Editing Jeremy Bentham (section)

== Work ==
[[File:Jeremy Bentham by Henry William Pickersgill.jpg|thumb|Portrait by [[Henry William Pickersgill]], exhibited 1829.]]

=== Animal rights ===
Bentham is widely regarded as one of the earliest proponents of [[animal rights]].{{sfn|Benthall|2007|p=1}} He argued and believed that the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, should be the benchmark, or what he called the "insuperable line". If reason alone were the criterion by which we judge who ought to have rights, human infants and adults with certain forms of disability might fall short, too.<ref name=":2">Bentham, Jeremy. 1780. "[http://www.koeblergerhard.de/Fontes/BenthamJeremyMoralsandLegislation1789.pdf#page=351 Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence]". pp. 307–335 in ''[[An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation]]''. London: T. Payne and Sons.</ref> In 1780, alluding to the limited degree of legal protection afforded to [[slave]]s in the [[French West Indies]] by the [[Code Noir]], he wrote:<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|309n}}{{blockquote|The day has been, I am sad to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing, as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day ''may'' come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the [[Hair follicle|villosity]] of the skin, or the termination of the ''[[Sacrum|os sacrum]]'' are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of [[Speech communication|discourse]]? But a full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they ''reason''? nor, Can they ''talk''? but, Can they ''suffer''?}}Earlier in the paragraph, Bentham makes clear that he accepted that animals could be killed for food, or in defence of human life, provided that the animal was not made to suffer unnecessarily. Bentham did not object to [[Animal testing|medical experiments on animals]], providing that the experiments had in mind a particular goal of benefit to humanity, and had a reasonable chance of achieving that goal. He wrote that otherwise he had a "decided and insuperable objection" to causing pain to animals, in part because of the harmful effects such practices might have on human beings. In a letter to the editor of the ''[[The Morning Chronicle|Morning Chronicle]]'' in March 1825, he wrote:

{{blockquote|I never have seen, nor ever can see, any objection to the putting of dogs and other inferior animals to pain, in the way of medical experiment, when that experiment has a determinate object, beneficial to mankind, accompanied with a fair prospect of the accomplishment of it. But I have a decided and insuperable objection to the putting of them to pain without any such view. To my apprehension, every act by which, without prospect of preponderant good, pain is knowingly and willingly produced in any being whatsoever, is an act of cruelty; and, like other bad habits, the more the correspondent habit is indulged in, the stronger it grows, and the more frequently productive of its bad fruit. I am unable to comprehend how it should be, that to him to whom it is a matter of amusement to see a dog or a horse suffer, it should not be matter of like amusement to see a man suffer; seeing, as I do, how much more morality as well as intelligence, an adult quadruped of those and many other species has in him, than any biped has for some months after he has been brought into existence; nor does it appear to me how it should be, that a person to whom the production of pain, either in the one or in the other instance, is a source of amusement, would scruple to give himself that amusement when he could do so under an assurance of impunity.<ref name="Bentham1825" />}}

=== Economics ===
[[File:Bentham - Defence of usury, 1788 - 5231094.tif|thumb|''Defence of Usury'', 1788]]
Bentham's opinions about [[money|monetary economics]] were completely different from those of [[David Ricardo]]; however, they had some similarities to those of [[Henry Thornton (reformer)|Henry Thornton]]. He focused on [[monetary expansion]] as a means of helping to create [[full employment]]. He was also aware of the relevance of forced saving, [[propensity to consume]], the saving-investment relationship, and other matters that form the content of modern income and employment analysis. His monetary view was close to the fundamental concepts employed in his model of utilitarian decision making. His work is considered to be an early precursor of modern [[welfare economics]].{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Collard|first=David|title=Research on well-being: Some advice from Jeremy Bentham|journal=Philosophy of the Social Sciences}}</ref>

Bentham stated that pleasures and pains can be ranked according to their value or "dimension" such as intensity, duration, certainty of a pleasure or a pain. He was concerned with maxima and minima of pleasures and pains; and they set a precedent for the future employment of the maximisation principle in the economics of the consumer, the firm and the search for an optimum in welfare economics.{{sfn|Spiegel|1991|pp=341–343}}

Bentham advocated "Pauper Management" which involved the creation of a chain of large workhouses.<ref name="bev._">{{Cite web |title=Tracts on Poor Laws and Pauper Management |last=Bentham |first=Jeremy |work=bev.berkeley.edu |date=1843 |access-date=27 March 2019 |url= http://bev.berkeley.edu/PE%20100/On%20Pauper%20Laws%20-%20Bentham.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160804171116/http://bev.berkeley.edu/PE%20100/On%20Pauper%20Laws%20-%20Bentham.pdf |archive-date=2016-08-04 |url-status=live  }}</ref>{{sfn|Himmelfarb| 1968| pp= 74–75}}

Lawless writes that Bentham's "theoretical contributions to the political, economic, legal and psychological structures of English capitalism were enormous. Even Marx moved through a world that had been well-described by the arch-Philistine's voice. In his unique way, Bentham defined and analyzed the England of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, creating not only a comprehensive social theory but, with the help of James Mill and others, a political movement to go with it ."<ref>{{citation|last=Lawless|first=Andrew|title=THE ONTOLOGY OF DISCIPLINE: FROM BENTHAM TO MILL|page=1}}</ref>

=== Gender and sexuality ===
Bentham said that it was the placing of women in a legally inferior position that made him choose in 1759, at the age of eleven, the career of a reformist,{{sfn|Williford|1975|p=167}} though American critic [[John Neal]] claimed to have convinced him to take up women's rights issues during their association between 1825 and 1827.{{sfn|King|1966|p=49}} Bentham spoke for a complete equality between the sexes, arguing in favour of [[women's suffrage]], a woman's right to obtain a divorce, and a woman's right to hold political office.

The {{Circa|1785}} essay "Paederasty (Offences Against One's Self)"{{sfn|Bentham|2008|pp=389–406}} argued for the [[liberalisation]] of laws prohibiting homosexual sex.{{sfn|Campos Boralevi|2012| p= 40}} The essay remained unpublished during his lifetime for fear of offending public morality. Some of Bentham's writings on "sexual non-conformity" were published for the first time in 1931,{{sfn|Campos Boralevi|2012| p= 37}} but ''Paederasty'' was not published until 1978.<ref>''Journal of Homosexuality'', v.3:4 (1978), 389–405; continued in v.4:1 (1978)</ref> Bentham does not believe homosexual acts to be unnatural, describing them merely as "irregularities of the venereal appetite". The essay chastises the society of the time for making a disproportionate response to what Bentham appears to consider a largely private offence—public displays or forced acts being dealt with rightly by other laws. When the essay was published in the ''Journal of Homosexuality'' in 1978, the [[Abstract (summary)|abstract]] stated that Bentham's essay was the "first known argument for homosexual law reform in England".{{sfn|Bentham|2008|pp=389–406}}

=== Imperialism ===
Bentham's writings in the early 1790s onwards expressed an [[Anti-imperialism|opposition]] to [[imperialism]]. His 1793 pamphlet ''Emancipate Your Colonies!'' critiqued French colonialism. In the early 1820s, he argued that the liberal government in Spain should emancipate its New World colonies. In the essay ''Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace'', Bentham argued that Britain should emancipate its New World colonies and abandon its colonial ambitions. 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pitts |first=Jennifer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=szeU8olEDewC |title=A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France |date=2005 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1400826636 |pages=107–112 |language=en}}</ref>

=== Law reform ===
[[File:Jeremy Bentham. Etching by G. W. Appleton after R. M. Sully. Wellcome V0000465.jpg|thumb|1829 etching by G. W. Appleton.]]
Bentham was the first person to be an aggressive advocate for the [[codification (law)|codification]] of ''all'' of the [[common law]] into a coherent set of statutes; he was actually the person who coined the verb "to codify" to refer to the process of drafting a legal code.{{sfn|Morriss|1999|p=}} He lobbied hard for the formation of codification commissions in both England and the United States, and went so far as to write to President [[James Madison]] in 1811 to volunteer to write a complete legal code for the young country. After he learned more about American law and realised that most of it was state-based, he promptly wrote to the governors of every single state with the same offer.{{sfn|Weiss|2000|p=}}

During his lifetime, Bentham's codification efforts were completely unsuccessful. Even today, they have been completely rejected by almost every common law jurisdiction, including England.{{sfn|Weiss|2000|p=}} However, his writings on the subject laid the foundation for the moderately successful codification work of [[David Dudley Field II]] in the United States a generation later.{{sfn|Morriss|1999|p=}}

=== Privacy ===
For Bentham, transparency had moral value. For example, journalism puts power-holders under moral scrutiny. However, Bentham wanted such transparency to apply to everyone influential. This he describes by picturing the world as a gymnasium in which each "gesture, every turn of limb or feature, in those whose motions have a visible impact on the general happiness, will be noticed and marked down".{{sfn|Bentham|1834|p=101}} He considered both surveillance and transparency to be useful ways of generating understanding and improvements for people's lives.<ref name="McStay2013" />

=== Racial views ===
Bentham believed each race to be different, independent of climate or place of birth. He wrote in ''[[An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation]]'':
{{blockquote|"Another article in the catalogue of secondary circumstances, is that of race or lineage: the national race or lineage a man issues from. This circumstance, independently of that of climate, will commonly make some difference in point of radical frame of mind and body. A man of negro race, born in France or England, is a very different being, in many respects, from a man of French or English race. A man of Spanish race, born in Mexico or Peru, is at the hour of his birth a different sort of being, in many respects, from a man of the original Mexican or Peruvian race. This circumstance, as far as it is distinct from climate, rank, and education, and from the two just mentioned, operates chiefly through the medium of moral, religious, sympathetic, and antipathetic biases".|author=Bentham, Jeremy|title=An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, p. 56}}

=== Theory of Fictions ===
Bentham’s Theory of Fictions explored how language shapes thought, particularly in legal and political discourse. He distinguished between "fabulous entities", which are purely imaginary (e.g., literary or mythological figures like [[Prince Hamlet]] or a [[centaur]]), and "fictitious entities", which have no physical existence but are essential for reasoning (e.g., [[laws]], [[rights]], and [[obligations]]). Similar to [[Kant]]'s categories,{{sfn|Cutrofello|2014|p=115}} such as [[nature]], [[Convention_(norm)|custom]], or the [[social contract]],{{sfn|Murphy|2014|pp=61–62}} these fictitious entities help structure human understanding but do not exist independently.

While Bentham acknowledged the necessity of "fictitious entities" for communication, he warned that they could obscure truth and be manipulated for deception, especially in law. He viewed legal fictions — such as the notion of [[corporate personhood]] or [[sovereignty]] — as tools that could be either useful or misleading, depending on their application. His analysis influenced later thinkers in legal theory, philosophy of language, and utilitarian ethics, advocating for clarity and empirical reasoning in public affairs.

=== Utilitarianism ===
{{Utilitarianism}}

Bentham today is considered as the "Father of Utilitarianism".<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Burke |first= T. Patrick |title= Nozick, Robert (1938–2002) |editor-first=Ronald |editor-last=Hamowy |editor-link=Ronald Hamowy |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism |chapter= Bentham, Jeremy (1748–1832) |chapter-url= https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/libertarianism/n19.xml |year=2008 |publisher= [[SAGE Publications]], [[Cato Institute]] |location= Thousand Oaks, CA |doi=10.4135/9781412965811.n220 |isbn= 978-1412965804 |oclc=750831024| lccn = 2008009151 |pages=30–31}}</ref> His ambition in life was to create a "Pannomion", a complete [[utilitarianism|utilitarian]] code of law. He not only proposed many legal and social reforms, but also expounded an underlying moral principle on which they should be based. This philosophy of [[utilitarianism]] took for its "fundamental axiom" to be the notion that ''it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong''.{{sfn|Bentham|1776|p= |loc=Preface (2nd para.)}} Bentham claimed to have borrowed this concept from the writings of [[Joseph Priestley]],{{sfn|Bentham |1821 |p=24 }} although the closest that Priestley in fact came to expressing it was in the form "the good and happiness of the members, that is the majority of the members of any state, is the great standard by which {{Sic|every thing}} relating to that state must finally be determined."{{sfn|Priestley|1771|p=17}}

Bentham was a rare major figure in the history of philosophy to endorse [[psychological egoism]].<ref name="May" /> He was also a determined opponent of religion, as Crimmins observes: "Between 1809 and 1823 Jeremy Bentham carried out an exhaustive examination of religion with the declared aim of extirpating religious beliefs, even the idea of religion itself, from the minds of men."{{sfn|Crimmins|1986|p=95}}

Bentham also suggested a procedure for estimating the [[moral status]] of any action, which he called the [[Hedonism|hedonistic]] or [[felicific calculus]].

'''Principle of utility'''
{{Hedonism}}
The principle of utility, or "[[greatest happiness principle]]", forms the cornerstone of all Bentham's thought. By "happiness", he understood a predominance of "pleasure" over "pain". He wrote in ''[[An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation]]'':<ref>Bentham, Jeremy. 1780. "[http://www.koeblergerhard.de/Fontes/BenthamJeremyMoralsandLegislation1789.pdf#page=43 Of The Principle of Utility]". pp. 1–6 in ''[[An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation]]''. London: T. Payne and Sons. [https://www.utilitarianism.com/jeremy-bentham/#one eText]. p. 1.</ref>

{{blockquote|Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think.…|author=|title=|source=}}

Bentham's ''Principles of Morals and Legislation'' focuses on the principle of utility and how this view of morality ties into legislative practices.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=Bentham |first=Jeremy |title=An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation|date=2005|publisher=Elibron Classics|isbn=1421290480|location=[Chestnut Hill, Mass.?]|oclc=64578728}}</ref> His principle of utility regards ''good'' as that which produces the greatest amount of pleasure and the minimum amount of pain and ''evil'' as that which produces the most pain without the pleasure. This concept of '''pleasure and pain''' is defined by Bentham as physical as well as spiritual. Bentham writes about this principle as it manifests itself within the legislation of a society.<ref name=":1" />

In order to measure the extent of pain or pleasure that a certain decision will create, he lays down a set of criteria divided into the categories of '''intensity''', '''duration''', '''certainty''', '''proximity''', '''productiveness''', '''purity''', and '''extent'''.<ref name=":1" /> Using these measurements, he reviews the concept of punishment and when it should be used as far as whether a punishment will create more pleasure or more pain for a society.

He calls for legislators to determine whether punishment creates an even more evil offence. Instead of suppressing the evil acts, Bentham argues that certain unnecessary laws and punishments could ultimately lead to new and more dangerous vices than those being punished to begin with, and calls upon legislators to measure the pleasures and pains associated with any legislation and to form laws in order to create the greatest good for the greatest number. He argues that the concept of the individual pursuing his or her own happiness cannot be necessarily declared "right", because often these individual pursuits can lead to greater pain and less pleasure for a society as a whole. Therefore, the legislation of a society is vital to maintain the maximum pleasure and the minimum degree of pain for the greatest number of people.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

==== Hedonistic/felicific calculus ====
In his exposition of the [[felicific calculus]], Bentham proposed a classification of 12 pains and 14 pleasures, by which we might test the "'''happiness factor'''" of any action.<ref>Bentham, Jeremy. 1780. "[http://www.koeblergerhard.de/Fontes/BenthamJeremyMoralsandLegislation1789.pdf#page=68 Value of a Lot of Pleasure or Pain, How to be Measured]". pp. 26–29 in ''[[An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation]]''. London: T. Payne and Sons. [https://www.utilitarianism.com/jeremy-bentham/#four eText].</ref> For Bentham, according to P. J. Kelly, the law "provides the basic framework of social interaction by delimiting spheres of personal inviolability within which individuals can form and pursue their own conceptions of well-being".{{sfn|Kelly|1990|p=81}} It provides security, a precondition for the formation of expectations. As the hedonic calculus shows "expectation utilities" to be much higher than natural ones, it follows that Bentham does not favour the sacrifice of a few to the benefit of the many. Law professor [[Alan Dershowitz]] has quoted Bentham to argue that torture should sometimes be permitted.<ref name="Dershowitz2014" />

==== 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}}