Bentham’s Views on Rights and Duties
Bentham discarded natural rights to the individuals. But he did not kill the concept of natural rights. Bentham totally denied the existence of natural law, holding that law is the expression of the sovereign will in the shape of a command. This sovereign was absolute and omnipotent against which individuals possessed no natural rights nor did they have any legal right to show resistance against it.
Bentham was a passionate champion for the existence of freedom and equality but he would not base them natural law. He supported for the existence of an authority for the purpose to enforce rights by imposing penalties in case of violation. Neither law of nature or natural rights could impose limitations on the unlimited absolute powers of sovereign authority. The only conceivable imposition to the authority could possibly be made by effective resistance by the determined subjects.
It is queer to note that, though Bentham denied natural rights, yet he could not disregard the right of private property. He advocated it for its preservation on the basis of general utility. The happiness of the individual depended upon security, subsistence, abundance and equality. Security includes liberty, safety and property of the individual. Thus the legal reformer recognizes the right of property. He prefers security to liberty.
Kinds of Rights:
1. Legal Rights:
A vivid and intelligible expression means a faculty of action sanctioned by the will of a supreme law-maker in a political society.
2. Moral Rights:
It means vivid and intelligible expression than the other. Its sanction is the opinion or feeling of a group of persons who cannot be precisely identified, but who nevertheless are able to make their collective or over age will unmistakably manifest.
3. Natural Rights:
It is a term commonly used without any definite meaning or any form of usefulness. Nature is a vague and indefinite entity. It may indeed be used as synonymous with God. In any other sense it denotes something that cannot be thought as endowed with will, and is incapable of making law. “Natural Rights” is a phrase that can contribute only confusion in a national system of political science.
Kinds of Duties:
According to Bentham, duties of following kinds:
1. Political Duty:
It is determined by the penalty which a definitely known person i.e., a political superior will inflict for the violation of certain rights.
2. Religious Duty:
It is determined by the punishment to be inflicted by a definitely known being i-e the Creator.
3. Moral Duty:
It depends upon circumstances hardly certain and definite enough to be called punishment, yet such as to create an unpleasant state of mind in the person concerned, by putting in disagreeable relations with that infinite body of individuals known as the community in general.
Bentham denied natural rights and natural law, yet he carried both these things in his political philosophy.
Sabine said,
“The liberal elements in Bentham’s Philosophy resided largely in its tacit premises. When he observed that one man is worth just the same as another man or that in calculating the greatest happiness, each person is ‘to count for one and no one more than one,’ he was obviously borrowing the principle of equality from natural law.”