the methods that a court should use to get at the truth as quickly as possible; and in the Essay on Political Tactics (1791) he described what he considered the most effective forms of debate for a legislative assembly—an account based largely on the procedure of the House of Commons. In these works and in others Bentham was concerned to discover what makes for efficiency. Though he defined efficiency in terms of happiness, his reader need not do so; or, if he does, he need not think of happiness as Bentham did. Bentham’s assumptions about what makes for happiness are often quite ordinary and sensible; the reader can accept them and still insist that happiness is not to be defined in terms of pleasure and is not to be measured. Whatever is excellent, ingenious, and original in Bentham—and there is a great deal of it—need not depend on the “felicific calculus” and “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”