Jeremy Bentham

JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832) Jeremy Bentham, the founder of Utilitarianism, combined throughout his active life the carriers of a philosopher, a jurist and that of a social reformer and activist. Though trained to be a lawyer, he gave up the practice of law in order to examine the basis of law and to pursue legal reforms. His utilitarian philosophy based on the principle of the “greatest happiness of the greatest number” was aimed at rearing the fabric of felicity of prison, legislation and parliament and stressed the need for a new penal code for England. It was for these reasons that he has been regarded by J.S. Mill as a “progressive philosopher”, the great benefactor of mankind’ and enemy of the status quo and the greatest questioner of things established.

From the middle of the 18th century, England experienced a technological and industrial transformation whose impact was revolutionary from the view point of new social ideas and a new material environment. Socially, the industrial revolution was responsible for three complementary developments; first the growth of new and the rapid expansion of old towns and cities; second the increase in population made possible by higher living standards and improved conditions of health; third the destruction of the existing social hierarchy headed by the landed aristocracy and its gradual replacement by the manufacturers, financiers, merchants and professional men as the new dominant social class. The war with France (1793-1815)provided the conservative government in Britain with a welcome opportunity to repress democratic and radical ideas under the pretext of fighting Jacobinism. The defeat of Napoleon and the revival of the old European order at the Congress of Vienna (1815) seemed to put an end to the nightmare of revolution and democracy. As Prof. Sabine has pointed out, the rising middle classes in Britain inevitably developed a new social and political philosophy that was clearly distinct from Burke’s adulation of landed aristocracy, as well as from Paine’s radicalism and Godwin’s anarchy” . What was needed was a political faith reflecting the outlook of the middle classes, which was essentially empirical optimistic willing to innovate and eager to translate natural science into technology and industry and political science into government and administration.

The most characteristic expression of this outlook is to be found in the work of Jeremy Benthan, the founder of Philosophical Radicalism. Bentham was born in 1748, only three years after the Jocabite rebellion of 1745 that sought to regain the throne of the Stuarts. Bethan’s father and grand father were well-to-do attorneys and Bentham was to enter upon the same carrier. At the comparatively early age of three Bentham was found poring over a big folio volume of Rapin’s History of England,; he read Latin before he was four, French at six and took to Voltaire for light reading at eight. He entered Oxford at twelve, received his bachelor’s degree at fifteen and then studied the law. He was called to the bar in 1769 but he soon decided that he was more interested in reforming the law than in practicing it. A small annual income of a hundred pounds enabled him to live independently though modestly; after his father’s death in 1792 his financial situation greatly improved and he was able to live comfortably in his house in London. There he spent his life, unmarried completely devoted to his literary and political activities.

Jeremy Bentham’s political philosophy was influenced by the writings of David Hume, Priestly Claude Adrien Helvetius, Cesore Bonesana etc. Bentham’s first book Fragment on Government was directed against Blackstone, the oracle of English law. The Fragment on Government was published in 1776, the year of James Watt’s first successful steam engine, the Declaration of Independence and the publication of another milestone of social thought, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations’. In the Fragment, Bentham pragmatically describes the nature of political society in terms of the habit of obedience, and not of social contract, natural rights and other fictions. In this early work of Bentham there is more than a touch of Burke, because of the constant emphasis that government is not based on metaphysical generalities but on interest and advantage.

Bentham’s most widely known book is his Principles of Morals and Legislation (printed in 1780 and published in 1789) Bentham welcomed the French Revolution and set his reform proposals, though more were adopted. But he was made an honorary citizen of France in 1792. In 1809, a close relationship between Bentham and James Mill (1773—1836) began, with Mill being convinced of the urgency for reforms. Bentham started and financed the West minster Review in 1824 with the idea of propagating his utilitarian principles. Bentham lived till the age of 84.

QUANTITATIVE UTILITY

Utilitarianism as a school of thought dominated English political thinking form the middle of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th century. Some of the early utilitarian’s were Francis Hutcheson, Hume, Priestly, William Paley. But it was Bentham who systematically laid down its theory and made it popular on the basis of his innumerable proposals for reform. Bentham’s merit consisted of not in the doctrine but in his vigorous application of it to various practical problems. Through James Mill, Bentham developed close links with Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo getting acquainted with the ideas of the classical economists.

The basic premise of utilitarianism was that human beings as a rule sought happiness that pleasure alone is good, and that the only right action was that which produced the greatest happiness of the greatest number In the hands of Bentham, the pleasure pain theory evolved into a scientific principle to be applied to the policies of the state welfare measures and for administrative, penal and legislative reforms. He shared Machiavelli’s concern for a science of politics, not in the understanding the dynamics of political power, but in the hope of promoting and securing the happiness of individuals through legislation and policies.

Utilitarianism provided a psychological perspective on human nature, for it perceived human beings as creatures of pleasure. Bentham began the first chapter of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation thus: “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: A man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognises thus subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hand of reason and of law”.

Bentham believes that human beings by nature were hedonists. Each of their actions were motivated by a desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Every human action has a cause and a motive. The principles of utility recognised this basic psychological trait, for it “approves or disapproves every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to argument or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question………… not only of every action of a private individual but of every measure of government’;. Thus the principle of utility or the greatest happiness of the greatest number, is that quality in an act or object that produces benefit, advantage pleasure, good or happiness or prevent mischief, pain, evil or unhappiness.

For Bentham, utilitarianism was both a descriptive and normative theory, - it not only described how human beings act so as to maximise pleasure and minimise pain, but it also prescribed or advocated such action. According to the principle of utility, the cause of all human action is a desire for pleasure. But utility is meant that property in any object, where by it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure good or happiness

Bentham viewed hedonism not only as a principle of motivation, but also an a principle of action. He listed 14 simple pleasures and 12 simple pains, classifying these into self- regarding and other regarding groups, a distinction that J.S. Mill borrowed in elaboration of the concept of liberty. Only two benevolence and malevolence, were put under other regarding action. Under self-regarding motives, Bentham listed physical desire, pecuniary interest, love of power and self-preservation. Self- preservation included fear of pain, love of life and love of ease.

As Prof. C.L. Wayper has pointed out, when Bentham spoke of the good and bad consequences of an action he simple meant the happy or painful consequences of that action. He accepted the association principle of Hartley that all ideas are derived from the senses as the result of the operation of sensible objects on these, and he conceived of life as being made upon of interesting perceptions. All experience, he believed, was either pleasurable or painful or both. Pleasures were simply individual sensations. But happiness, he thought of not as a simple individual sensations. Rather it was a state of mind, a bundle of sensations.

Bentham is fully aware that personal happiness and the happiness of the greatest number are not always identical and he sees two means by which the gulf between individual selfishness and communal good can be bridged. First education can elevate men’s minds so that they will understand that rationally conceived happiness of one’s self includes good will, sympathy, and benevolence for others. The second means of bridging the gap between individual selfishness and the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the creation of an institutional environment in which main’s selfish impulses can be channelled into socially useful purposes, so that it will be contrary to his selfish - interest to harm others.

Bentham claims in his principles to have developed a genuinely scientific comprehension of the nature of pleasure. Pleasure, he agrues, may be said to be of lesser or greater value depending upon certain measurable variables such as intensity, duration, fecundity and so on. One pleasure, for example, may be more intense than another but of shorter duration . Another pleasure may be of greater duration but lack of fecundity that is the capacity to generate other subordinate pleasures.

Moreover, as Epicures had also noted, pleasures are often accompanied by pain and some pleasures are more apt to be accompanied by pain than others.

All pleasures and pains, according to Bentham are effects produced by external causes but individuals do not experience the same quantity of pleasure or pain from the same cause and this is because they differ in sensivity or sensibility. Bentham has listed around 32 factors which influence sensibility and these should be taken into account in any computation of the total amount of pleasure or pain involved in any given act. These factors are health, strength, hardness, bodily imperfections, quality and quantity of knowledge, strength of intellectual powers, firmness of mind, bent of inclination etc.

Bentham believes that every individual is the best of his happiness. The state is a group of persons organised for the promotion and maintenance of utility that is happiness or pleasure. The state could increase pleasure and diminish pain by the application of sanctions. These are the physical sanction which operates in the ordinary course of nature. The moral sanction which arises from the general feeling of society; the religious sanction, which is applied by the immediate hand of a “superior invisible being, either in the present life or in a future” ; and the political sanction which operates through government and the necessity for which is the explanation of the state. The community according to Bentham is a fictitious body and its interests are the sum total of the interests of the several members who compose it .

Bentham distinguished pleasures quantitatively rather than qualitatively when he wrote that ‘ the pleasure of pushpin is as good as poetry’. He did differentiate between pleasures, and in that sense he was not an elitist. He did not assign any inherent grading to activities and treated them at par in terms of their contribution to individual happiness. Her taught men to govern by the simple rule of the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ which in turn, could be measured by an apparatus known as felicific calculus

But it is important to recognise that Bentham’s calculus works only so long as two assumptions hold. We must assume first that the ethical is identical to the pleasurable, and second that the pleasurable can be defined in strictly quantitative terms such that any pleasure can be mathematically compared to any other. When we measure pleasure, he says we must take note of their intensity and duration. We must take note of their certainty or uncertainty since a pleasure that is more certain is greater than one which is less certain. Their propinquity or remoteness must also come into our calculations a pleasure that is closer or more easily available being greater than one which is farther away and more inaccessible. Thus Bentham’s doctrine of utility is a doctrine which is concerned with results not with motives.

Several criticisms have been levelled against Bentham’s doctrine of quantitative utility. Prof. William Ebenstein in his major work ‘Great Political Thinkers’ has criticised Bentham’s theory as “uninspiring, not imaginative enough and merely mechanical”. His theory lacked originality and was full of prejudices and speculation. He was very much confused and contradictory in his own theoretical adventures. Prof. Carlyle has branded Benthanism as the “pig philosophy” just to remind us that hedonism of the kind is not very satisfactory, the happiness is much more than pleasure.

Bentham’s theory has been criticised for its neglect of moral sense. What Bentham wanted to do was to establish a standard of right or wrong, good and evil related to calculable values. His psychological appreciation of human nature was inadequate. Many factors beside pleasure and pain, motivate individual and communal action.

Bentham distinguished pleasures and pains quantitatively rather than qualitatively. But in actual practice pleasures and pain differ qualitatively. Bentham believes that pleasures and pains could be arithmetically calculated with the help of an apparatus known as felicific calculus. However, modern researches in experimental psychology show that felicific calculus of pleasures with which Bentham supplied as turns out to have no practical significance at all. He provides no scale of values with which to measure the various factors and no way of determining the relative importance of the factors that he lists. How could we measure the fecundity or purity of a pleasure?

ASSESSMENT

Bentham was not an outstanding philosopher though paradoxically he occupies an important place in the history of political philosophy. Bentham’s main contribution to political science was not that he offered a novel principle of political philosophy but that he ‘ steadily applied an empirical and ciritical method of investigation to concrete problems of law and government.’ It was an attempt ‘to extend the experimental method of reasoning from the physical branch to the moral’. Whatever may be the criticisms levelled against Bentham’s theory of utility’, it is beyond dispute that Bentham ‘ changed the character of British institutions more than any other man in the nineteenth century’.

We cannot regard Bentham as the greatest critical thinker of his age and country. According to C.L. Wayper, it was “Benthamism which brought to an end the era of legislative stagnation and ushered in that period of increasing legislative activity which has not yet ended and under the cumulative effects of which we are living our lives today”. He supplied a new measurement for social reform- the maximising of individual happiness.

Bentham exercised a great influence upon theories of sovereignty and law. Law was not a mystic mandate of reason or nature. But simply the command of that authority to which the members of community render habitual obedience. He considered the power of the sovereign as indivisible unlimited, inalienable and permanent. As Prof. Sabine has rightly pointed out, Bentham’s greatest contribution was in the field of jurisprudence and government.

Bentham was a firm believer in gradual reform. He had no faith in the violence of a revolution. He advanced numerous ideas which have become central to the liberal creed of the 19th century. His utilitarian principles not only dominated the liberal discourse but also influenced the early socialist writings of William Thompson.