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Old Saturday, July 23, 2011
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Post Western Political Thought---Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham



“Bentham was the first among modern philosophers to place women upon a political equality with men. In Plato’s Republic this equality was to be fully recognized. But after Plato it was completely forgotten for over two thousand years.” (H. Thomas)


Introduction:
Jeremy Bentham was the intellectual leader and the real founder of English utilitarianism; whose deep interest in public affairs covered the period from the American Revolution to the Reform Bill of 1832. He was born in a rich lawyer’s family in 1748 in London. From the very childhood, Bentham was scholarly and pedantic. He learnt Latin when he was only three years old. He also learnt Greek and French and later on he devoted to the study of Jurisprudence and legal philosophy. He received the degree of graduation at the age of fifteen from Queen’s College Oxford. He had an instinctive interest in science and a distinctive talent for introspective psychology. From his youth he showed a passionate devotion to social welfare, identifying himself in imagination and determining to apply to the social sciences the methods that were being worked out in the natural science.

In 1763 Bentham entered Lincoln’s Inn to begin the study which was to be his life-long pursuit. In 1772 after having studied law, he entered the bar for practice. As he grew older, his interests widened and his opinions became more subversive. His supreme mission was to reconstruct the entire legal system on healthier lines.

At the time of his death, he was at the zenith of fame and glory because of his unparalleled contribution in the subject of jurisprudence and legal philosophy. After his death, Doyle says, “He was venerated by a group of disciples, as a Patriarch, a spiritual Leader, almost a God with James Mill as his St. Paul.”

Jeremy Bentham was a prolific writer and he collected works comprised of twenty-two volumes. His writings cover a wide range of interest including ethics, theology, psychology, logic, economics, penology etc. he wrote following most important books:

1. Fragments of Government
2. A Defence of Usury
3. Discourse on Civil and Penal Legislation
4. Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
5. A Treatise on Judicial Evidence
6. A Theory of Punishments and Rewards
7. Essay on Political Tactics


Importance of Bentham in
History of Political Thought


Bentham holds a distinctive place in the history of political thought. He was more a legal reformer and jurist rather than a political philosopher. He had nothing original in his political doctrine and also he did not create new ideas. Bentham was the first to establish the utilitarian school of thought. Maxey said, “Here was a doctrine to rock the foundations of all accredited political theory. With ruthless logic he brushed aside the ancient varieties of both radical and conservative thought; had erased all distinction in principle between free and despotic politics: had put it down that divine, feudal right, historical right, natural right and constitutional right equally and like were rubbish and nonsense. There was no right to rule and no right to be free, there was only the fact of power and the circumstances which made that power a fact.”


Influence of Utilitarianism:
Utilitarianism, a British gift to political philosophy, represented a British reaction against the value generalities about mutual rights and social contract and the mystic idealism of the German political thinkers. It brought political theory back from the abstractions of the Age of Reform to the level of concrete realities. The utilitarian philosophers particularly Bentham and Austin rendered valuable service to political thought. They were the thinkers who viewed society not from the ivory tower of isolation but from close participation. They were not idealistic, they were not utopian, they were not visionary and their philosophy was not transcendental. They built a new theory of government according to which government was based not on contract but on the habit of obedience of utility.


Achievements of Bentham:
Bentham was a true practical reformer and a great smasher of political evils in his age. He took keen interest in the political life of his country. Bentham and his followers are mainly responsible for the parliamentary reforms in England during the nineteenth century like the Municipal Reform Act of 1835. The following reforms are also due to Bentham’s suggestion:

1. Reform of law and legal procedure
2. University education became universal
3. Establishment of trade union

His theory of law established the point of view of analytic jurisprudence, which was almost the only system of the subject generally known to English and American lawyers throughout the nineteenth century.

Bentham contributed, sometimes on the request, sometimes as volunteer to the revision of the legal codes of many countries. In 1811 he made a formal proposal to President Madison to draw up a scientific code of law for the USA. Later he made a similar offer to the Czar of Russia and to the Governor of Pennsylvania, and in 1822 he appealed to “all nations professing opinions.” His confidence in his ability to create a system of laws guaranteed to promote the greatest good of greatest number was unbounded.

Bentham’s writings became popular in many countries. His doctrines were very popular in Spain, Russia, and Iberian Peninsula and in several parts of South America. His ideas were used by the leaders of the national movements that defeated the Holy Alliance and created new nations on the ruins of the Spanish and Turkish Empires. Such was the tremendous influence which Bentham exercised in the History of Political Thought.
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Old Monday, July 25, 2011
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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.”
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Bentham’s Views on Sovereignty and Government



Bentham empowered the sovereign with unlimited powers to legislate all and everything. The supreme government authority, though not infinite must unavoidably, be allowed to infinite unless limited by express convention. The only possible restraint on the sovereign authority is his own anticipation of popular resistance, based upon popular interests. Bentham firmly believed in the written constitutions as guarantees of rational governments, but he was against any bill of rights, limitations upon the powers to amend the constitution and all other devices for restraining the supreme authority and regarded them unsound in theory and worthless in practice. He said that rights emanated from the supreme authority of the state, i-e, the sovereign. The sovereign was not bound to respect any individual rights. A government was liberal and despotic according to the arrangement of distribution and application of supreme power.


Rights of Resistance:
Bentham thought that a subject had no legal right to show resistance or revolt against sovereign. Their legal duty is unconditioned obedience to the sovereign. But a subject has a moral right and a moral duty to resist his sovereign if the utility of resistance were greater than the evil of resistance. The exercise of his unlimited powers by the sovereign would depend on considerations of utility.


Government:
Bentham believed that in the long run a representative democracy was a more suitable form of government than any other to secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The main thing is that the government should be an agency of good, i-e, of happiness and not of evil. The extension, duration and intensity of government power should be properly restricted and de-limited with a view to secure the maximum of happiness and pleasures.

Bentham seems reluctant to agree with Blackstone’s characterization of the British constitution as perfect, and suggested some amendments to it. He was for the promulgation of universal manhood suffrage, annual parliaments and voting by ballot. He disliked oth the monarchy and the House of Lords in Britain. A republican government was best because it ensured efficiency, economy and supremacy of the people and brought about the greatest good of the greatest number on the basis of the identity of interests between the ruler and the ruled. Democratic constitution is presented by him.


Theory of Punishment:
Bentham held that punishment should be preventive and corrective rather than coercive and retaliatory. It should be calculated to prevent the spread of evil and to secure the extension of good. Punishment must not be inflicted where it was ineffective, groundless, needless or unprofitable. It should be obviously justifiable and proportionate to the offence committed but it must be sufficient to secure its ends. It ought to be able to prevent the offender from repeating the offence. It should be individualized, qualitatively and quantitatively, to suit the individual offender. The basic principles of punishment are:

1. Equable
2. Exemplary
3. Frugal of Pain
4. Remissible
5. Compensatory
6. Reformatory
7. Popular
8. Certain and not severe

According to Bentham, the only valid test of the adequacy of a punishment was its ability to secure public welfare. He believed that the English criminal law was inhuman. He was in favor of the reform of the criminal and the prisons and suggested the building of his moral Panopticon, a wheel-shaped building for the housing and proper observation of the criminals. He had a great faith in education as he wanted to bring about adult franchise, a responsible executive, universal education and a representative parliament.
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