Editing Jeremy Bentham (section)

== Legacy ==
[[File:Jeremy Bentham MET 2000.455.2.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|French medallion, modelled {{circa|1830}}, cast before 1844]]
Bentham influenced economists such as [[Milton Friedman]]<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Roy|first=Avik|date=Jul 31, 2014|title=Milton Friedman's Property Rights Legacy|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/07/31/milton-friedmans-property-rights-legacy/|magazine=Forbes}}</ref> and [[Henry Hazlitt]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Hazlitt|first=Henry|date=1964|title=The Foundations of Morality|url=https://hazlitt.org/e-texts/morality/ch12.html|page=90|quote=I have been quoting from Bentham's (out-of-print) Deontology at this great length, not only because of the brilliant light it throws on the necessary relations of prudence and beneficence, but because it develops the Greatest Happiness Principle with more thoroughness and logic than any other work with which I am acquainted. By identifying morality not with a pointless "will to refrain" or self-sacrifice, but with the maximization of happiness, and by emphasizing the essential harmony between self-interest and the general interest, Bentham provides a far greater incentive to morality than the conventional moralist. His detractors, from Matthew Arnold to Karl Marx, have always been fond of dismissing him as crass and vulgar, but he is as superior to them in the breadth of his sympathies as he is in analysis and logic.}}</ref>

In their youth, [[Karl Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels]] were interested in Bentham's ideas and utilitarian philosophy.<ref>{{cite book | chapter-url=https://www.pdcnet.org/wcp22/content/wcp22_2008_0016_0045_0058?file_type=pdf | doi=10.5840/wcp22200816841 | chapter="Forerunner of Socialism" or "Genius of Bourgeois Stupidity"? | title=Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy | date=2008 | volume=16 | pages=45–58 | isbn=978-1-889680-92-7 | last1=Duichin | first1=Marco }}</ref> Marx later became disillusioned with Bentham's ideas, describing him as "a genius of bourgeois stupidity",<ref name="Marx 1941">{{cite journal |last=Marx |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Marx  |title=Theory Among the Anglo-Saxons |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fi/vol02/no10/marx.htm |others=Transcription & mark-up: Einde O'Callaghan |journal=Fourth International: The Monthly Magazine of the Socialist Workers Party |volume=2 |number=2 |publisher=Socialist Workers Party |publication-place=New York, NY |date=December 1941 |oclc=1424899047 |pages=309–311}}<!--This web page cites Karl Marx, Das Kapital, vol.I. Footnote to Chapter XXII, so we should be able to cite it directly.--></ref> and viewed Bentham's views as too English and ''[[petite bourgeoisie]]'', saying "With the dullest naïveté he takes the modern petty-bourgeois philistine, especially the English philistine, as the normal man. Whatever is useful to this queer variety of normal man, and to his world, is useful in and for itself. This yardstick, then, he applies to past, present and future."

The [[UCL Faculty of Laws|Faculty of Laws]] at [[University College London]] occupies Bentham House, next to the main UCL campus.<ref name="UCL8" />

Bentham's name was adopted by the Australian [[Legal financing|litigation funder]] IMF Limited to become Bentham IMF Limited on 28 November 2013, in recognition of Bentham being "among the first to support the utility of litigation funding".<ref name="imf.com.au" />

=== Death and the auto-icon ===
[[File:"Mortal Remains" of Jeremy Bentham, 1832 Wellcome L0007730.jpg|thumb|Bentham's public dissection]]
[[File:Jeremy Bentham Auto-Icon.jpg|thumb|upright|Bentham's auto-icon in 2003]]

[[File:Jeremy Bentham Auto-Icon 2020.jpg|thumb|upright|Bentham's auto-icon in a new display case at University College London's Student Centre in 2020]]

Bentham died on 6 June 1832, aged 84, at his residence in Queen Square Place in [[Westminster]], London. He had continued to write up to a month before his death, and had made careful preparations for the [[dissection]] of his body after death and its preservation as an auto-icon. As early as 1769, when Bentham was 21 years old, he made a will leaving his body for dissection to a family friend, the physician and chemist [[George Fordyce]], whose daughter, Maria Sophia (1765–1858), married Jeremy's brother [[Samuel Bentham]].<ref name="ODNB" /> A paper written in 1830, instructing [[Thomas Southwood Smith]] to create the auto-icon, was attached to his last will, dated 30 May 1832.<ref name="ODNB" /> It stated:

{{blockquote|My body I give to my dear friend Dr Southwood Smith to be disposed of in a manner hereinafter mentioned, and I direct ... he will take my body under his charge and take the requisite and appropriate measures for the disposal and preservation of the several parts of my bodily frame in the manner in the paper annexed to this my will and at the top of which I have written Auto Icon.{{pb}}The skeleton he will cause to be put together in such a manner that the whole figure may be seated in a chair usually occupied by me when living, in the attitude in which I am sitting while engaged in thought in the course of time occupied in writing.{{pb}}I direct that the body thus prepared shall be transferred to my executor. He will cause the skeleton to be clad in one of the suits of black occasionally worn by me. The body so clothed, together with the chair and the staff in my later years borne by me, he will take charge of, and for containing the whole apparatus he will cause to be prepared an appropriate box or case, and will cause to be engraved in conspicuous characters on a plate to be affixed thereon and also on the labels on the glass case in which the preparations of the soft parts of my body shall be contained, ... my name at length with the letters ob: followed by the day of my decease.{{pb}}If it should so happen that my personal friends and other disciples should be disposed to meet together on some day or days of the year for the purpose of commemorating the founder of the greatest happiness system of morals and legislation, my executor will from time to time cause to be conveyed in the room in which they meet the said box or case with the contents therein, to be stationed in such part of the room as to the assembled company shall seem meet. – Queen's Square Place, Westminster, Wednesday 30 May 1832.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Raphael |first1=Isabel |title=Southwood Smith: his extraordinary life and family |journal=Camden History Review |date=2009 |volume=33 |page=6}}</ref>}}

Bentham's wish to preserve his dead body was consistent with his philosophy of utilitarianism. In his essay ''Auto-Icon, or the Uses of the Dead to the Living'', Bentham wrote, "If a country gentleman has rows of trees leading to his dwelling, the auto-icons of his family might alternate with the trees; copal varnish would protect the face from the effects of rain."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Forbes |first1=Malcolm |title=They Went That-a-way |date=1988 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |location=New York |isbn=0671657097 |page=28}}</ref> On 8 June 1832, two days after his death, invitations were distributed to a select group of friends, and on the following day at 3 p.m., Southwood Smith delivered a lengthy oration over Bentham's remains in the Webb Street School of Anatomy & Medicine in [[Southwark]], London. The printed oration contains a frontispiece with an engraving of Bentham's body partly covered by a sheet.<ref name="ODNB" />

Afterward, the skeleton and head were preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet called the "auto-icon", with the skeleton padded out with hay and dressed in Bentham's clothes. From 1833, it stood in Southwood Smith's [[Finsbury Square]] consulting rooms until he abandoned private practice in the winter of 1849–50, when it was moved to 36 [[Percy Street]], the studio of his unofficial partner, painter [[Margaret Gillies]], who made studies of it. In March 1850, Southwood Smith offered the auto-icon to [[Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux|Henry Brougham]], who readily accepted it for [[University College London|UCL]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hayes |first1=David |title=From Southwood Smith to Octavia Hill: a remarkable family's Camden years |journal=Camden History Review |date=2009 |volume=33 |page=9}}</ref>

It is currently kept on public display at the main entrance of the UCL Student Centre. It was previously displayed at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the college until it was moved in 2020. Upon the retirement of Sir [[Malcolm Grant]] as [[Provost (education)|provost]] of the college in 2013, however, the body was present at Grant's final council meeting. As of 2013, this was the only time that the body of Bentham has been taken to a UCL council meeting.<ref name="Smallman2013" /><ref>{{cite AV media |people=Das, Subhadra (curator) |date=19 November 2018 |title=The Boring Talks |trans-title=#25 Jeremy Bentham's 'Auto-Icon' |medium=podcast |language=en |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05t3gr2/episodes/downloads |publisher=BBC }}</ref> (There is a persistent myth that the body of Bentham is present at all council meetings.)<ref name="Smallman2013" /><ref name="UCL1" />

Bentham had intended the auto-icon to incorporate his actual head, [[Mummy#Modern mummies|mummified]] to resemble its appearance in life. Southwood Smith's experimental efforts at mummification – based on the [[mokomokai|preservation practices]] of [[New Zealand]]'s indigenous [[Māori people|Māori]] – involved placing the head under an air pump over sulphuric acid and drawing off the fluids. Although technically successful, they left the head looking distastefully macabre, with dried and darkened skin stretched tautly over the skull.<ref name="ODNB"/>

[[File:Jeremy Bentham's Severed Head.JPG|thumb|Jeremy Bentham's severed head, on temporary display at UCL]]
The auto-icon was therefore given a [[wax]] head, fitted with some of Bentham's own hair. The real head was displayed in the same case as the auto-icon for many years, but became the target of repeated [[student prank]]s. It was later locked away.<ref name="UCL1" /> 

In 2020, the auto-icon was put into a new glass display case and moved to the entrance of UCL's new Student Centre on [[Gordon Square]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Jeremy Bentham's Body Gets A Contentious New Box At UCL |url=https://londonist.com/london/jeremy-bentham-s-body-gets-a-new-box |access-date=27 February 2020 |work=Londonist |date=24 February 2020 |language=en}}</ref>

=== University College London ===
[[File:Four founders of UCL.JPG|thumb|right|upright|[[Henry Tonks]]' imaginary scene of Bentham approving the building plans of London University]]
Bentham is widely associated with the foundation in 1826 of London University (the institution that, in 1836, became [[University College London]]), though he was 78 years old when the university opened and played only an indirect role in its establishment. His direct involvement was limited to his buying a single £100 share in the new university, making him just one of over a thousand shareholders.{{sfn|Harte|1998|pp= 5–8}}

Bentham and his ideas can nonetheless be seen as having inspired several of the actual founders of the university. He strongly believed that education should be more widely available, particularly to those who were not wealthy or who did not belong to the established church; in Bentham's time, membership of the [[Church of England]] and the capacity to bear considerable expenses were required of students entering the Universities of [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] and [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge]]. As the University of London was the first in England to admit all, regardless of [[Race (classification of human beings)|race]], creed or political belief, it was largely consistent with Bentham's vision. There is some evidence that, from the sidelines, he played a "more than passive part" in the planning discussions for the new institution, although it is also apparent that "his interest was greater than his influence".{{sfn|Harte|1998|pp= 5–8}} He failed in his efforts to see his disciple [[John Bowring]] appointed professor of English or History, but he did oversee the appointment of another pupil, [[John Austin (legal philosophy)|John Austin]], as the first professor of [[Jurisprudence]] in 1829.

The more direct associations between Bentham and UCL—the college's custody of his Auto-icon (see above) and of the majority of his surviving papers—postdate his death by some years: the papers were donated in 1849, and the Auto-icon in 1850. A large painting by [[Henry Tonks]] hanging in UCL's [[John Flaxman|Flaxman Gallery]] depicts Bentham approving the plans of the new university, but it was executed in 1922 and the scene is entirely imaginary. Since 1959 (when the Bentham Committee was first established), UCL has hosted the Bentham Project, which is progressively publishing a [[The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham|definitive edition of Bentham's writings]].

UCL now endeavours to acknowledge Bentham's influence on its foundation, while avoiding any suggestion of direct involvement, by describing him as its "spiritual founder".<ref name="UCL Academic Figures" />