JEREMY BENTHAM

Utilitarianism is essentially a British school of political theory. It consisted of a group of writers, politicians, officers and social reformers. The mainly well-known members of the group are Jeremy Bentham, James Mill and John Stuart Mill. Their primary theoretical interest lay in conceiving a framework of political rules leading to a science of politics. In practice they emphasized on the utmost necessity of legal and social reform and evolving efficient political institutions. Their impact in common and that of Bentham's own efforts at substantial reforms in scrupulous drew substantial popular support. John Stuart Mill's tribute to Bentham as the father of British innovation and as a great critical thinker was justified.

Bentham not only wanted to reform the social and legal institutions of his day, but was also a strong supporter of democratic reform—of universal suffrage, shorter annual Parliaments and the secret ballot. He was the founder of a group described the Philosophical Radicals, who, influenced through the French revolution, and rejecting Burke's condemnation of it, advocated that social institutions should be judged through the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Any social practice, which did not advance this happiness should be reformed.

LIFE AND TIMES

Bentham was born in 1748 in England in the family of a wealthy and successful attorney. After an Oxford education at Queen's College (1760-63), Bentham began attending the London law courts in 1763. In those days, the only method for would-be lawyers to learn in relation to the law was through attending court proceedings; it was Bentham's luck that from some years ago, the University of Oxford had begun organizing a series of lectures on law through William Blackstone. Bentham attended these lectures in 1763, and when Blackstone published his lectures as the well-known Commentaries in 1765, Bentham caused quite a stir through writing an very critical commentary on a few paragraphs of this work. Once he began, Bentham never seemed to stop writing, although mainly of his writings were fragmentary. It was his friend, Etienne Dumont, a Genevan, who organized his early writings into a book form, and published them in translation in French as A Theory o f Legislation in 1802. This work became accessible to Bentham's countrymen only when it had been translated back in to English in the 1820s. In the middle of the writings of Bentham published originally in English are A Fragment on Government (1776), Introduction to the Principles o f Morals and Legislation (i789) and the Constitutional Code (1830). The Code was supposed to be his magnum opus, and he had planned it as a three volume work, but he was able to publish only the first volume in his lifetime.

Bentham was not so much a practicing lawyer as a legal reformer. Mainly of his work was written with the purpose of bringing in relation to the legal and political reform in Britain. He even went to Russia as an adviser to Catherine the Great in 1785 and spent three years there. Back house, in the 1790s, he entered into a contract with the British government to undertake prison reform—to design and build a structure described the Panoptic on—an ideal prison. Very disappointed when this project fell through, lie turned to the reform of political institutions. In 1809 he first met James Mill, who was to become his lifelong associate and jointly they set up, in 1824, the Westminster Review, a journal devoted to the philosophy of Utilitarianism. Bentham died in 1832 while the thrash about for parliamentary reforms was on in England.

Utilitarian Principles

Bentham began the first chapter of An  Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation therefore : "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 recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the base of that system, the substance of which is to rear the fabric of felicity through the hands of cause and of law."

For Bentham, utilitarianism was both a descriptive and normative theory—it not only described how human beings act so as to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, but it also prescribed or advocated such action. Just as to the principle of utility (or the greatest happiness principle, or the felicity principle) the cause of all human action, that which motivates human beings to act, is a desire for pleasure. Utility <or happiness is defined in conditions of pleasure: a thing/action is useful if it brings in relation to the happiness:, that is, pleasure: "Through utility is meant that property in any substance, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness." A person's interest also has the similar content—That of pleasure—"something is in the interest of a person when it tends to add to the sum total of his pleasures or diminish the sum total of his pains."

In The Principles, Bentham listed fourteen types of easy pleasures that move human beings— including the pleasures of sense, wealth, ability, power, benevolence and malevolence. Diminishing pain also means more pleasure— there are twelve types of pain which individuals seek to avoid—for instance, the pains of the senses, or of an ill name.

Not only do individuals behave in this manner, but they use the evaluative conditions of good and bad to name those behaviors which bring them pleasure or pain. Now this is a location as old as Hobbes. What is new with Bentham and his claim of utilitarianism being a moral theory is the advocacy of such action. What brings in relation to the pleasure is morally good, that which leads to pain is evil and should be avoided, (emphasis added) Human welfare can only be furthered if individuals maximize pleasure and minimize pain. As early as 1776, in the Preface to the Fragment, Bentham had written: "It is die greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong."

What is so moral in relation to the an individual seeking his pleasure? Bentham's answer to the charge of utilitarianism being, instead of a theory of morality, a theory actually of selfish psychological hedonism is that utilitarianism does not propose that one seek only one's own pleasure. In deciding whether to act in a scrupulous manner, one has to be impartial flanked by one's own pleasure and that of all those affected through that act. "...if all happiness is either the happiness of the agent himself or the happiness of others", then we can clearly illustrate that utilitarianism is concerned with the happiness of others. Let us take the instance of punishment—-if punishment is to have some utility, and to have utility is to generate happiness, then punishment is obviously not going to create the person who is being punished happy. It will instead create others happy through creation it less probable that the crime is committed again. It is true that for Bentham the society is a 'fictitious' entity—nothing more than individual members constituting it. "The interest of the society then is...the sum of the interests of the many members who compose it." It remnants true, though, that the interests (happiness) of others are to count as much as the interest of oneself.

The context of one's action determines the circle of individuals affected through it. For government officials, all the members of their state are affected through their action, so the government has to calculate the balance of pleasure and pain on a country wide,' level. A private individual has to consider only the pleasures and pains of those few directly affected through his action. Therefore the government is concerned in relation to the happiness or welfare of all its citizens, and the individual is to think of the happiness of other persons separately from himself—that is then, what creates utilitarianism a moral theory.

Bentham recognized four common motives for human action. The purely social motive of benevolence moves only a few individuals. Such benevolent individuals pursue the happiness of others even at the cost of their own happiness, An individual acting out of the semi-social motive of love of reputation or praise, pursues others' happiness only when it promotes his own as well. The majority of humankind act out of the asocial motive of self interest, when one's own happiness is pursued, taking care not to cause others pain but not pursuing their happiness either. Finally, there are some individuals moved through dissocial motives, who actually experience pleasure through harming others.

Bentham also provided a calculus for determining the balance flanked by pleasure and pain from any action. Just as to this felicific calculus, one necessity provide a numerical value to the intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, and propinquity or remoteness, of the pleasures and pains of the persons affected through one's actions, and one necessity undertake the action only if the value of the pleasure is higher than the value of the pain. One should also factor in the fecundity of the pleasure producing act, as well as the purity and extent of the pleasure being produced. In calculating pleasure and pain, one necessity be careful to abstract both from the substance which is the source of the pleasure/pain, as well as from the person whose pleasure/pain is being calculated. This means that the pleasures every one is to count as one, and the pleasure from a worthwhile action like writing a history of Egypt is not through definition of higher value than that from gambling with a deck of cards.

Human beings seek happiness, their own and that of others. They ought to seek happiness, their own and of others. To seek, though, is one thing; the: question is, how they can attain what they seek. What is required, in common, for human beings to reach the happiness they are searching for? Human happiness, for Bentham, depended on the services men rendered to each other. Government can ensure these services through creating a system of rights and obligations. Political society exists because government is necessary to compel individuals to render services to each other to augment their happiness—this then is how Bentham made the transition from his utilitarianism to his political philosophy.

BENTHAM'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

"Government cannot be exercised without coercion; nor coercion without producing unhappiness," Bentham said. Now, unhappiness is to be avoided, so the only justification for government is that without it more unhappiness would be produced in society. The raison d ' etre of government is to attach sanctions to sure unhappiness producing actions so that individual citizens will not be motivated to perform them. Or, the coercion which is, through definition, part of the nature of government, is essential to make a system of rights and obligations to further the welfare of society.

Did Bentham visualize or construct a pre-political state for mankind? Bentham did contrast political society with natural society, defining political society as follows: "When a number of persons (whom we may approach subjects) are supposed to be in the habit of paying obedience to a person, or an assemblage of persons, of a recognized and sure account (whom we may call governor or governors) such persons altogether (subjects and governors) are said to be in a state of political SOCIETY." "When a number of persons are supposed to be in the habit of conversing with each other, at the similar time that they are not in any such habit, they are said to be in a state of natural SOCIETY," was what Bentham had to say in relation to the state of nature. The state of nature is not an asocial or anti-social state. It is an ongoing society, with men in conversation, that is, in interaction with each other. For Bentham there was no pure state or nature or political society, but there was a continuum flanked by the two: "Governments accordingly, in proportion as the habit of obedience is more perfect, recede from, in proportion as it is less perfect, approach to a state of nature..."

The common end of government is the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In specific conditions, the ends of government are "survival, abundance, security, and equality; each maximized, in so distant as it is compatible with the maximization of the rest." Bentham defined survival as the absence of everything leading to positive physical suffering. He advised the government to encourage industrialization to generate employment so that each individual could seem after his own survival, But if an individual was unable to do so, the government was to set up a general finance from contributions from the rich, for the well being of the poor.

If survival keeps the citizens from being unhappy, abundance is necessary to maximize their happiness. Through ensuring prosperity, that is, surplus wealth in the hands of individuals after their vital needs are met, the government encourages the citizens to fulfill all their desires. Bentham thought that affluence could best be increased through guaranteeing to each man the due reward of his work and security of his possessions. The state should also encourage the invention of new apparatus and gadgets, and offer rewards, for socially useful inventions; it should develop technological manpower, and encourage thrift and hard work. "Above all it should fight those characteristics of religious thought that encourage men to despise comforts and luxuries."

For Bentham, security had many components—the security of person, of property, of power, of reputation, and of condition of life. Through the latter, Bentham meant something like social status. Every citizen's security, in each of these characteristics, was to be provided for through the government; security of property, for instance, is provided through seeing to it that valid contracts are kept through everyone.

Bentham was concerned in relation to the four types of inequality— moral, intellectual, economic and political. He did not propose any events to reduce moral and intellectual inequalities, but inequalities of wealth and power were to be mitigated. Differences flanked by the rich and the poor were to be evened out—"the more remote from equality are the shares possessed through the individuals in question, in the mass of the instruments of felicity, the less is the sum of felicity, produced through the sum of those similar shares" but not at the cost of the security of property. Inequalities of power could be "minimized through reducing the amount of power attached to public offices to the barest minimum, through declaring every sane adult eligible for them, and through creation their incumbents accountable to those subject to their power."

The last service to be provided through the government was that of encouraging benevolence in the citizen body so that every member of the body politic voluntarily, and with enjoyment performed the 'countless small services' of which the fabric of the felicity of society was built. The government could, for instance, "fight the religious and sectarian prejudices which limit men's sympathies and incline them to treat outsiders as less than fully human."

So distant, we looked at how the government fulfils its goals in specific methods. What is more significant, is Bentham's theory of how the government reaches its goals in common. Bentham whispered man to be a creature so dependent on others for his well being that human life would be miserable and even impossible if men did not render several kinds of services to one another...society is ultimately only a system of services men render one another. Government creates sure of these services through creating a system of obligations and rights. It does this through putting in lay a system of offences with their corresponding punishments: it is a punishable offence, for instance, not to pay one's taxes; it is a punishable offence to steal someone else's money. These punishable offences ground the services men render each other—the positive service, or obligation, of contributing to the finance of general possessions, or the negative service, or obligation of not interfering with someone's right to property. These services, or obligations, in turn, then ground everybody's rights—my right to property, or my right to survival. Each right only exists because of a corresponding obligation, and the government is to be extremely careful in specifying these obligations. "My rights may or may not be a source of pleasure to me, but the corresponding obligations they impose on others are sure sources of pain to them. The government so should never make rights, 'instruments of felicity' though they are, unless it can be absolutely sure that their probable advantages would more than compensate for their sure disadvantages."

In a political society the sovereign can get the citizens to act as he wants through two methods, through influencing their will, which Bentham calls impetration, and through the threat of corporeal punishment, which Bentham calls contestation. Although the former power is based on the latter, creation the latter the foundation of the sovereign's sovereignty, Bentham points out that a political society based on impetration is stabler and longer lasting than a society based on contestation.

How is one to ensure that the government will make that system of rights and obligations, which will best fulfill the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Bentham's utilitarianism led him to consider that the government that would best serve the people's interests would be the democratic form of government. Only in such a government could a harmony flanked by the interests of the governed and those in government be engineered. In a democracy, what would maximize the happiness of the rulers is to be returned to office, and they know that the best chance of this happening is if they maximize the happiness, or in other languages, seem after the welfare and interests of the ruled. They know that if they go against the interests of the ruled, they will be voted out of office. From this argument, Bentham logically derived the following: the right of every adult to vote, frequent national elections, as frequent as one every year, transparency of government business which meant a free press, unlimited access to government offices, and the right to attend legislative sessions. '"Once annual election, universal franchise, and fullest publicity are recognized, no government, Bentham thinks, would eves 'dream' of pursuing its interest at the cost of that of the society."

THE PANOPTICON

The Panopticon is the name that Bentham gave to a model prison that lie intended for the British government in the 1790s. A piece of land was bought through the government, on which Bentham was to supervise the construction of the new prison. Though, much to Bentham's disappointment, approximately the year 1802, the project fell through.

The design of the Panopticon was to serve as a model for any disciplinary institution — not presently a jail home, but any school, hospital, factory and military barracks could have the similar structure as well. The thought of the Panopticon has become significant again today with Foucault crediting Bentham with creating a new technology of power. The Panopticon symbolizes "one central moment in the history of repression — the transition from the inflicting of penalties to the imposition of surveillance." This is how Foucault describes the architecture of the prison structure: "A perimeter structure in the form of a ring. At the centre of this, a tower pierced through big windows opening on to the inner face of the ring. The outer structure is divided into cells each of which traverses the whole thickness of the structure. These cells have two windows, one opening on to the inside, facing the windows of the central tower, the other, outer one allowing daylight to pass through the whole cell. All that is then needed is to put an overseer in the tower and lay in each of the cells a lunatic, a patient, a convict, a worker or a school boy. The back lighting enables one to pick out from the central tower the little captive silhouettes in the ring of cells. In short, the principle of the dungeon is reversed; daylight and the overseer's gaze capture the inmate more effectively." The prisoners, who have no get in touch with each other, feel as if they are under the constant watch of the guards. "There is no require for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Presently a gaze. An inspecting gaze whom each individual under its weight will end through interiorizing to the point that lie is his own overseer, each individual therefore exercising this surveillance in excess of, and against, himself."

To have overthrown the feudal or monarchical form of power and replaced it with a new model of contemporary shapes of power, is to have brought in relation to the a revolution in political theory, even if one is infamous for doing so. Critics of liberalism Have often claimed that the connection flanked by the government and the citizens, for liberal theorists, approximately mirrors the Panopticon. Liberalism devalues horizontal links flanked by citizens—what unites a citizen body is each individual's separate political obligation to obey the government. Although liberalism claims to ground the government in the consent of the governed, this consent is, just as to critics, (as the Panopticon model shows) only a mythical or manufactured consent.

Fellow liberals, who are from the rights based custom of liberalism, have also criticized some of the vital tenets of utilitarianism. Kymlicka, for instance, has pointed out that Bentham was wrong in thinking that human beings only seem for, or should only seem for, pleasure. If an individual could hook himself to a machine which constantly generated sensations of pleasure, without having to do anything else, that would not satisfy that person. Human beings seek to undertake sure behaviors for the sake of those behaviors, not only for the pleasurable sensations they get from doing them.

Bentham like all the other significant political thinkers was a child of his times. It is true that the essential foundation of his utilitarian ethics was self-interest, egoism and individualism. Though the society for him was a fictitious body, yet one significant purpose of legislation was to enhance the pleasure of others, presently not of one self which means convergence of private with public interest. Bentham was opposed to any type of oppression and brutality and he understood that the mainly significant is to begin with reform of the legal system to create it efficient, clear, transparent and easy. His humanism is writ big in all his works and the first major reform that brought in democracy in Britain was the Reform Act of 1832 which was made possible mainly due to his untiring efforts.