Jeremy Bentham is most well known as the founder of utilitarianism, a theory of morality that determines the rightness of acts by the consequences of those acts. Bentham's work in the areas of legal philosophy, penal reform and criminology sought to apply his philosophical principles to the English legal system and other social institutions. Bentham sought to codify the English common law and developed the Panopticon, a system for prison reform.
Jeremy Bentham was born on February 15, 1748, to Alicia Grove Whitehorne and Jeremiah Bentham, a London attorney. He began studying Latin at the age of three and attending Westminster School at seven. At twelve, he entered Queen's College, Oxford, and was awarded a bachelor's degree in 1764. He began to prepare for a career as a barrister by entering Lincoln's Inn and attending the Court of King's Bench beginning in 1763, was awarded a master's degree at Oxford in 1767, and was admitted to the bar in 1769. However, Bentham was more interested in the theoretical form of the legal system, and he never actually practiced law. His father died in 1792, leaving Bentham the family estate and rendering him an independently wealthy gentleman. With his wealth, Bentham centered himself in English intellectual life. A prominent author, he continued to produce works on social causes throughout his life and co-founded The Westminster Review with James Mill in 1824. Upon his death in 1832, Bentham willed his body to University College London, and instructed that his preserved skeleton be made into an effigy of himself, stuffed and dressed in his own clothes, and displayed.
Bentham, whose thought was influenced by French philosopher Claude-Adrien Helvétius, conceived of the principle of utilitarianism in order to define morality. Utilitarianism described utility as the ability to produce the greatest happiness for society in general and the principle was introduced in Bentham's work A Fragment on Government . Originally called the "principle of utility" and later renamed the "greatest happiness principle," this principle was carried on through the nineteenth century by Bentham's followers, the Philosophical Radicals. Bentham and his followers defined happiness in terms of good and pleasure and purported that pleasure could be measured through the "felicific calculus." In what could be seen as an early form of cost-benefit analysis, Bentham proposed that individuals cared only about their own greatest good, but that an individual should do what brought the greatest good for the greatest number. Immoral or unethical acts were those that were incompatible with the greatest happiness of society. Bentham sought to apply this principle to many of England's social systems of the day, including the government, legal, and education systems.
Also using the pseudonym Gamaliel Smith, Bentham wrote widely on the social issues of the day. Among his most well known works are the Defence of Usury, which considers taxation and the Panopticon. This series of works details a system of organization for prisons that provided for the maximum surveillance of inmates. Bentham's brother, Samuel, provided the initial architectural design for the building, and this sparked the ideas of prison reform, which were to possess Bentham for more than twenty years. While he was recognized as a great critical thinker by his contemporaries, including John Stuart Mill and William Hazlitt, Bentham was often criticized as one whose ideas were difficult to follow. What is more, his ideas on morality and social reform have been hotly debated since the early 1900s, with critics claiming that Bentham's methods were cold and mechanistic and did not respect the individual's natural need for privacy. Though controversial, Bentham is recognized as having made significant contributions to many areas of social reform, including public health, universal suffrage, the electoral process, and public safety.
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