Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham (IPA: {{IPA|}}) (15 February 1748 – 6 June 1832) was an English gentleman, jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He is best known as an early advocate of utilitarianism and animal rights.

Utilitarianism

Bentham is the first and perhaps the greatest of the "philosophical radicals" - not only did he propose many legal and social reforms, but he also devised moral principles on which they should be based. This philosophy, utilitarianism, argued that the right act or policy was that which would cause "the greatest happiness for the greatest number"—a phrase of which he is generally, though erroneously, regarded as the author—though he later dropped the second qualification and embraced what he called "the greatest happiness principle." Bentham also suggested a procedure to mechanically estimate the moral status of any action, which he called the Hedonic or felicific calculus. Utilitarianism was revised and expanded by Bentham's more famous disciple, John Stuart Mill. In Mill's hands, "Benthamism" became a major element in the liberal conception of state policy objectives.

Related Topics:
Felicific calculus - John Stuart Mill - Liberal

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It is often said that Bentham's theory, unlike Mill's, faces the problem of lacking a principle of fairness embodied in a conception of justice. Thus, some critics object, it would be moral, for example, to torture one person if this would produce an amount of happiness in other people outweighing the unhappiness of the tortured individual. However, as P. J. Kelly forcibly argued in his book Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law , Bentham had a theory of justice that prevented such undesirable consequences. According to Kelly, for Bentham the law "provides the basic framework of social interaction by delimiting spheres of personal inviolability within which individuals can form and pursue their own conceptions of well-being." (op. cit., p. 81) They provide security, a precondition for the formation of expectations. As the hedonic calculus shows "expectation utilities" to be much higher than "natural" ones, it follows that Bentham does not favour the sacrifice of a few to the benefit of the many.

Related Topics:
Justice - Torture - Expectation utilities

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However, Bentham did not originally believe that utilitarianism should be applied to real world decisions totally devoid of reason or considerations of right and justice. Though Bentham viewed pain and pleasure as inevitable guides to human thought, he still allowed for the ability of human reason to override these two "sovereign masters" as he refers to them:

Related Topics:
Reason - Right

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::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. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think... (Chp. I, p. 1, The Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1781).

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This view may be summed up in the following image, where considerations of right and wrong, causes and consequences (effects) are "fastened to the throne" of the two "sovereign masters." In fact, Bentham first introduces the principle of utility in his book entitled The Principles of Morals and Legislation, a book whose contents stem from a dedicated study of legislation, morality, consequence, punishment and jurisprudence.

Related Topics:
Legislation - Morality - Consequence - Punishment - Jurisprudence

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