Jeremy Bentham
British philosopher and economist
born Feb. 15, 1748, London
died June 6, 1832, London
Main
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 Greek and Latin verse
writing. In 1760 he went to Queen’s College, Oxford, and took his degree
in 1763. In November he entered Lincoln’s Inn 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 in 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.
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 philosophic 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 every man 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” he gives 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 of the states of Europe and America. With many of
the leading men 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 philosophic 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, advocating annual elections,
equal electoral districts, a wide suffrage, and the secret ballot, which
was, however, not published until 1817. He drafted a series of
resolutions based on this tract 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 J.S. 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.
Assessment.
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 men use to describe and explain human
behaviour are too simple. He seems to have believed both that man is
completely selfish and that everyone 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 since World
War II of Bentham’s previously unknown manuscripts has done much to
enhance his reputation as a philosopher of law. His Victorian editor,
Sir John Bowring, cut out from Bentham’s work much that was both
original and well-argued. The more up-to-date scholarship of such
Bentham specialists as Herbert L.A. Hart, J.H. Burns, Frederick Rosen,
and Lea Campos-Boralevi has revealed a more rigorous and systematic
thinker than the legendary muddled Utilitarian that Bentham appeared to
be to earlier generations.
As a critic of institutions Bentham was admirable. In his Rationale
of Judicial Evidence he describes the methods that a court should use to
get at the truth as quickly as possible; and in the Essay on Political
Tactics he describes what he considers the most effective forms of
debate for a legislative assembly—an account largely based on the
procedure of the House of Commons. In these works and in others Bentham
is concerned to discover what makes for efficiency. Though he defines
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.”
John P. Plamenatz
