Editing Jeremy Bentham (section)

==== Criticisms ====
Utilitarianism was revised and expanded by Bentham's student [[John Stuart Mill]], who sharply criticised Bentham's view of human nature, which failed to recognise conscience as a human motive. Mill considered Bentham's view "to have done and to be doing very serious evil."<ref>[[John Stuart Mill|Mill, John Stuart]]. 1897. ''Early Essays of John Stuart Mill''. London. pp. 401–404.</ref> In Mill's hands, "Benthamism" became a major element in the [[classical liberalism|liberal]] conception of [[state policy]] objectives.

Bentham's critics have claimed that he undermined the foundation of a free society by rejecting [[Natural rights and legal rights|natural rights]].<ref name="Smith2012" /> Historian [[Gertrude Himmelfarb]] wrote "The principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number was as inimical to the idea of liberty as to the idea of rights."{{sfn|Himmelfarb|1968|p=77}}

Bentham's "hedonistic" theory (a term from [[J. J. C. Smart]]) is often criticised for lacking a principle of fairness embodied in a conception of [[justice]]. In ''Bentham and the Common Law Tradition'', Gerald J. Postema states: "No moral concept suffers more at Bentham's hand than the concept of justice. There is no sustained, mature analysis of the notion."{{sfn|Postema|1986|p=148}} Thus, some critics{{who|date=January 2013}} object, it would be acceptable to [[torture]] one person if this would produce an amount of happiness in other people outweighing the unhappiness of the tortured individual. However, as P. J. Kelly argued in ''Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law'', Bentham had a theory of justice that prevented such consequences.{{clarify|date=July 2021}}