Background
Jeremy Bentham was born on 15 February 1748 in London, United Kingdom. He was the elder son of an attorney, Jeremiah Bentham, and his first wife, Alicia Whitehorn. He had was also a brother to Samuel, a naval architect and diplomat.
The entrance to Dean's Yard and Westminster School war memorial viewed from the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in August 2012
Bentham's severed head, on temporary display at the University College of London.
Henry Tonks' imaginary scene of Bentham approving the building plans of London University
The Queen's College, Oxford
Portrait of Bentham by the studio of Thomas Frye, 1760-1762
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
(Jeremy Bentham's work on "The Principles of Morals and Le...)
Jeremy Bentham's work on "The Principles of Morals and Legislation" emerges from its historic roots in hedonism and teleology as a scientific attempt to assess the moral content of human action by focusing on its results or consequences. Proceeding from the assumption that human beings desire pleasure (and avoid pain), Bentham's unique perspective, known as utilitarianism, is used to construct a fascinating calculus for determining which action to perform when confronted with situations requiring moral decision-making the goal of which is to arrive at the "greatest happiness of the greatest number."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0879754346/?tag=2022091-20
1780
(The work Panopticon: The Inspection House was a work writ...)
The work Panopticon: The Inspection House was a work written by Jeremy Bentham, and first published in 1791, which famously outlines the notion of the institutional panopticon, which allows for the prison or manufactory, for instance, to view all inmates or workers from a central vantage point without knowing they are being watched.
https://www.amazon.com/Panopticon-Inspection-House-Jeremy-Bentham/dp/1978103913/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1604933085&sr=1-10
1791
(One of the most important nineteenth-century schools of t...)
One of the most important nineteenth-century schools of thought, "Utilitarianism" propounds the view that the value or rightness of an action rests in how well it promotes the welfare of those affected by it, aiming for "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." Jeremy Bentham was the movement's founder, as much a social reformer as a philosopher.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140432728/?tag=2022091-20
(Bentham's writings for the French Revolution were dominat...)
Bentham's writings for the French Revolution were dominated by the themes of rights, representation, and reform. In "Nonsense upon Stilts" (hitherto known as "Anarchical Fallacies"), the most devastating attack on the theory of natural rights ever written, he argued that natural rights provided an unsuitable basis for stable legal and political arrangements. In discussing the nature of representation he produced the earliest utilitarian justification of political equality and representative democracy, even recommending women's suffrage.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019924863X/?tag=2022091-20
(The Complete Works of Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham was a...)
The Complete Works of Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham defined as the "fundamental axiom" of his philosophy the principle that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong."
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Works-Jeremy-Bentham-ebook/dp/B0855G2GB5/ref=sr_1_14?dchild=1&qid=1604933085&refinements=p_27%3AJeremy+Bentham&s=digital-text&sr=1-14&text=Jeremy+Bentham
(Jeremy Bentham, philosopher, and reformer, is one of the ...)
Jeremy Bentham, philosopher, and reformer, is one of the most influential thinkers of the modern age. This introduction to his writings presents a representative selection of texts authoritatively restored by the Bentham Project, University College London. As well as more familiar pieces on utility, law, and politics/policy, highlights include the succinct essay "On Retrenchment" and a never-before-published treatise on sex. The volume is completed by major interpretative essays by Mark Canuel, David Lieberman, Jennifer Pitts, and Philip Schofield.
https://www.amazon.com/Selected-Writings-Rethinking-Western-Tradition-ebook/dp/B00801N2HO/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&qid=1604933085&refinements=p_27%3AJeremy+Bentham&s=digital-text&sr=1-8&text=Jeremy+Bentham
jurist philosopher reformer theorist
Jeremy Bentham was born on 15 February 1748 in London, United Kingdom. He was the elder son of an attorney, Jeremiah Bentham, and his first wife, Alicia Whitehorn. He had was also a brother to Samuel, a naval architect and diplomat.
A precocious child, Bentham learned Latin, Greek, and French before he was 10. After attending the famous Westminster school (1755-1760), he went to Queen's College, Oxford, and took his degree in 1763 at the age of 15. He studied at Lincoln's Inn, receiving a master of arts degree in 1766.
In 1767 Bentham was called to the bar. His father, who had amassed a considerable fortune in real estate speculations, died in 1792, and from that time on Bentham retired from public life and devoted himself to writing.
In 1776 he published Fragment on Government, which criticized the interpretations of English common law by Sir William Blackstone. Bentham attacked the notion that a social contract or compact had a legal basis.
Among his many proposals for legal and social reform was a design for a prison building he called the Panopticon. He spent some sixteen years of his life developing and refining his ideas for the building and hoped that the government would adopt the plan for a National Penitentiary appointing him as contractor-governor.
More successful was Bentham's cooperation with Patrick Colquhoun in tackling the corruption in the Pool of London. This resulted in the Thames Police Bill of 1798, which was passed in 1800. The bill created the Thames River Police, which was the first preventive police force in the country and was a precedent for Robert Peel's reforms 30 years later.
He continued to write on jurisprudence throughout his career. Although he spent 7 or 8 hours daily on his writing for more than 50 years, virtually all his published books are the product of editors. He habitually worked on several projects simultaneously without finishing them, and often there were several incomplete versions of the same topic. Bentham was fortunate in having editors of dedication and genius such as Étienne Dumont, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill.
Throughout his life, Bentham conducted a lengthy, and largely unsolicited, correspondence with various heads of state suggesting methods of legal and constitutional reform. In 1814 Bentham purchased a mansion, and his home became a center of English intellectual life. In his will, which contributed to establishing University College, London, he stipulated that his clothed skeleton and wax head be preserved. Bentham died on 6 June 1832 aged 84 at his residence in Queen Square Place in Westminster, London, England.
(The work Panopticon: The Inspection House was a work writ...)
1791(One of the most important nineteenth-century schools of t...)
(Jeremy Bentham's work on "The Principles of Morals and Le...)
1780(The Complete Works of Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham was a...)
(Bentham's writings for the French Revolution were dominat...)
(Jeremy Bentham, philosopher, and reformer, is one of the ...)
Bentham was an atheist and a determined opponent of religion.
Bentham scorned the French Revolution's "Declaration of the Rights of Man," commenting that all talk of rights was "nonsense" and talk of absolute rights as "nonsense on stilts."
The penal code was to be the first in a collection of codes that would constitute the utilitarian pannomion, a complete body of law based on the utility principle, the development of which was to engage Bentham in a lifetime’s work and was to include civil, procedural, and constitutional law. Codes drawn up by him were adopted in whole or in part by France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Portugal, India, Australia, Canada, other countries of Europe and South America, and several states of the United States.
He devised a blueprint for representative democracy and his attempts to measure utility now lie at the root of modern theories of cost-benefit analysis. He also laid out a systematic theory of punishment which emphasized deterrence, proportionality and mildness of punishment, and reformation of prisoners.
Bentham also advocated for women’s suffrage and was a proponent of sexual liberty, calling for the elimination of legal or religious sanctions on all forms of consensual sexual activity.
Bentham is primarily known today for his moral philosophy, especially his principle of utilitarianism, which evaluates actions based upon their consequences. The relevant consequences, in particular, are the overall happiness created for everyone affected by the action. Influenced by many enlightenment thinkers, especially empiricists such as John Locke and David Hume, Bentham developed an ethical theory grounded in a large empiricist account of human nature. He famously held a hedonistic account of both motivation and value according to which what is fundamentally valuable and what ultimately motivates us is pleasure and pain. Happiness, according to Bentham, is thus a matter of experiencing pleasure and lack of pain.
Although he never practiced law, Bentham did write a great deal of philosophy of law, spending most of his life critiquing the existing law and strongly advocating legal reform. Throughout his work, he critiques various natural accounts of law which claim, for example, that liberty, rights, and so on exist independently of government. In this way, Bentham arguably developed an early form of what is now often called "legal positivism." Beyond such critiques, he ultimately maintained that putting his moral theory into consistent practice would yield results in legal theory by providing justification for social, political, and legal institutions.
Utilitarianism is defined by Bentham as the thesis that an act is right or good if it produces pleasure, and evil if it leads to pain. Although this doctrine is almost as old as philosophy itself, the principle of utility received its classic expression in Bentham's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789).
He avoided the subjectivism of most hedonistic theories by acknowledging altruistic as well as egoistic pleasures and recognizing that pleasure often consists primarily of avoiding pain. He defined the community as the sum of the interests of its members and stated that utilitarianism aims at the greatest happiness of the greatest number. To determine the specific utility of actions, Bentham proposed a "felicific calculus" by which one can balance the pleasures and pains consequent upon one's acts. The value of action will be greater or less in terms of the intensity and duration of pleasure and its certainty and possibility. One should also consider how an act will affect other people. In addition, the circumstances should be taken into account but not the motives, which do not matter.
Late in life, he became concerned with how the dead could be of use to the living; in the work Auto Icon he suggested that, with proper embalming, every man could become his own monument and that notables might be interspersed with trees in public parks.
Bentham’s influence was minor during his life. But his impact was greater in later years as his ideas were carried on by followers such as John Stuart Mill, John Austin, and other consequentialists.
Quotations:
"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure."
"The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer?"
"The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong."
"Every law is an infraction of liberty."
"The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation."
"Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart."
"The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law."
"The age we live in is a busy age; in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection."
"The schoolmaster is abroad! And I trust to him armed with his primer against the soldier in full military array."
"No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion."
"Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet."
Bentham was a man of considerable irony and personal eccentricity. He had a talent for simplification; he reduced all ethical considerations to an immediate source. Bentham's eccentricity took the form of obsession with certain ideas.
Bentham was the inventor of many words you hear today in the board room. Maximize, manageability, monetary, percentage, secretarial to name a few.
Bentham collected recipes for a prison cookbook designed to maximize nutritious value without raising costs.
Bentham was a dedicated writer. He produced around 20 pages of manuscript writing every day until his death.
Jeremy Bentham had never been married, and there is no information about his possible children.