Jeremy Bentham

This article revisits a set of classic political, theological and economic scenes in the (early) modern debate on usury from Luther to Bentham. To summarize, I argue that this theory of usury – which polemically mobilizes counter-Aristotelian tropes of the breeding, reproduction and husbandry of money – might also be read as a theory of what Foucault famously calls pastoral power. If this debate nominally concerns the ‘repeal’ of the ancient prohibition against money-lending at interest, I argue that what is (...) really at stake here is the pastoral production of a new theory of the subject as ‘human interest’: a self whose allegedly intrinsic self-interest expresses itself paradigmatically through financial interest. In conclusion, I situate this genealogy of human interest within the larger history of the self-interested, capitalist and indebted subject from Hirschman, through Foucault, to Lazzarato. (shrink)

C.S. Peirce offered an evaluation of Bentham's philosophy to the effect that on some points Bentham's performance was of great value, but essentially, he was ‘a shallow logician’ confined to analysis of ‘lower motive’. This paper argues that Bentham's logic is deeply metaphysically based, multi‐levelled, and comprehensive. There are at least three constituent parts in his utilitarian logic: the first is his ontology, with its distinction between real and fictitious entities, and with pain and pleasure constituting the core real entities; (...) the second is his reductionism in, and analytical view of, simple and complex pleasures and pains; the third is the distinction between private ethics and public ethics. Bentham's logic is staunchly based on empiricism and truth and he developed a pragmatic utilitarian solution to overcome the potential impasse of Hume's scepticism through a mechanism of reflection. Even the doctrines of belief and abduction embraced and developed by Peirce are contained in Bentham's utilitarian logic. Bentham would certainly take Peirce's philosophy as ipse dixitism. Peirce was not in fact a serious reader of Bentham and failed to employ the distinction between argument and argumentation in his study of Bentham's logic. (shrink)

In “Sidgwick on Bentham: the ‘Double Aspect’ of Utilitarianism”, Schofield argued that Bentham did not regard his psychological theory as part of his utilitarianism and that natural benevolence is at his disposal to mitigate the problem of the “double aspect” of utilitarianism. This paper argues that Bentham regarded his psychological theory as part of his utilitarianism and that, in a manner quite distinct from an internal, benevolence approach, he took advantage of self‐preference and thus adopted a self‐preference and artificial means‐based (...) approach, thereby still maintaining an internal approach supported by external, institutional contrivance. In so doing, he argued first that self‐preference could add to the greatest happiness; second, that benevolence would tend to facilitate the achievement of the greatest happiness, with the consequence that he endorsed the artificial cultivation of benevolence; and third, that the artificial means of the junction‐of‐interests‐prescribing principle should be adopted to bridge the gap between self‐preference and the greatest happiness. Sidgwick failed to appreciate the depth and sophistication of Bentham's logic. (shrink)

In this chapter, Benjamin Bourcier argues that Bentham’s politics of global commerce evolved from enlightenment cosmopolitanism aspirations to gradually integrate several features of an economic imperialist model. Bentham’s series of writings on colonial and commercial projects share a relative similarity with the British imperial ideology of his time. Observing that Bentham’s politics of global commerce is not perfectly coherent, Bourcier interrogates how these changes reveal a close historical and conceptual relation between enlightenment cosmopolitan ideas on commerce and the burgeoning development (...) of British imperial ideology. (shrink)

This book articulates international political theory in dialogue with economics on several questions. It asks: how has modern international theory been adjusted and nourished by economic ideas, theories and practices? How far has the distinctive contribution of some theorists to international theory been informed by their views on economy? What has been the impact of the theory of the state for economic and international theory? What sort of economic thinking has led to revise the debates constitutive for the modern international (...) realm? How have economic debates been rhetorically connected to political debates in the field of international relations? (shrink)

ABSTRACT Between April 1820 and April 1822, stimulated by the restoration of the Cádiz Constitution, Bentham devoted himself to writing a number of works on the constitutional reform and colonial rule of Spain, which have been sources of a scholarly debate over Bentham's views on colony. By examining those works, this essay aims to supplement the scholarly debate by drawing attention to a thesis that Bentham developed in his criticism and evaluation of the Cádiz Constitution: a thesis concerning the irreconcilable (...) incompatibilities of liberal constitution and colonisation. I focus on Bentham's critical analyses of the Constitution, and indicate that Spain's colonial rule of Ultramaria not only intensified the weaknesses of the Constitution, but also rendered its merits useless, if not harmful, to the public in both hemispheres. Moreover, I explore the tension that Bentham detected between liberal constitutionalism and colonialism. I maintain that, in Bentham's observation, the civil rights granted by the Cádiz Constitution to the Ultramarians stood to facilitate the enlightenment of citizens and the formation of civil society. As a consequence, the delusion of the Spanish ruling few would be exposed, and the Ultramarians’ discontent with exploitation by such foreign rulers would sow the seeds of disobedience and resistance. (shrink)

The Montreal Declaration on Animal Exploitation, which has been endorsed by hundreds of influential academic ethicists, calls for establishing a vegan economy by banning what it refers to as all unnecessary animal suffering, including fishing. It does so by appeal to the moral principle of equal consideration of comparable interests. I argue that this principle is misapplied by discounting morally relevant cognitive capacities of self-conscious and volitional personhood as distinguished from merely sentient non-personhood. I describe it as a kind of (...) anthropomorphizing moralism which I call anthropomoralism, defined as the tendency to project morally relevant characteristics of personhood onto merely sentient non-persons by discounting their existing differences with actual persons. I show that this attitude can lend support to the resurgent attempt to treat fetal pain as equally morally considerable to that of childbearing persons they gestate within. I explain that the only sound way to apply the principle of equal consideration of comparable interests is to compare experiences of actual persons. Therefore, while supporting a vegan economy may be morally praiseworthy, it should not be deemed morally obligatory. (shrink)

In this chapter, Eileen M. Hunt reveals new intellectual ties between Bentham and Benthamite thought and the political ideals of Wollstonecraft and Shelley, who theorized the relationship between women’s misery and women’s rights in British international thought from the end of the eighteenth century through the first few decades of the nineteenth century. Hunt argues that Wollstonecraft’s political ideas influenced her daughter Mary Shelley, leading her to develop a critique of Malthusian and Benthamite views on misery and population control that (...) inscribed new political and feminist arguments into the global reception of British international thought. (shrink)

In this chapter, Michael Quinn argues that although Bentham’s only works on international trade were discussions on “the balance of trade” and “colonial trade,” these works reveal several new aspects of Bentham’s broader political economy. Like Smith, Bentham considered international trade to be mutually beneficial and strongly criticized mercantilist fallacies concerning balance of trade and the fetishization of precious metals. However, Bentham’s views differ from Smith’s on the issues of paper money and inflation. The chapter explains Bentham’s struggles to combine (...) elements of both commodity and credit theories of money in a coherent package. (shrink)

In this chapter Nathalie Sigot argues that Bentham’s interest in international trade lies in the consideration of the redistributive effects of trade and its consequences on happiness for one’s society. Sigot demonstrates that Bentham’s view on international trade changed between 1786 and 1821, when the principle of the limitation of industry by capital disappeared from his writings. Sigot explains how Bentham’s approach is driven by a focus on security and on a calculus of gains and losses in terms of happiness.

J.S. Mill argued that Bentham was ‘not a great philosopher’, asserting that one reason for his judgment was ‘the incompleteness of his [i. e. Bentham’s] own mind as a representative of universal human nature’. This paper argues that Mill’s judgment of Bentham on human nature and his assumptions about Bentham’s ‘own mind’ were seriously mistaken. In fact, Bentham understood many of the most natural and strongest feelings of human nature; he recognized spiritual or mental perfection, and recognized many pleasures associated (...) with a desire for self-perfection, or at least self-improvement; he never denied the importance of the faculty of imagination; he was by no means cut off from life’s graver experiences; his conception of arts and sciences was much broader, more metaphysically-based, consistent and sophisticated than Mill appreciated; and he enthusiastically embraced and encouraged arts and sciences. Mill’s mistake was partly caused by his limited reading of Bentham’s works, but mainly because he failed to grasp the ontological basis and fundamental principles of Bentham’s philosophy. (shrink)

Suppose two players wish to divide a finite set of indivisible items, over which each distributes a specified number of points. Assuming the utility of a player’s bundle is the sum of the points it assigns to the items it contains, we analyze what divisions are fair. We show that if there is an envy-free (EF) allocation of the items, two other desirable properties—Pareto-optimality (PO) and Maximinality (MM)—can also be satisfied, rendering these three properties compatible. But there may be no (...) EF division, in which case some division must satisfy a modification of Bentham’s (1789/2017) “greatest satisfaction of the greatest number” property, called maximum Nash welfare (MNW), that satisfies PO. However, an MNF division may be neither MM nor EFX, which is a weaker form of EF. We conjecture that there is always an EFX allocation that satisfies MM, ensuring that an allocation is maximin, precisely the property that Rawls (1971/1999) championed. We discuss four broader philosophical implications of our more technical analysis. (shrink)

According to Bentham's utilitarian mode of reasoning, the legitimacy of an intervention was not to be valued on the grounds of the underlying intentions or the means employed, but rather in light of its (expected) consequences. What at first would seem as incoherent, arbitrary or ambivalent attitudes towards intervention were in fact consistent with his situational and pragmatic mode of reasoning. Rather than a disjuncture between ideal theory and practical reasoning, his positions on intervention reflected the inevitably local nature of (...) his principled 'moral casuistry', characterised by the attempt to reconcile self-regarding interests with extra-regarding interests. The key to this move resided in Bentham's concept of 'effective benevolence'. The 'business of the Deontologist' - and the essence of his principled moral casuistry - was that of exposing the dictates of 'effective benevolence' wherever possible, and Bentham himself took up this challenge in his writings on Tripoli and... (shrink)

Ce volume collectif accompagne, à quelques mois d’intervalle, la publication de l’édition critique des textes consacrés par Bentham à l’Australie (_Panopticon versus New South Wales and other writings on Australia_) chez UCL Press sous la direction de Tim Causer et Philip Schofield. Les versions numériques des deux ouvrages sont disponibles en accès ouvert sur le site de l’éditeur. Bentham consacre un premier essai au système pénal en Australie en 1791, à peine six ans après le début des déportations de prisonniers (...) vers la nouvelle colonie carcérale. Il s’oppose sans relâche à cette politique et tente de démontrer que son propre projet de prison panoptique est à la fois plus efficace et moins coûteux pour punir les criminels et conduire à leur réforme. En 1801, au moment où le ministère rejette définitivement la construction du panoptique près de Londres, Bentham érige les colonies australiennes en symboles de la corruption de la constitution et de la malhonnêteté des membres du gouve... (shrink)

It would be an almost comical understatement to say that, throughout my graduate study in philosophy and subsequent years of teaching and writing, I found myself engaging with the works of Jeremy Bentham somewhat infrequently. Beyond flavorful anecdotes about mummified heads and jabs about stilted nonsense in my undergraduate Intro to Ethics courses—as we segued into extended discussion of John Stuart Mill, of course—Bentham’s direct and recognized role in my philosophical activities has been pretty much nonexistent. With all that said: (...) as a sexual- and gender- nonconforming aesthetician and LGBTQIA+ educator and wellness professional living in what is now a post-Roe United States, I found Carrie D. Shanafelt’s Uncommon Sense: Jeremy Bentham, Queer Aesthetics, and the Politics of Taste (2021) to be rich, captivating, and at times, even genuinely comforting. -/- Shanafelt’s short book is equal parts history of philosophy, philosophical history, biography, and queer manifesto, written in an accessible manner that successfully balances scholarship with readability. I could easily see Uncommon Sense engendering rich discussion in graduate seminars as well as undergraduate courses of various sorts—though I can just as easily see portions of the book’s content generating various rumbles of controversy, at least at some of the institutions I’ve taught at before. (See, for example, Chapter Four, titled ‘Bentham’s Queer Christ.’) Any anticipatory worries of short-sighted reactionary takes aside, the book would absolutely serve well as the central focus on an entire course, supplemented by a range of literature and scholarly material from philosophical aesthetics, queer studies, political theory, and more. Honestly, I would love to teach that class. (shrink)

Der Einfluss Jeremy BenthamsBentham, Jeremy auf Mills Denken ist kaum zu überschätzen. Mills Auseinandersetzung mit und Emanzipation von Bentham ist in Mills Werk allgegenwärtig, durch die Autobiography gut belegt und auch Gegenstand zweier kleinerer Schriften – „Remarks on Bentham’s Philosophy“ und „Bentham“ –, in denen er seinen Lehrer teils scharf kritisiert. Benthams Einfluss besteht auch mit Blick auf Mills gesellschaftspolitisches Denken, vor allem aber mit Blick auf die utilitaristische Ethik als Fundament seiner Sozialphilosophie. Benthams Lehren sind der Ausgangspunkt von Mills (...) Überlegungen, die er seiner eigenen Aussage nach nie völlig verwirft, sondern nur korrigiert. Entsprechend versteht Mill seine Ausführungen in Utilitarianism als Weiterentwicklung der Ideen seiner Vorgänger. (shrink)

In her influential book of _ A Turn to Empire _, J. Pitts argues that Bentham’s project was very different from later British liberal aspiration to civilize the backward countries. On the other hand, Pitts appears to struggle how to treat Bentham’s such description, for instance, of Islamic countries as a region of incurable barbarity and ignorance. I would like to argue that there was no such contradiction as suggested by Pitts in Bentham’s theory. I will firstly (in section 2) (...) discuss Bentham’s 'Place and Time,' and show that, unlike Pitt’s interpretation, Bentham tried to change the religions, traditions and customs of non-Western countries, which are at odds with his principle of utility. However, this was based on Bentham’s conception of universal human nature. In section 3, I will examine Bentham’s enterprise of universal jurisprudence to elucidate Bentham’s conception of the universal human nature. I will then discuss that Bentham consistently tried to disseminate this conception... (shrink)

Die Wege von Rawls und Bentham haben sich mehrfach gekreuzt. Nach einer frühen Werkepoche, in der er sich an der Verteidigung eines utilitaristischen Moralverständnisses versucht, schreibt Rawls in Eine Theorie der Gerechtigkeit gegen eine dominante zeitgenössische Konzeption an, die er als Wiedergänger des ‚klassischen Utilitarismus‘ von Bentham, Edgeworth und Sidgwick identifiziert. Parallel dazu entdeckt die politische Ideengeschichtsschreibung seit den 1980er Jahren einen neuen, liberalen Bentham, der Rawls als Wegbegleiter anempfohlen wird.

The study deals with the content and transformations of Jeremy Bentham’s theory of sanctions and its role in the development of the contemporary understanding of how moral regulation works. In An Introduction to the principles of morals and legislation, Bentham defines sanction as a type of pleasure and pain that gives the binding force to some law or rule and mentions four sanctions: physical, political, popular, or moral, and religious. The popular, or moral, sanction rests on such a motive as (...) ‘the love of reputation’. Unlike the motive of ‘good-will’, ‘the love of reputation’ has some drawbacks that lessen its general efficiency and its contribution to the fulfillment of the principle of utility. Though the development of civilization makes them less dangerous. In the Deontology, two more sanctions were added: sympathetic (the pain generated by the contemplation of the pain suffered by a fellow creature) and retributive (the pain caused to a perpetrator by retaliatory actions of his/her immediate victim). The renewed typology of sanctions is discussed by Bentham in the context of the activity of a moralist, or a deontologist. There are two main interpretations of moral sanctions in the contemporary ethics: ‘the moral sanction as a public condemnation of a perpetrator’ and ‘the moral sanction as a self-condemnation of a perpetrator (his/her feeling of guilt, pricks of conscience)’. Bentham was a major figure in the development of the first interpretation. However, his extended typology contributed to the development of the second. Bentham’s sympathetic sanction in the case of ‘pains of sympathy’ that experienced by a perpetrator and caused him/her by pains of his/her victims is not identical to a guilt-feeling but can work without a public condemnation. (shrink)

This book explains and evaluates the main arguments and themes in Bentham's an introduction (IPML). It's designed for upper level undergraduate students of philosophy; it would also be useful for grad students and scholars in philosophy and other disciplines. Each chapter of the book is discussed in sequence. Emphasis is placed on Bentham's original goal of introducing a utilitarian penal code. His causal theory of action, and account of motives and motivation, are analysed carefully, so as to lay the groundwork (...) for his treatment of the deterrence of potential offenders, and the punishment of convicted offenders. Bentham's approach to making acts into legal offenses, or 'criminalization', is also treated. His understanding of the principle of utility, theory of intrinsic value, and claims about the measurement of pleasure and pain, and intrinsic value, are fully discussed. Some attention is given to the features of English criminal law in Bentham's time, and to its practice in contemporary societies. (shrink)

Jeremy Bentham is usually seen as an anti-realist political thinker, or a proponent of what Bernard Williams has termed ‘political moralism’. This article questions that prevalent view and suggests instead that there are good grounds for considering Bentham a political realist. Bentham’s political thought has considerable commonalities with that of the sociologist and political realist Max Weber: both agree that politics is a unique domain of human activity defined by its association with power; that consequently, ethical conduct is unavoidably inflected (...) by power in politics; that a commitment to truth in politics can only ever be contingent; and that politics has a set of basic conditions that it would be not only misguided but dangerous to attempt to transcend. Whilst it is often held that Bentham advanced a reductive framework for understanding politics, in fact, his utilitarianism was a far more realistic approach to political ends and means than has generally been acknowledged, and one that contemporary political theory realists would benefit from taking seriously. (shrink)

This article argues that Bentham’s metaphysics has until recently been unfairly belittled, and that it in fact built on and surpassed that of David Hume, of whom Bentham was both an attentive student and a fierce critic. Bentham’s logic is metaphysically based, multi-levelled, and comprehensive. First, taking Hume’s empiricism as a starting point, Bentham developed the additional mechanism of “reflection” to facilitate a utilitarian pragmatic resolution to Hume’s skepticism. Second, unlike Hume, Bentham aspired to encyclopedic knowledge, especially of the human (...) mind, which he believed allowed him to place his thought on a more solid and broader foundation. Third, whereas Hume focused on the passive understanding, Bentham captured the interaction between understanding and volition. Fourth, in relation to moral approbation, Hume adopted an approach which highlighted benevolence, whereas Bentham sought to reconcile self-preference with benevolence. Fifth, Hume’s common sense moral philosophy pushed him to associate justice with social convention, and helped to make him a conservative. Bentham developed the principle of utility to direct and push forward social reform for a better world. (shrink)

Over time, the actions of mankind have been the victim of two vague labels, right and wrong. The criteria for these labels are not clearly defined, but they still seem to be the standard by which the actions of man are judged. There are some people that abide by a deontological view when it comes to judging the nature of actions; the deontological view holds that it is a person's intention that makes an action right or wrong. On the other (...) hand there is the teleological view which holds that it is the result of an action is what makes that act right or wrong. In this essay I will be dealing with utilitarianism, a philosophical principle that holds a teleological view when it comes the nature of actions. To solely discuss utilitarianism is much too broad of topic and must be broken down, so I will discuss specifically quantitative utilitarianism as presented by Jeremy Bentham. In this essay I will present the argument of Bentham supporting his respective form of utilitarianism and I will give my critique of this argument along the way. (shrink)

The Discourse of Universalism , Moral Relativism & Utilitarianism Table of Contents: Chapter 1. Moral relativism: history and theory of moral relativism: Ancient Greece and Early Modern Era Chapter 2. Universalism and Relativism Chapter 3. Hume's Universalism Chapter 4. Plato's Universalism Chapter 5. Problems with Rawls Theory Chapter 6. Aristotle's Relativism Chapter 7. Is Aristotle an ethical relativist? Chapter 8. John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism Chapter 9. Mill and Principle of Utility Chapter 10. Kant and Moral Theory The historian Herodotus gives (...) the anecdote of Darius, King of Persia, who summoned the Greeks and asked them if they would be willing to eat the bodies of their dead fathers. They replied they would not for any money in the world. Later, Darius asked some Indians of the tribe called Callatiae, who do eat their dead parents’ bodies, if they would ever consider burning the bodies, as was the custom among Greeks. “One can see by this what custom can do” writes Herodotus. He draws the conclusion that this story vindicates the view some acts may be right for some and wrong for others, depending on their individual conceptions of morality. The Sophists were also associated with relativistic thinking, notably Protagoras who asserts that “man is the measure of all things”. However, this view was quite uncommon and moral relativism hardly flourished, as Plato and Aristotle both defended forms of moral absolutism. Ancient Greek philosophers acknowledged moral diversity, but more often under the form of moral scepticism, which states that there is no moral knowledge (rather than moral truth is relative to a culture). (shrink)

Mill’s Principle of Utility: Origins, Proof, and Implications (Leiden: Brill, 2022) is a scholarly monograph on John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism with a particular emphasis on his proof of the principle of utility. Originally published as Mill’s Principle of Utility: A Defense of John Stuart Mill’s Notorious Proof (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1994), the present volume is a revised and enlarged edition with additional material, tighter arguments, crisper discussions, and updated references. The initiative is still principally an analysis, interpretation, and defense of (...) the controversial proof, which has yet to attract a scholarly consensus on how it works and whether it succeeds. Well over a century and a half after Mill’s contribution, the subject matter continues to figure prominently in classroom discussions, where the principle and its proof are presented and debated in connection with the critical baggage of logical problems and conceptual confusions wrongly attributed to Mill from the beginning. The overarching aim of the book, now supplemented by a comprehensive historical background and salient philosophical implications, remains the vindication of Mill’s reasoning in pursuit of what he promises as a proof of the principle of utility. (shrink)

Jeremy Bentham es unánimemente reconocido como un filósofo político y del derecho de primera fila; también es muy reconocido como economista o teórico de la economía; desde luego, es considerado como uno de los grandes reformadores sociales del siglo XIX; incluso, recientemente, desde el último cuarto del siglo XX, ha comenzado a ser visto como uno de los grandes expertos clásicos en historia de la sexualidad y como un pensador radical en este ámbito. Pero ¿fue Bentham un gran filósofo, especialmente (...) un gran filósofo moral? (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como propósito inicial exponer y analizar la oposición que representa el utilitarismo clásico propuesto por Jeremy Bentham frente a la visión deontológica propia de la filosofía de los derechos naturales. Se argumentará que el objetivo del teórico inglés radicaba en trascender los planteamientos netamente filosóficos y argüir por la necesidad de incluir elementos prácticos que permitieran generar acciones tangibles para el bienestar de la mayoría de los individuos. Una vez abordado lo anterior, se demostrará que el (...) principal axioma del utilitarismo –la mayor felicidad para el mayor número posible como medida de lo correcto e incorrecto– requiere, basado en un método de cuantificación edificado en el placer y el dolor, de la intervención del legislador ante las externalidades y de la implementación de ciertas medidas de redistribución de la riqueza que conduzcan al cumplimiento del principio planteado: generar la mayor igualdad y felicidad posible. (shrink)

Dans L’Histoire d’Angleterre, Hume consacre de nombreuses pages aux événements qui conduisirent à la rédaction de la Grande Charte et aux remous qui en résultèrent. Certes, il ne s’agit pas de faire de ce texte une sorte de contrat qui aurait régi la vie politique anglaise pendant plus de cinq siècles. La conception contractualiste que les Whigs ont de l’histoire ne saurait tirer argument d’un tel document ; mais l’événement ne fut tout de même pas sans conséquences ; et il (...) se pourrait même que la vie politique, économique, sociale de l’Angleterre ait été davantage changée en profondeur par ce document que celle des Français par les rideaux de fumée dont Bentham fut le témoin lors de la rédaction des diverses Déclarations des droits de l’homme par les révolutionnaires français à partir de 1789. Jusqu’à la fin de sa vie, Bentham, qui n’est ni anti-républicain, ni anti-démocrate, comme a pu l’être Hume, prend au sérieux le texte de la Magna Carta dans laquelle il voit, mutatis mutandis, une sorte de modèle selon lequel les lois qui accordent les libertés pourraient être garanties aux citoyens : sans les fioritures ni la grandiloquence françaises, mais avec le maximum de précision qu’il convient d’accorder à leur rédaction. Le chiasme est étonnant : Hume est plus prompt que Bentham à dénoncer les fictions de la Grande Charte et de l’usage qu’il est possible d’en faire, alors que le spécialiste des fictions, voit dans la Grande Charte - qu’il aurait tout lieu de dénoncer à la suite de Hume - une source d’inspiration non négligeable pour écrire sérieusement des lois. (shrink)

To challenge the Foucauldian legacy of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon prison, scholars often highlight Bentham’s later writings on the democratic power of public opinion. In doing so, they reaffirm Bentham’s reputation as a unreserved proponent of transparency. To recover the limits of Bentham’s embrace of publicity, I examine the model of visibility exemplified by his designs for the Sotimion, a residence for unmarried, pregnant women. The Sotimion draws our attention to Bentham’s appreciation for concealment as a method of preventing individual and (...) social harms caused by publicity and his criticisms of ascetic sexual norms. By being able to see visitors without being seen by them, the residents of the Sotimion would have avoided social censure while continuing to meet with friends, family, and even lovers. The Sotimion designs eschewed the panoptic principle, the use of asymmetric surveillance to reform moral behavior, and offered what I call the “soteric principle,” the use of asymmetric surveillance to protect the observer from punishment. By comparing the Sotimion to the Magdalen Hospital for Penitent Prostitutes and Bentham’s discussions of panoptic institutions for women, I examine the Sotimion’s distinctiveness while acknowledging its normalizing effects for residents from lower socioeconomic classes. Just as the panopticon captured Bentham’s commitment to publicity, applying the soteric model to Bentham’s theory of public opinion highlights his commitment to secrecy for protecting critics of government abuses from retribution. (shrink)

Ratio Juris, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 38-54, March 2022.

En este artículo se trata de analizar cómo Jeremy Bentham afronta el problema de la compatibilidad entre libertad sexual y felicidad pública. Se considera entonces el amplio _corpus _benthamiano sobre la cuestión de las relaciones homoeróticas, estableciendo su cronología y examinando sus argumentos. Desde el principio de utilidad, Bentham defiende la despenalización de las relaciones homoeróticas y los efectos beneficiosos de esta práctica sobre la felicidad pública. Finalmente, se explora el contexto de la propuesta benthamiana: el debate ilustrado acerca de (...) las relaciones homoeróticas y la denominada “anomalía inglesa”. (shrink)

In terms of the distinction between relationalist and substantialist philosophies of science opened up by American pragmatist thinkers like Dewey and Bentley, Bentham’s social ontology is relationalist and anti-substantialist. When the ontology is combined with his emphasis on ordinary language as the basis of social reality, it is seen to have thematic connections to later developments in social science such as social constructionism, social phenomenology, ethnomethodology and, due to its intent to critically question-received fictions, to neo-Marxian and other concerns about (...) objectivation and reification. Also, by re-reading Bentham’s theory of fictions as a theory of vernacular language habits, it can be shown to have empirical relevance for the sociology of language. (shrink)

A dialogue, in three parts, on utilitarian vulnerability to exploitation.

Edición a cargo de José Luis Tasset & Francisco Vázquez García. Introducción de José Luis Tasset. Epílogo de Francisco Vázquez García.

Ratio Juris, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 55-70, March 2022.

An erudite introduction to the ideas of the father of utilitarianism.

An erudite introduction to the ideas of the father of utilitarianism.