BENTHAM, JEREMY. — Philosopher and jurist, born in London on 15 Feb. 1748, died there on 6 June 1832. He was of very precocious intellect, being able to read parts of P. de Rapin’s *History of England* at the age of three and beginning the study of Latin the following year. He studied at Westminster, then at the University of Oxford, where he obtained the degree of Bachelor (1763) and Master of Arts (1766).
Directed by his father toward the legal profession, which he had no intention of pursuing, he practiced law for a short time before turning to philosophical studies, particularly influenced by the doctrines of Locke, Hume, Beccaria, Montesquieu, and Helvétius. In 1776, he published his first work anonymously, *A Fragment of Government*, in which he violently attacked the English constitution and proposed the utilitarian principle as the foundation of ethical and juridical doctrines. In 1785, he traveled to Russia—via Italy and Constantinople—to visit his brother, a naval engineer in the service of Catherine II, and there he wrote *Defence of Usury* (1787). Upon his return to England, he published his principal work, which he had been preparing for many years: *Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation* (1789), aimed at establishing solid principles, from the standpoint of utilitarianism, for sound legislation. The work brought him wide fame in Europe and America. It is also the only major work entirely written in his own hand. In his other works, B. had collaborators, disciples, and followers, the first among them being the Genevan E. Dumont, whom he met in London. Dumont, besides translating B.’s works (*Oeuvres*, 3 vols., Brussels, 1829–30), edited and published in French his *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 panopticon*; *De la promulgation des lois*, etc., Paris, 1802), as well as *Théorie des peines et des récompenses* (Paris, 1811), *Traité des preuves judiciaires* (Paris, 1823), and other writings. Posthumously appeared *Deontology or the Science of Morality*, edited by J. Bowring (Edinburgh, 1834). For over twenty years, B. also took an interest in philanthropic projects, particularly the reform of prisons (he envisaged a type of prison in which every part would be visible from a central point, a design he called the *panopticon* from the Greek). Although his projects were considered by the English Parliament, they did not come to fruition, though he received substantial financial compensation.
B.’s works, which remain a rich source of legislative ideas studied by politicians and jurists, influenced various European and American legislations during the period of restoration. In England, the philosopher’s ideas spread widely, especially through the *Westminster Review*, which he founded in collaboration with James Mill in 1823 as a radical organ in opposition to the conservative *Edinburgh Review*. The journal attracted a group of ardent contributors, foremost among them J. MELLO (v.). The reform of English legislation, as well as of civil and criminal procedure, was largely 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 formulation, systematization, and defense of utilitarianism. Initially educated in traditional and orthodox English conservatism, B. first encountered the utilitarian principle through his reading of Hume (*A Fragment of G.*, I, § 36, n.), which became the center of his entire ethical and juridical conception. There is, he observes, no foundation for human conduct, when it is not influenced by prejudice—particularly of a religious nature—other than the pursuit of happiness. Pleasure and pain inherent in or connected with our actions are, in the end, the true and sole motives that determine them. Even what is called and felt as “moral obligation” cannot be conceived or explained otherwise than as the necessity of performing or omitting an action because it serves and is indispensable to the good of the individual and society. Its principal sanction is likewise found 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 freed from the theoretical norms of the so-called natural law and guided solely by the aim of achieving “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” Such is the synthetic formula of the ethical and juridical principle and norm, already enunciated by Beccaria, whom B. follows. By identifying 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. Indeed, the interest of individuals, if properly understood, ultimately accords with the general interest, and the limits that the latter imposes on momentary egoism are compensated by the final result, which is a greater sum of happiness.
B. then delves into a subtle description of the motives of actions, for which he constructs extensive tables, and into a minute analysis of the various classes of pleasures, attempting to determine their respective contributions, immediate and mediate, to the final sum of happiness.
In general, pleasure must be considered: 1) With regard to the object, in its intensity, duration, certainty, accessibility, fecundity, purity from admixture of pain, and extension to a greater or lesser multitude of individuals. 2) With regard to the subject. Pleasure is indeed relative, so that in the calculation of pleasures, all environmental and individual variables enter as factors of decision and choice. 3) In its social aspect, since private interest is intimately connected with the general interest. A crime, for example, must be viewed not only in terms of the good or harm it brings to the perpetrator but in all the repercussions it causes in society—damage, uncertainty, fear, etc. In relation to this calculation of the quantitative value of pleasures, which, for most human actions, has already been made by the experience of the ages, B. enunciates the concrete and universal norm of action: an action is to be performed if and only if the sum of its utility prevails.
Benthamite ethics, equivalent as it is to a technique and an arithmetic of pleasure and utility, diverges from Cyrenaic hedonism—directed solely to present and immediate pleasure—with which it substantially agrees in reducing happiness to empirical good and enjoyment. In this lies both its error and its intrinsic insufficiency. Undoubtedly, by emphasizing the principle of utility, which is also an integral part of a general ethical system, B. made a valid contribution to law and its codification (the word is B.’s own). This is where his positive contribution must be recognized. Moreover, many of his conclusions stand independently of the principles of utilitarianism. But his systematic moral conception, confined within the narrow limits of empiricism, is unable to preserve the ethical norm from relativism and thus, simply, to maintain it as such. By identifying moral good with utility, one ceases to recognize, alongside mere interest—whether egoistic or social—a superior universal value of good that exists in itself and imposes itself on man as a spiritual being.
The same misunderstanding is evident in B.’s treatment of Christianity and then of religion in general, which he discusses on the basis of the utilitarian principle and judges more harmful than useful to humanity. His ideas on this subject were developed mainly 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: *Traité de législation civile et pénale* (22 March 1819), *Traité des preuves judiciaires* (4 March 1828), *Deontology* (20 January 1835).
Manzoni wrote a refutation of B. in the short work *Del sistema che fonda la morale sull'utilità*, published as an appendix to ch. III of *Osservazioni sulla morale cattolica*, in *Opere varie*, Milan 1855, and separately there; see also