Bentham, Jeremy

Abstract

Jeremy Bentham, jurist and political reformer, is the philosopherwhose name is most closely associated with the foundational era of themodern utilitarian tradition. Earlier moralists had enunciated severalof the core ideas and characteristic terminology of utilitarianphilosophy, most notably John Gay, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume,Claude-Adrien Helvétius and Cesare Beccaria, but it was Benthamwho rendered the theory in its recognisably secular and systematicform and made it a critical tool of moral and legal philosophy andpolitical and social improvement. In 1776, he first announced himselfto the world as a proponent of utility as the guiding principle ofconduct and law in A Fragment on Government. In AnIntroduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (printed1780, published 1789), as a preliminary to developing a theory ofpenal law he detailed the basic elements of classical utilitariantheory. The penal code was to be the first in a collection of codesthat would constitute the utilitarian pannomion, a completebody of law based on the utility principle, the development of whichwas to engage Bentham in a lifetime’s work and was to includecivil, procedural, and constitutional law. As a by-product, and in theinterstices between the sub-codes of this vast legislative edifice,Bentham’s writings ranged across ethics, ontology, logic,political economy, judicial administration, poor law reform, prisonreform, punishment, policing, international law, education, religiousbeliefs and institutions, democratic theory, government, andadministration. In all these areas he made major contributions thatcontinue to feature in discussions of utilitarianism, notably itsmoral, legal, economic and political forms. Upon this restsBentham’s reputation as one of the great thinkers in modernphilosophy.