Bentham, Jeremy(1748–1832)
Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher and reformer, was born in Houndsditch, London, on February 15, 1748. His father was a solicitor, with wealthy and important clients in the City of London. Of his siblings, only one younger brother, Samuel (1757–1831), survived into adulthood, becoming a prominent naval architect and engineer. His mother died on January 6, 1759. In 1760 his father entered him, at the age of twelve, into the University of Oxford, where he attended the lectures of William Blackstone (later published as Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765–1769). He graduated in 1764, having been obliged to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, the statement of its dogma and discipline.
Having entered Lincoln's Inn in 1763, he was admitted to the bar in 1769. He did not, as his father wished, practice law, but decided instead to devote himself to its reform. Bentham thought of himself as "the Newton of legislation" (Milne 1981, p. 169); just as Isaac Newton (1642–1727) had brought order to the physical sciences, so would he to the moral sciences. Bentham adopted the principle of utility (an action was judged to be morally right to the extent that that it promoted the greatest happiness of the greatest number) as a critical standard by which to test the value of existing practices, laws, and institutions, and to suggest reform and improvement.
This page contains 201 words.
Bentham, Jeremy (1748–1832) article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 6,437 words
(approx. 21 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Jeremy Bentham Article
