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Updated: June 15, 2025
Though Jeremy Bentham's skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library of one of his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed utilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy's other leading personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from any leviathan's articulated bones.
This procedure from the particular case of the Catechism in schools up to the general problem of the utility of religion in general, is curiously characteristic of Bentham. Bentham's mind was attracted to various other schemes by the disciples who came to sit at his feet, and professed, with more or less sincerity, to regard him as a Solon.
"An egoistic Hedonist," Parry was beginning, but Ellis cut him short. "It's best explained," he said, "by an example. Here, for example, is Bentham's definition of the pleasures of friendship; they are, he says, 'those which accompany the persuasion of possessing the goodwill of such and such individuals, and the right of expecting from them, in consequence, spontaneous and gratuitous services."
Bentham's principle, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, has often been narrowly and unfairly judged, but it may be doubted whether a sounder theory of political and social government has ever come out of the mere wisdom of man.
After all Bentham's insistence upon the 'self-preference principle' and Mill's account of selfishness in his political theory, we are suddenly told that morality means a lofty and rigid code in which the happiness of all is the one end. Here again Mill is entangled by the characteristic difficulty of his psychology. To analyse is to divide objects into separate units.
Bentham's confidence in his logic lifts him above any appeal to experience; and he occasionally reminds us of the proof given in Martin Chuzzlewit that the queen must live in the Tower of London. The 'monarch, as he observes, 'is naturally the very worst the most maleficent member of the whole community. Wherever an aristocracy differs from the democracy, their judgment will be erroneous.
Bowring was not a judicious reporter, indeed, and capable of taking hasty phrases too seriously. What Bentham's remarks upon these and other friends suggest is not malice or resentment, but the flippant utterance of a man whose feelings are wanting in depth rather than kindliness. It is noticeable that, after his early visit at Bowood, no woman seems to have counted for anything in Bentham's life.
Briefly, however, I am content to say that, while he starts from Bentham, and admits Bentham's fundamental principles, he has become convinced by experience that Bentham's onslaught upon 'judge-made law, and legal fictions, and the 'fee-gathering' system, was in great part due to misunderstanding. The law requires to be systematised and made clear rather than to be substantially altered.
In the first place, he heartily admired Bentham: 'the most profound and celebrated writer on legislation in this or any other country. He accepts the 'greatest happiness principle' as applicable to the social problem. He argues for equality upon Bentham's ground. Take a penny from a poor man to give it to the rich man, and the poor man clearly loses far more happiness than the rich man gains.
If the mind of man were competent to comprehend the whole of truth and good, and act upon it at once, and independently of all other considerations, Mr. Bentham's plan would be a feasible one, and the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth would be the best possible ground to place morality upon. But it is not so.
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