BENTHAM, JEREMY. — Philosopher and jurist, born in London on 15 February 1748, died there on 6 June 1832. He was of exceptionally precocious intellect, to the point that at the age of three he was able to read part of P. De Rapin’s History of England, and the following year began learning Latin. He studied at Westminster, then at the University of Oxford, where he obtained the degree of bachelor (1763) and that of «master of arts» (1766).
Directed by his father toward the legal profession, to which he did not intend to devote himself, he practiced it for a short time and then turned to philosophical studies, forming himself particularly in the doctrines of Locke, Hume, Beccaria, Montesquieu, and Helvétius. In 1776 he published anonymously his first work, A Fragment of Government, in which he violently attacked the English constitution and identified the utilitarian principle as the foundation of ethical and juridical doctrines. In 1785, passing through Italy and Constantinople, he made a journey to Russia — to visit his brother, a naval engineer in the service of Catherine II — and there wrote Defence of usury (1787). On returning to England he published his principal work, on which he had been engaged for many years: Introduction to the principles of Moral and Legislation (1789), intended to seek, from the standpoint of utilitarianism, sound principles for a healthy system of legislation. The work brought him widespread fame in Europe and America. It is also the only one among his major works written entirely in his own hand. In the rest of his works B. had disciples and followers as collaborators, foremost among them the Genevan E. Dumont, whom he met in London. In addition to the translations (Oeuvres, 3 vols., Brussels, 1829–30), Dumont edited and published in French the Traités de législation civile et pénale (3 vols. containing various works by B.: Principes généraux de législation; Principes du code civil; Principes du code pénal; Mémoire sur le panoptique; De la promulgation des lois, etc., Paris 1802); as well as the Théorie des peines et des récompenses (ibid. 1811); the Traité des preuves judiciaires (ibid. 1823), and other writings. Published posthumously was Deontology or the Science of Morality, edited by J. Bowring (Edinburgh 1834). For more than twenty years B. was also concerned with philanthropic projects, principally the reform of prisons (he envisioned a type of prison in which every part would be visible from a central point, called «panopticon» from the Greek). Although his projects were taken into consideration by the English Parliament, they led to no result, despite the substantial monetary compensation he received for them.
B.’s works, which remain a rich source of legislative ideas and were studied by politicians and jurists, influenced various European and American legal systems during the Restoration period. In England the philosopher’s ideas achieved wide dissemination, thanks above all to the Westminster Review, which he founded in collaboration with James Mill in 1823 as a radical organ opposing the conservative Edinburgh Review. The journal gathered around itself a group of fervent contributors, foremost among them J. MELLO (v.). The reform of English legislation and of procedural, civil, and criminal law was due in large part to B.
B. occupies an important place not only in the history of legislation but also in the history of ethical thought, on account of his original expression, systematization, and defense of utilitarianism. Initially educated in traditional and orthodox English conservatism, B. received from reading Hume (A Fragment of G., I, § 36, n.) the first revelation of the utilitarian principle, which became the center of his entire ethical and juridical conception. There is not, he observes, at the foundation of human conduct, when it is not influenced by prejudices, particularly those of a religious nature, any motive other than happiness. The pleasure and pain inherent in or connected with our actions are, ultimately, the true and sole motives that determine them. Even what is called and felt as a moral «obligation» can be conceived and explained only as the necessity of performing or omitting an action because this serves, or is indispensable to, the good of the individual and of society. It likewise finds its principal sanction in the harmful consequences that an action contrary to utility naturally entails. The utilitarian principle thus becomes at once the basis of morality and of law, and consequently of legislation, which must be withdrawn from the theoretical norms of so-called natural law and guided solely by the intention of realizing «the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number of individuals». This is the concise formula of the ethical and juridical principle and norm, already enunciated by Beccaria, from whom B. drew inspiration. Having thus identified ethical good with utility and evil with everything that harms happiness, morality is conceived as a wise calculation of the most real and fruitful interest of all. Indeed, the interests of individuals, if properly understood, ultimately accord with the general interest: and the limits that the latter imposes on immediate egoism are compensated by the final result, which is a greater sum of happiness. B. then proceeds to a subtle description of the motives of actions, constructing extremely extensive tables of them, and to a meticulous analysis of the various classes of pleasures, attempting to determine their respective immediate and mediated contributions to the final sum of happiness.
In general, pleasure must be considered: 1) On the part of the object, in its intensity, duration, certainty, accessibility, fecundity, freedom from admixture with pain, and extension to a greater or lesser multitude of individuals. 2) With regard to the subject. Pleasure is in fact relative, and therefore, in the calculation of pleasures, all environmental and individual variations enter as factors in decision and choice. 3) In its social aspect, since private interest is precisely intimately connected with the general interest. A crime, for example, must be viewed not only in terms of the good or evil it brings to the person who commits it, but in all the repercussions it produces in society—harm, uncertainty, fear, etc. In relation to this calculation of the quantitative value of pleasures, which, for the majority of human actions, has already been made by the experience of the centuries, B. states the concrete and universal norm of action: if the sum of utility prevails, and only then, the action is to be performed.
Bentham’s ethics, equivalent, as may be seen, to a technique and an arithmetic of pleasure and utility, differs in this respect from Cyrenaic hedonism — directed solely toward actual and present pleasure — with which it nevertheless substantially agrees in reducing happiness to empirical good and enjoyment. Herein also lie its error and its intrinsic insufficiency. Undoubtedly B., by giving value to the principle of utility, which is likewise an integral part of a general system of ethics, succeeded in making a valid contribution to law and its codification (the word is B.’s). His positive contribution must be considered in this regard. Moreover, many of his conclusions stand and remain valid independently of the principles of utilitarianism. But his systematic moral conception, restricted within the narrow limits of empiricism, is unable to save the ethical norm from relativism and therefore, quite simply, to preserve it as such. By identifying moral good with utility, one ceases to recognize, alongside pure interest, whether egoistic or social, a universal higher value of good that is valuable in itself and imposes itself upon man insofar as he is a spiritual being.
B. displays the same lack of understanding toward the Christian religion and then toward religion in general, which he discussed on the basis of the utilitarian principle and judged more harmful than beneficial to humanity. His ideas on this subject were developed chiefly in the Analysis of Religion, published by G. Grote under the pseudonym Ph. Beauchamp in 1822.
The following works by B. were placed on the Index: Traités de législation civile et pénale (22 March 1819), Traité des preuves judiciaires (4 March 1828), Deontology (20 January 1835).
Manzoni wrote, in refutation of B., the brief work Del sistema che fonda la morale sull'utilità, published as an appendix to chap. III of the Osservazioni sulla morale cattolica, in Opere varie, Milan 1855, and separately, there, in the same year.
BIBL. Works: In addition to the works cited above and various manuscripts still unpublished, preserved chiefly at University College London and the British Museum, the Deontology or the science of morality, published posthumously (London-Edinburgh 1834) under the editorship of J. Bowring, is fundamental. He also edited the complete edition of the works (the preceding work is not included): B.'s works, 11 vols., Edinburgh
1838-43: the first 9 vols. contain in part works previously published, in part works not yet published, and in part versions from Dumont's French redactions; the final 2 vols. contain B.'s life and a systematic index; Italian trans.: Deontologia, excerpts edited by A. Coiazzi, Turin n. d. — Studies: L. Stephen, The English Utilitarians, I, London 1900 (with an accurate critical note on B.'s writings [pp. 310-26]); an important work from the historical and critical point of view; C. M. Atkinson, B.: his life and his work, there 1905; W. R. Sorley, B. and the early utilitarians, there 1914; G. Wallis, J. B., there 1922; id., J. B. and Word-creation, Oxford 1928; M. Holdsworth, Some markers of English Law, Cambridge 1938. Ugo Viglino