Who Was Jeremy Bentham?
The philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was born in Spitalfields,
London, on 15 February 1748. He proved to be something of a child prodigy: while
still a toddler he was discovered sitting at his father's desk reading a multi-volume
history of England, and he began to study Latin at the age of three. At twelve,
he was sent to Queen's College Oxford, his father, a prosperous attorney, having
decided that Jeremy would follow him into the law, and feeling quite sure that
his brilliant son would one day be Lord Chancellor of England.
Bentham, however, soon became disillusioned with the law, especially
after hearing the lectures of the leading authority of the day, Sir
William Blackstone (1723-80). Instead of practising the law, he decided
to write about it, and he spent his life criticising the existing law
and suggesting ways for its improvement. His father's death in 1792
left him financially independent, and for nearly forty years he lived
quietly in Westminster, producing between ten and twenty sheets of
manuscript a day, even when he was in his eighties.
Above left: Bentham in about 1790, aged about forty, and (right) in
1827, aged seventy nine.
Even for those who have never read a line of Bentham, he will always
be associated with the doctrine of Utilitarianism and the principle of
`the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. This, however, was
only his starting point for a radical critique of society, which aimed
to test the usefulness of existing institutions, practices and beliefs
against an objective evaluative standard. He was an outspoken advocate
of law reform, a pugnacious critic of established political doctrines
like natural law and contractarianism, and the first to produce a
utilitarian justification for democracy. He also had much to say of
note on subjects as diverse as prison reform, religion, poor relief,
international law, and animal welfare. A visionary far ahead of his
time, he advocated universal suffrage and the decriminalisation of
homosexuality.
By the 1820s Bentham had become a widely respected figure, both in Britain
and in other parts of the world. His ideas were greatly to influence the reforms
of public administration made during the nineteenth century, and his writings
are still at the centre of academic debate, especially as regards social policy,
legal positivism, and welfare economics. Research into his work continues at
UCL in the Bentham Project,
set up in the early 1960s with the aim of producing the first scholarly edition
of his works and correspondence, a projected total of some seventy volumes!
Further reading:
J.R. Dinwiddy, Bentham (Oxford University Press, 1989) - in the 'Past
Masters' series. A new edition was published in hardcover in October 2003 as J.R.
Dinwiddy, Bentham:
Selected Writings of John Dinwiddy (Jurists: Profiles in Legal Theory
S.),
W. Twining (Editor),
Stanford University Press.
C.F.A. Marmoy, 'The "Auto-Icon" of Jeremy Bentham at University College London', Medical History, 2 (1958), 77-86.
R. Richardson, 'Bentham and Bodies for Dissection', The Bentham Newsletter, x (1986), 22-33.
R. Richardson and B. Hurwitz, 'Jeremy Bentham's self-image: an exemplary bequest for dissection', British Medical Journal, 295 (July-Dec. 1987).
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996). A new paperback edition with an introduction by F. Rosen, and an interpretive essay by H.L.A. Hart. Rosen's introduction outlines recent trends in Bentham scholarship, and contains an extensive bibliography.
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