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)

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)

1. J.S. Mill made a dual estimation of Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy featuring two polarized attitudes, one extremely positive, and the other extremely negative. On the positive side, in Mill’s eyes,...

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)

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 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.

O escopo deste artigo consiste em analisar o problema da punição e como podemos justificar o dano intencional causado pelo Estado a um agente infrator no pensamento de Jeremy Bentham e na teoria utilitarista clássica. Para tal fim analisaremos a obra “Uma introdução aos princípios da moral e da legislação”, além de artigos de comentadores. O presente texto divide-se em cinco etapas, a saber, uma breve introdução, seguida de uma análise da proposta benthaniana e de sua concepção de Estado. Após, (...) destacaremos os aspectos positivos de assumir uma posição utilitarista de justificação da punição e, consequentemente, quais são as implicações negativas dessa proposta. Por fim, a título de considerações finais, parece-nos importante considerar alguns aspectos dessa proposta para o pensamento contemporâneo dos sistemas penais e sua legitimidade. (shrink)

Drawing upon original manuscripts and The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, this collection represents the latest scholarship on Bentham's late and mature thought on constitutional law. The contributions cover a diverse range of major topics, from official aptitude or competency to the interests of women, and explore Bentham's writings on courts, codification, and cosmopolitanism. Together, its chapters challenge the received notion, based on early jurisprudential writings, that Bentham's constitutional thought is authoritarian, and show that Bentham, as a constitutional theorist, offers (...) a distinctive liberal perspective. Freeing Bentham's theories from their long sentences and unfamiliar terminology, these essays make accessible Bentham's subtle and important ideas on liberal democracy. By shining a light on Bentham's mature thought, this volume offers a refreshingly comprehensive, detailed, and authentic account of Bentham's theory of democracy. (shrink)

La doctrine classique de la Common Law est la cible de nombreuses critiques de la part de Hobbes et de Bentham. Tous deux remettent en cause les principes qui fondent et justifient cette composante fondamentale du droit anglais. Sont notamment visés le caractère coutumier qui lui est attribué, sa prétendue rationalité ainsi que l’interprétation qu’en font les juges. Moment décisif dans l’histoire des théories du droit, cette controverse tend à faire prévaloir l’idée d’un droit créé par un acte de volonté (...) sur un droit non écrit, tiré de la coutume, que les juges s’efforcent d’appliquer et de perpétuer. Mais, au-delà de leur portée critique, les textes de Hobbes et Bentham présentent des divergences qui font apparaître deux conceptions distinctes de la Common Law et de la décision judiciaire. (shrink)

Alors que plus d’un siècle sépare Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) et Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), leurs philosophies respectives entretiennent des rapports étroits qui, bien qu’ils aient souvent retenu l’attention des historiens de la philosophie et commentateurs, n’ont jamais été étudiés spécifiquement. On cherche ici à pallier ce manque par une étude des rapports entre Hobbes et Bentham dans le champ de la philosophie politique, juridique et morale. On espère ainsi expliquer les points communs, influences, réappropriations, différences et oppositions existant entre ces deux (...) pensées et contribuer par là à faire mieux comprendre leur rôle dans l’histoire de la philosophie moderne anglaise. (shrink)

Souvent délaissée, la pensée politique de l’international chez Hobbes et Bentham recèle plus de points communs qu’on ne pourrait le penser. Pour reconstruire philosophiquement cette pensée, en s’attachant plus spécifiquement au rapport entre économie et politique, on explique d’abord leur commune opposition aux colonies et aux politiques étrangères bellicistes. On montre ensuite comment ils comprennent le commerce international, l’économie et le marché en relation avec l’État, et enfin qu’on ne saurait constituer une théorie politique internationale assurant la sécurité, la paix (...) et la prospérité qui soit autonome et séparée de la théorie de l’État. (shrink)

Alexander Maconochie, the originator of the “Mark System”, is a major figure in the history of penal discipline and is best known for his attempt to implement it at the Norfolk Island penal station from 1840 to 1844. Among Maconochie’s many works is the eight-page “Comparison Between Mr. Bentham’s Views on Punishment, and Those Advocated in Connexion with the Mark System”, in which Maconochie rejected Bentham’s critique of transportation, as well as fundamental elements of his theory of punishment. Maconochie concluded (...) that mainstream thinking on penal discipline was dominated by “mistakes” that either “in great measure originat[ed] with Mr. Bentham”, or had been “at least sanctioned by his high authority”.This paper questions whether Maconochie’s rejection of Bentham’s views is entirely convincing, since his penal practices, as well as an earlier and lesser-cited work, indicate that Maconochie was, at times, considerably closer to Bentham’s position on punishment than “Comparison” suggests. Section I will provide some brief biographical background. Section II will explore Maconochie’s attempt to implement his reformative system at Norfolk Island, at the heart of which was surveillance and extensive record-keeping to monitor individual behaviour and progress, and in which there are echoes of Bentham’s panopticon scheme. Section III will examine Maconochie’s changing views on criminal transportation, from his adherence to the Benthamite anti-transportation line in 1818, to his qualified support for transportation from 1838 onwards. Finally, Section IV will examine the Mark System and Maconochie’s criticism of Bentham in more detail. (shrink)