Jeremy Bentham

1748-1832 · English · Jurisprudence, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Law

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.

A child prodigy sent to Oxford at twelve and called to the bar he never practiced, Jeremy Bentham took one look at English law and decided it was an instrument of plunder operated by lawyers for their own profit. In 1769 he found his life's purpose: to subject law and morals to a single rational standard. His lifelong enemy was the jurist William Blackstone, whose celebration of the common law Bentham spent decades demolishing, beginning with A Fragment on Government in 1776.

Topics Jeremy Bentham addresses

• the principle of utility
• the greatest happiness principle
• pleasure and pain as the two sovereign masters
• the felicific calculus
• psychological hedonism
• real and fictitious entities
• paraphrasis and phraseoplerosis
• nonsense upon stilts
• the critique of natural rights
• legal positivism
• law as it is versus law as it ought to be
• the expositor and the censor
• the four sanctions
• the sub-ends of utility
• subsistence, abundance, security, and equality
• the critique of the common law
• the critique of Blackstone
• the pannomion and codification
• securities against misrule
• sinister interest
• the theory of punishment
• the theory of reward
• the rationale of judicial evidence
• the Panopticon

Questions to put to Jeremy Bentham

Utility and the Felicific Calculus

• What do you mean by the principle of utility?
• How does the felicific calculus actually work?
• Are pleasure and pain really the only things that motivate us?
• How do you answer the worry that utility could sacrifice a few innocent people for the greater good?
• What's the difference between your view and just saying everyone should do whatever feels good?

Real and Fictitious Entities

• What's the difference between a real entity and a fictitious entity?
• How do you explain what a right is using paraphrasis?
• Why do you call things that can't be traced back to pleasure and pain 'nonsense'?
• Can we talk meaningfully about justice or duty on your view?
• How does your theory of language shape your approach to law?

The Critique of Natural Rights and Blackstone

• Why do you call natural rights 'nonsense upon stilts'?
• What's wrong with saying people have rights that no government can take away?
• How do you see the difference between law as it is and law as it ought to be?
• What do you offer instead of natural rights as protection against tyranny?
• Why did you spend so much of your life attacking Blackstone?

Legal Positivism and Codification

• What's your objection to the common law?
• Why do you think all law should be written down in a complete code?
• How would your pannomion actually work?
• What do you mean when you say rights are 'the child of law'?
• How do the four sanctions guide people toward the general happiness?

Punishment, Evidence, and the Panopticon

• What's the purpose of punishment on your view?
• How should we decide how severely to punish different crimes?
• What is the Panopticon and why did you design it?
• How do you respond to the worry that constant surveillance destroys human dignity?
• Why did you write so much about the law of evidence?

Religion, Sex, and Radical Reform

• Why do you think morality must be divorced from religion?
• How do you defend decriminalizing acts between consenting adults that harm no one?
• What turned you from a legal reformer into a radical democrat?
• What role does the Public Opinion Tribunal play in your Constitutional Code?
• Why should animals' capacity to suffer matter morally?

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