Jeremy Bentham Biography

Dromo's Den

BENTHAM, Jeremy (1748-1832). An English jurist and philosopher. He was the son of a wealthy solicitor in London; received his early education at Westminster School; and when yet a boy, being little more than 12 years of age, went to Queen's College, Oxford, where he took his bachelor's degree in 1763 and his master's degree in 1766. Before entering it, he had already, by his precocious tendencies to speculation acquired the title of "the philosopher." In 1763 his father, who expected his son to become Lord Chancellor, sent him to the study of the law at Lincoln's Inn; but soon afterward he went back to Oxford, attracted by the fame of Blackstone's (q.v.) lectures. In 1767 he left Oxford to begin a legal career, but, much to the disappointment of his father, he had no relish for it and took no pains to succeed in it. He studied chemistry and physics when he was expected to be working up cases. Turning from the practice of law to its theory, he became the greatest critic of legislation and government in his day. In 1776 he published A Fragment on Government, which was an acute criticism of some views contained in Blackstone's Commentaries. The Fragment abounds in fine, original, and just observation; it contains the germs of most of his later writings. In 1778 he published View of the Hard Labor Bill, recommending an improvement in the mode of criminal punishment. His views on this subject were more fully expressed in a work written about this time, but not published in English till 1825, the Rationale of Punishment and Rewards. Bentham did more than any other writer of his time to rationalize the theory of punishments by consideration of their various kinds and effects, their true objects, and the conditions of their efficacy. He published in 1789 Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; in 1791, The Panopticon, or the Inspection House; Manual of Political Economy was written in 1793; Poor Laws and Pauper Management was published in 1797; Introductory Views of the Rationale of Evidence was printed in part in 1812. The Rationale of Judicial Evidence (edited by J. S. Mill, London, 1827) was another and a fuller presentation of the same subject. Many works of various dates bear upon the subject of codification of the laws. His Constitutional Code one of his most important works, was published in full in 1841 under the editorial supervision of R. Doane. The subject of logic also interested Bentham, and he wrote a treatise on it. Deontology, or the Science of Morality, was edited and published by Bowring in 1834. His works were collected and edited by Bowring, and published with life and correspondence in 11 volumes (Edinburgh, 1843). A great mass of unpublished manuscript from Bentham's pen is to be found in the library of University College, London. Much of what came to light in Bentham's lifetime was edited by his friends, and some of it appeared first in French under the supervision of Dumont. Bentham had a habit of writing on various subjects at the same time; the result was an aggregation of manuscripts that required sifting, and he was fortunate in finding men of ability like Dumont to undertake his work. In his early works Bentham's style was clear, free, spirited, and often eloquent; but in his later works it became difficult, through being overloaded and darkened with technical terms. In regard to these latter works more especially, M. Dumont has most materially served his master by arranging and translating them into French, through the medium of which language Bentham's doctrines were propagated throughout Europe, till they became more popular abroad than at home. James Mill, himself an independent thinker, did much in his writings to extend the application in new directions of Bentham's principles--a work in which, apart from his original efforts, he has achieved a lasting monument of his own subtlety and vigor of mind. Another valuable contribution in English to Bentham's reputation is perhaps Benthamiana, by John Hill Burton (Edinburgh, 1843), containing a memoir, selections of the leading and important passages from his various writings, and an appendix embracing an essay on his system and a brief, clear view of all his leading doctrines.

In all Bentham's ethical and political writings the doctrine of utility is the leading and pervading principle, and his favorite vehicle for its expression is the phrase "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," which Bentham attributed to Priestley (q.v.), but which really dates back to Hutcheson's (q.v.) Enquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, which appeared as early as 1725. "In this phrase," Bentham says, "I saw delineated for the first time a plain as well as a true standard for whatever is right or wrong, useful useless, or mischievous in human conduct, whether in the field of morals or of polities." It need scarcely be remarked that the phrase affords no guidance as to how the benevolent end is to be attained and is no more than a blanket name for the objects of true benevolence. In order to compass these objects, Bentham demanded nothing less than the immediate remodeling of the government, and the codification and reconstruction of the laws; and insisted, among other changes, on those which came at a later day to be popularly demanded as the points of the "charter," viz., universal suffrage, annual parliaments vote by ballot and paid representatives. However impossible some of these schemes then were, it cannot be denied that Bentham did more to rouse the spirit of modern reform and improvement in laws and politics than any other writer of his day. Many of his ideals have been, and many more are in the course of being, slowly realized. The end and object of them all was the general welfare, and his chief error, apart from his overestimate of the value of some changes which he proposed, lay in conceiving that organic changes are possible through any other process than that of growth and modification of the popular wants and sentiments. It was this error that led the philosopher, in his closet in London, to devise codes of laws for Russia (through which country he made a tour in 1785) , America, and India, the adoption of which would have been equivalent to revolutions in those countries, and then bitterly to bewail the folly of mankind when his schemes were rejected. In ethics, as in politics, he pressed his doctrines to extremes. See UTILITARIANISM; HEDONISM.

By the death of his father in 1792 Bentham succeeded to property yielding from £500 to £600 a year. By a life of temperance and industry, with great self-complacency, in the society of a few devoted friends, Bentham attained to the age of 84.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. III (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 149.