Jeremy Bentham was undoubtedly one of the most important and influential figures in the development of modern social science. His numerous writings are major contributions to the development of philosophy, law, government, economics, social administration and public policy, and many have become classic texts in these fields. To these subjects he brought an analytical precision and careful attention to detail which, especially in matters of legal organization and jurisprudence, had not been attempted since Aristotle, and he transformed in method and substance the way these subjects were conceived. He combined a critical rationalism and empiricism with a vision of reform and, latterly, radical reform, which gave unity and direction to what became Philosophic Radicalism. Although he was not the first philosopher to use the greatest happiness principle as the standard of right and wrong, he is rightly remembered as the founder of modern utilitarianism. Many of Bentham’s writings were never published in his lifetime or were completed by various editors. The new edition of the Collected Works (1968-in progress) will replace in approximately sixty-five volumes the inadequate Works of Jeremy Bentham (1838–43), edited by John Bowring, and will reveal for the first time the full extent and scope of Bentham’s work.
Bentham is best known for some of his earliest writings. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (printed in 1780 and published in 1789) and Of Laws in General (not published until 1945) are important texts in legal philosophy and, together with his critique of William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England in the Comment on the Commentaries (published first in 1928) and A Fragment on Government (1776), represent major landmarks in the development of jurisprudence. The Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation was also intended to serve as an introduction to a penal code, which was an important part of a lifelong ambition, never fully realized, of constructing a complete code of laws (latterly called the Pannomion). At this time Bentham also turned to economic questions which were to occupy him in various forms throughout his life. His first publication was the Defence of Usury (1787), a critique of Adam Smith’s treatment of this subject in The Wealth of Nations.
From the outset of his career, Bentham was devoted to reform and especially to the reform of legal institutions. His attitude towards fundamental political reform developed more slowly. Although at the time of the French Revolution he was not part of the radical movement in England, he wrote numerous manuscripts in support of democratic institutions in France. He eventually reacted strongly against the excesses of the revolution, but earlier contacts, largely developed through Lord Lansdowne, and the publication of his Draught of a New Plan for the Organisation of the Judicial Establishment of France, led to his being made an honorary citizen of France. One important development of this period was his friendship with Etienne Dumont, the Swiss reformer and scholar, whose French versions of Bentham’s works, especially the Traités de législation, civile et pénale (1802), were read throughout Europe and Latin America and earned for Bentham a considerable international reputation. Following the French Revolution much of Bentham’s practical energies were devoted, in conjunction with his brother Samuel, to establishing model prisons, called Panopticons, in various countries.
His main effort in England failed, and this failure, though ultimately compensated by the government, was one factor leading him to take up the cause of radical political reform. The influence of James Mill was perhaps the most important factor (there were many) in his ‘conversion’ to radicalism in 1809–10, and the publication of A Plan of Parliamentary Reform in 1817 launched the Philosophic Radicals in their quest for parliamentary reform. In the 1820s, though now in his seventies, Bentham resumed the task of codification and the construction of the Pannomion in response to requests from governments and disciples in Spain, Portugal, Greece and Latin America. In his massive, unfinished Constitutional Code (1822–), he set forth a theory of representative democracy which was a grand synthesis of many of his ideas and a classic of liberal political thought.
Frederick Rosen
University of London
Further reading
Dinwiddy, J. (1989) Bentham, Oxford.
Halévy, E. (1901–4) La Formation du radicalisme philosophique, 3 vols, Paris.
Hart, H.L.A. (1982) Essays on Bentham: Jurisprudence and Political Theory, Oxford.
Kelly, P. (1990) Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law, Oxford.
Rosen, F. (1983) Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, Oxford.
——(1992) Bentham, Byron find Greece: Constitutionalism, Nationalism and Early Liberal Political Thought, Oxford.
Semple, J. (1993) Bentham’s Prison: A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary, Oxford.
