JEREMY BENTHAM

Born: February 15, 1748 Birthplace: London, England Died: June 6, 1832

The Father of Utilitarianism

Life and Works

In 1760, Bentham entered Queen’s College, Oxford and, upon graduation in 1764, studied law at Lincoln’s Inn.

A leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law and one of the founders of utilitarianism.

Never practiced law and devoted most of his life to writing on matters of legal reform.

Bentham's family had been Tories and for the first period of his life he shared their conservative political views. This changed after Bentham read the work of Joseph Priestley.

At his death in London, on June 6, 1832, Bentham left manuscripts amounting to some 5,000,000 words.

Spiritual Founder of University College of London (UCL).

His body was preserved and is kept at the University College London (UCL) in a wooden cabinet, modestly and precisely labelled Jeremy Bentham. (Auto- icon)

The Auto-icon has a wax head, as Bentham's head was badly damaged in the preservation process

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

From his book “Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation”, he stated that the greatest happiness for the greatest number is the basis of morality.

A moral principle which legal and social reforms could be based.

This philosophy is known as UTILITARIANISM.

also suggested a procedure to mechanically estimate the moral status of any action, which he called the FELICIFIC CALCULUS.

A Fragment on Government (1776), which is an excerpt from a longer work published only in 1928 is a Comment on Blackstone’s Commentaries. He attacked the legal theory of Sir William Blackstone. , Blackstone’s defense of tradition in law.

As a theorist of punishment, he develop a model of an English prison that applied his theories of punishment to imprisonment. He called his model the PANOPTICON.

The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the incarcerated being able to tell whether they are being watched (sentiment of invisible omniscience).

He described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity till now without example."

For him 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.

For him, liberty is the absence of restraint. liberty is not natural or that there is an a

priori sphere of liberty in which the individual is sovereign

Liberty is a good that even though it is not something that is a fundamental value, it reflects the greatest happiness principle.

Liberty is good because it is pleasant and the restriction of liberty is an evil because it is

painful. Law, which is by its very nature a restriction of liberty and painful to those whose freedom

is restricted, is a prima facie evil.

Still he recognized, good laws are still necessary to social order and clearly

essential to good government. Indeed, more than Locke, Bentham in spite of everything saw the positive role to be

played by law and government in achieving community well-being. To the extent that law advances and

protects one’s economic and personal goods and that what government

exists is self-government, law reflects the interests of the individual.

“Every law is an infraction of liberty”

Jeremy Bentham

Bondoc, Marcel

Dela Cruz, Nico

Dimaano, Ysmael

Ocfemia, Ronnell Vergel

Pangan, Rosario Carmina

Pascual, Allan Carl

Group 5Topic: Jeremy Bentham