Thinker · TH-0240
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher and legal reformer, based in London, who founded modern utilitarianism. In An Introduction to the Principles of Morals…
On the Coordinates: 3.2 Normative Ethics · 3.2.1 Consequence-Based Approaches · 3.3.6 Animal Ethics +2 more
Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher and legal reformer, based in London, who founded modern utilitarianism. In An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation he held that actions and laws should be judged by their tendency to promote happiness and reduce pain. Because he grounded moral standing in the capacity for pleasure and pain, he argued in a famous note that the relevant question about animals is not whether they can reason or talk but whether they can suffer.
Key ideas
- The principle of utility: the right action or law is the one that produces the greatest happiness.
- Pleasures and pains can be measured by intensity, duration, certainty and similar dimensions (the 'felicific calculus').
- The capacity to suffer, not reason or speech, is what gives a being a claim to moral consideration.
- Law should be codified and reformed by utility; he dismissed natural rights as 'nonsense upon stilts'.
Major works
- A Fragment on Government (1776)
- An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (printed 1780, published 1789)
- Panopticon; or, The Inspection-House (1791)
In the conversation
- Debate The argument from marginal cases has never been properly answered
- Debate Mozi was a consequentialist two thousand years before Bentham, and lost the argument the same way
- Discussion Four ventilators, seven patients: is triage consequentialism with a human face, or something else?
- Debate Bentham was right that natural rights are nonsense, but wrong about why
In the Journal
- Journal Ethical theories explained: a beginner’s guide to how philosophers judge right and wrong
- Journal Should you care for everyone equally? Mozi and the first great argument about impartiality
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where Jeremy Bentham takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 3.2 Normative Ethics What should I look at to tell whether an act is right?
- 3.2.1 Consequence-Based Approaches If an act produces the best outcome, can it be wrong?
- 3.3.6 Animal Ethics What is it about humans that makes us count?
- 6.2 Philosophy of Law Is an unjust law still a law?
- 6.4.2 Rights and Liberty Are you free when nobody stops you, or when you could actually do it?