BENTHAM, JEREMY. - Philosopher and jurist, b. in London on 15 Feb. 1748, d. there on 6 June 1832. He was of a very precocious intellect, so much so that at the age of three he could read part of P. De Rapin's History of England, and begin the following year the learning of Latin. He studied at Westminster, then at the University of Oxford, where he obtained the degree of bachelor (1763) and 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 on the doctrines of Locke, Hume, Beccaria, Montesquieu, Helvétius. He published, anonymously, in 1776, his first work, A Fragment of Government, in which he violently attacked the English constitution and indicated in the utilitarian principle the foundation of ethical-juridical doctrines. In 1785, passing through Italy and Constantinople, he made a journey to Russia — to visit his brother, naval engineer to Catherine II — and there wrote the Defence of usury (1787). Returned to England, he published his principal work, on which he had been working for many years: Introduction to the principles of Moral and Legislation (1789), intended for the search for solid principles, from the point of view of utilitarianism, for a sound legislation. The work gave him wide fame in Europe and America. It is also the only one, among the major ones, written entirely by his own hand. In the rest of his works B. had as collaborators disciples and followers, first among them the Genevan E. Dumont, whom he met in London, who, in addition to the translations (Oeuvres, 3 vols., Brussels, 1829-30), edited and published in French the Traités de législation civile et pénale (3 vols. containing various works of 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); and furthermore the Théorie des peines et des récompenses (ibid. 1811); the Traité des preuves judiciaires (ibid. 1823), and other writings. There appeared posthumously: Deontology or the Science of Morality, edited by J. Bowring (Edinburgh 1834). B., for over 20 years, was also interested in philanthropic projects, and principally in the reform of penitentiaries (he thought of a type of prison in which, from a central point, every part was visible, named from the Greek "panopticon"). Although his projects had been taken into consideration by the English Parliament, they came to no result, though he had ample compensation in money for them.
The works of B., which remain a rich source of legislative ideas, studied by politicians and jurists, influenced, in the period of the Restoration, various legislations of Europe and America. In England the philosopher's ideas had wide diffusion, thanks above all to the Westminster Review, founded by him, in collaboration with James Mill, in 1823, as a radical organ in opposition to the conservative Edinburgh Review. The review attracted around itself a group of fervent collaborators, first among them all J. Stuart Mill (v.). The reform of English legislation, of procedural, civil and criminal law, was in large part due to B.
B. occupies an important place, not only in the history of legislation, but also in the history of ethical thought, for his original expression, systematization and defense of utilitarianism. Educated first in English conservatism, traditional and orthodox, B. had from the reading of Hume (A Fragment of G., I, § 36, n.) the first revelation of the utilitarian principle which became the center of his entire ethical-juridical conception. There is not, he observes, at the foundation of human conduct, when it does not let itself be influenced by prejudices, particularly of a religious order, any other motive than that of happiness. The pleasure and the pain inherent in or connected with our actions is, at bottom, the true and only motive that determines them. Even that which is called and is felt as moral "obligation" is not conceived nor explained otherwise than as the necessity of positing 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 intent of realizing "the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number of individuals." Such is the synthetic formula of the principle and of the ethical-juridical norm, already enunciated by Beccaria, by whom B. was inspired. Having thus identified the ethical good with the useful and evil with all that harms happiness, morality is conceived as a wise calculation of the most real and fruitful interest of all. In fact the interest of individuals, if well understood, accords in the end with the general interest: and the limits that this imposes on the egoism of the moment are compensated by the final result, which is a greater sum of happiness. B. then enters into a subtle description of the motives of actions, of which he constructs very extensive tables, and into a minute analysis of the various classes of pleasures, attempting to determine their respective contribution, immediate and mediate, 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, purity from admixture of pain, extension to a greater or lesser multitude of individuals. 2) With regard to the subject. Pleasure is in fact relative, so that, in the computation of pleasures, all environmental and individual variants enter as factors of decision and choice. 3) In its social aspect, since precisely private interest is intimately connected with the general one. A crime, for example, must be seen not only in what of good or evil it brings to the one who commits it, but in all the repercussions that it determines in society, of 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 centuries, B. enunciates the concrete and universal norm of action: if the sum of the useful prevails, and only then, the action is to be performed.
Bentham's ethics, equivalent, as can be seen, to a technique and an arithmetic of pleasure and of the useful, departs, by this character, from Cyrenaic hedonism — turned solely to actual and present pleasure — with which it nevertheless substantially agrees in the reduction of happiness to empirical good and enjoyment. In this is also its error and its intrinsic insufficiency. Undoubtedly B., by valorizing the principle of utility, which is also an integral part of a general system of ethics, was able to bring a valid contribution to law and to its codification (the word is B.'s). In this must be considered his positive contribution. Moreover many of his conclusions stand and hold independently of the principles of utilitarianism. But his systematic moral conception, restricted within the narrow limits of empiricism, is not able to save the ethical norm from relativism, and therefore, simply, to preserve it as such. By identifying the moral good with the useful, one ceases to recognize, alongside pure interest, whether egoistic or social, a superior universal value of good that is valid for itself and imposes itself on man as a spiritual being.
The same incomprehension B. demonstrates with regard to the Christian religion and then to religion in general, discussed on the basis of the utilitarian principle and judged more harmful than useful to humanity. His ideas on the matter were developed principally in the Analysis of Religion, published by G. Grote under the pseudonym of Ph. Beauchamp, in 1822.
The following were placed on the Index: Traités de législation civile et pénale (22 March 1819), Traité des preuves judiciaires (4 March 1828), Deontology (20 Jan. 1835).
Manzoni wrote in confutation of B. the short work Del sistema che fonda la morale sull'utilità, published as an appendix to ch. III of the Osservazioni sulla morale cattolica, in Opere varie, Milan 1855, and separately, ibid., same year.
BIBL. Works: Besides the works mentioned above and various manuscripts still unpublished, preserved mainly at University College London and the British Museum, fundamental is the posthumous Deontology or the science of morality (London-Edinburgh 1834), edited by J. Bowring, who also edited the complete edition of the works (the preceding one is not included in it): B.'s works, 11 vols., Edinburgh
1838-43: the first 9 vols. contain in part works already published previously, in part works not yet published, and in part versions from Dumont's French redactions; the last 2 vols. contain the life of B. and a systematic index; Italian trans.: Deontologia, extracts 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, ibid. 1905; W. R. Sorley, B. and the early utilitarians, ibid. 1914; G. Wallis, J. B., ibid. 1922; id., J. B. and Word-creation, Oxford 1928; M. Holdsworth, Some markers of English Law, Cambridge 1938.
Ugo Viglino