Jeremy bentham philosophy

Jeremy Bentham was born in to a wealthy family.

Jeremy bentham biography wikipedia The Conversation. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. This he saw as an ethical commandment for rulers: act always to ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Retrieved 10 May

A child prodigy, his father sent him to study at Queen’s College, Oxford University, aged Although he never practiced, Bentham trained as a lawyer and wrote extensively on law and legal reform. He died in at the age of 84 and requested his body and head to be preserved for scientific research. They are currently on display at University College London.

---

Jeremy Bentham is often regarded as the founder of classical utilitarianism.

According to Bentham himself, it was in he came upon “the principle of utility”, inspired by the writings of Hume, Priestley, Helvétius and Beccaria.¹ This is the principle at the foundation of utilitarian ethics, as it states that any action is right insofar as it increases happiness, and wrong insofar as it increases pain.

For Bentham, happiness simply meant pleasure and the absence of pain and could be quantified according to its intensity and duration. Famously, he rejected the idea of inalienable natural rights—rights that exist independent of their enforcement by any government—as “nonsense on stilts”.² Instead, the application of the principle of utility to law and government guided Bentham’s views on legal rights.

Jeremy bentham biography The philosopher was careful to cite existing rules and previous cases to illustrate that his legal theories were sound. Philip Schofield argues that it was largely because of his sense of injustice and frustration that he developed his ideas of "sinister interest"—that is, of the vested interests of the powerful conspiring against a wider public interest—which underpinned many of his broader arguments for reform. Retrieved 10 May Western philosophy.

During his lifetime, he attempted to create a “utilitarian pannomion”—a complete body of law based on the utility principle. He enjoyed several modest successes in law reform during his lifetime (as early as , the Scottish historian John Hill Burton was able to trace twenty-six legal reforms to Bentham’s arguments)³ and continued to exercise considerable influence on British public life.

Many of Bentham’s views were considered radical in Georgian and Victorian Britain.

His manuscripts on homosexuality were so liberal that his editor hid them from the public after his death.⁴ Underlying his position on the decriminalization of homosexuality were his beliefs that the right end of government is the maximization of happiness, and that the severity of punishment should be proportional to the harm inflicted by the crime.

He was also an early advocate of animal welfare, famously stating that their capacity to feel suffering gives us reason to care for their well-being: “The question is not can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But can they suffer?”.⁵ As well as animal welfare and the decriminalization of homosexuality, Bentham supported women’s rights (including the right to divorce), the abolition of slavery, the abolition of capital punishment, the abolition of corporal punishment, prison reform and economic liberalization.⁶

Bentham also applied the principle of utility to the reform of political institutions.

Believing that with greater education, people can more accurately discern their long-term interests, and seeing progress in education within his own society, he supported democratic reforms such as the extension of the suffrage.

Jeremy bentham biography wife We judge machines only on the basis of their utility, why not laws? He argued that empire was bad for the greatest number in the metropole and the colonies. According to Bentham, empire was financially unsound, entailed taxation on the poor in the metropole, caused unnecessary expansion in the military apparatus, undermined the security of the metropole, and were ultimately motivated by misguided ideas of honour and glory. A child prodigy—studying historical tomes at age three and Latin at age six—he entered Oxford at twelve and at fifteen was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, one of the four English Inns of the Court where undergraduates studied law in preparation for being called to the Bar as barristers.

He also advocated for greater freedom of speech, transparency and publicity of officials as accountability mechanisms. A committed atheist, he argued in favor of the separation of church and state.

Representative Works of Jeremy Bentham

Resources on Jeremy Bentham’s Life and Work

• Who was Jeremy Bentham?

  The Bentham Project, University College London.

• Crimmins, J. E. ().

• Jeremy bentham utilitarianism
• Jeremy bentham biography death
• Jeremy bentham

Jeremy Bentham. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Zalta, E. N. (ed.).

• Sweet, W. Jeremy Bentham. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Schofield, P. (). Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism. Philosophy Bites Podcast.
• Gustafsson, J. E. (). “Bentham’s Binary Form of Maximizing Utilitarianism”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 26 (1): 87–

Prominent Quotes of Jeremy Bentham

• “[T]he dictates of utility are just the dictates of the most extensive and enlightened—-advised—benevolence”.⁷
• “The principle of utility judges any action to be right by the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interests are in question.”⁸
• “Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove.
  John stuart mill biography Article Talk. Ben-Dor, Oren. Nevertheless, John Troyer notes that Bentham's greatest happiness model "dominates" modern economics by seeing "rational action as an attempt to maximize net utility" p. He had established its literary organ in the Westminster Review , and he was instrumental in creating University College, London, to disseminate rational ideas to future leaders of society.

  Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains.” (Bentham’s advice to a young girl, )

• “The day may come when the non-human part of the animal creation will acquire the rights that never could have been withheld from them except by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the whims of a tormentor.

  Perhaps it will some day be recognised that the number of legs, the hairiness of the skin, or the possession of a tail, are equally insufficient reasons for abandoning to the same fate a creature that can feel? What else could be used to draw the line? Is it the faculty of reason or the possession of language?

• Jeremy bentham utilitarianism
• Jeremy bentham theory of utilitarianism
• Jeremy bentham contribution
• Jeremy bentham death

But a full-grown horse or dog is incomparably more rational and conversable than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. Even if that were not so, what difference would that make? The question is not Can they reason? Or Can they talk? but Can they suffer.”⁹

---