Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham was born in 1748 and he died in 1832. He was known for his stance on utilitarianism and morals. He lived a very interesting life. He went to school to be an attorney but he never actually practiced law. Jeremy also wrote a lot but failed to try and get much of his works published before he died. His life shows how eccentric in my opinion he was including after death. Jeremy Bentham was born in Houndsditch, London. He came from a line of attorneys, his father and grandfather were both attorneys. Jeremy was born during the time of many changes occurring in the world. This was during the Industrial Revolution, many changes socially were occurring at this time the middle class was emerging. He spent most of his time writing down ideas and working on projects. Bentham was influenced by the Enlightenment philosophies and Locke and Hume. Bentham combined these ideas and philosophies to try and get fiction out of the law entirely. He even believed that the idea of law at all was fiction. In the 1790’s his writings on moral theory were becoming recognized. One of his pieces that was published “The Theory of Legislation.” Another piece he did was “ Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.” He was known for psychological hedonism, human behavior was explained by two motives pleasure and pain. Bentham believed that the individual is what was important not their interactions with others. He also talked about what brings the greatest amount of happiness to the most number of individuals is how you choose what is right or wrong morally. His idea is that you apply this to every action whatever cause the most happiness and least pain. Some view this as incorrect, why should we consider others happiness if in the beginning he emphasizes the individual. He had many aspects to his philosophies and ways of proving his ideas. An interesting project I found he worked on dealt with prisons. He came up with a project called “Panopticon”, which was the idea of seeing inmates at all times by guards that you couldn’t see at the penitentiaries. To me this was very interesting that he wrote philosophy but also worked on projects like that. Today people debate over how much contribution Jeremy Bentham really had British politics. He spent much of his time attacking both sides of parliament. He also spent time helping make bills such as the secret ballot and the Reform Bill of 1832. Luckily for Jeremy he inherited a nice amount of money that he could live off of because he wasn’t making money on hisd unpublished writings and projects. He was a very eccentric man upon his death in 1832. He left his large estate to establish the University College. He also left thousands of papers he never had published. The University College he funded was for students who were excluded from education such as Catholics and Jews. Then with his body he had it dissected and embalmed, then dressed and placed sitting in a chair at the University College. It still remains their now in the University College. Since his death in 1960’s the University College had started trying to publish a number of his works. It was to be called “Bentham’s Works and Correspondence.” It’s a shame he didn’t try to publish more while he was alive. But he made sure he lives on in the University College.

Works Cited

William Sweet. “Jeremy Bentham.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. December 23, 2008. http://www.iep.utm.edu/bentham/