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Jeremy Bentham

 

Jeremy Bentham, detail of an oil painting by H.W. Pickersgill, 1829; in the National Portrait
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Jeremy Bentham, detail of an oil painting by H.W. Pickersgill, 1829; in the National Portrait (credit: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
(born Feb. 15, 1748, London, Eng.died June 6, 1832, London) British moral philosopher and legal theorist, the earliest expounder of utilitarianism. A precocious student, he graduated from Oxford at age 15. In his An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, he argued that mankind was governed by two sovereign motives, pain and pleasure. The object of all legislation, therefore, must be the greatest happiness of the greatest number; and since all punishment involves pain and is therefore evil, it ought only to be used so far as it promises to exclude some greater evil. His work inspired much reform legislation, especially regarding prisons. He was also an exponent of the new laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Though a vocal advocate of democracy, he rejected the notions of the social contract, natural law, and natural rights as fictional and counterproductive (Rights is the child of law; from real law come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from law of nature,' come imaginary rights). He helped found the radical Westminster Review (1823). In accordance with his will, his clothed skeleton is permanently exhibited at University College, London.

For more information on Jeremy Bentham, visit Britannica.com.

Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:

Jeremy Bentham

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The English philosopher, political theorist, and jurist Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) expounded the ethical doctrine known as utilitarianism. Partly through his work many political, legal, and penal reforms were enacted by Parliament.

Jeremy Bentham, the son of a lawyer, was born on Feb. 15, 1748, in Houndsditch, near London. A precocious child, he learned Latin, Greek, and French before he was 10. The "philosopher," as he was known to his family, was an avid reader. After attending the famous Westminster school (1755-1760), he went to Queen's College, Oxford, and took his degree in 1763 at the age of 15. He studied at Lincoln's Inn, receiving a master of arts degree in 1766. The following year he was called to the bar.

Bentham cared little for his formal education, insisting that "mendacity and insincerity … are the only sure effects of an English university education," and he cared even less about succeeding as a practicing lawyer. He preferred to read and write papers on legal reform and to study physical science, especially chemistry. His father, who had amassed a considerable fortune in real estate speculations, died in 1792, and from that time on Bentham retired from public life and devoted himself to writing. In 1814 he purchased a mansion, and his home became a center of English intellectual life.

Bentham's Utilitarianism

In 1776 Bentham published Fragment on Government, which criticized the interpretations of English common law by Sir William Blackstone. Bentham attacked the notion that a social contract or compact had a legal basis. He continued to write on jurisprudence throughout his career: Introductory View of the Rationale of Evidence (1812), edited by James Mill, and the five-volume Rationale of Juridical Evidence (1827), edited by John Stuart Mill. In these criticisms of law, evidence, and even language (anticipating the "definition in use" theory of linguistic philosophy), Bentham was a consistent nominalist and instinctive utilitarian. Words and laws, men and institutions must be judged solely in terms of their actual usage and consequences.

Utilitarianism may be defined as the thesis that an act is right or good if it produces pleasure, and evil if it leads to pain. Although this doctrine is almost as old as philosophy itself, the principle of utility received its classic expression in Bentham's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789). Bentham had a talent for simplification; he reduced all ethical considerations to an immediate source. "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure." Utilitarianism aims to make morals and politics an exact science based on these objective criteria and to offer a quantitative method for evaluating both individual and institutional actions.

Men are often unhappy or are deprived of happiness by governments because they fail to perceive that the terms value, ought, good, and right are meaningless unless identical with utility, which is understood as pleasure or happiness. Bentham avoided the subjectivism of most hedonistic theories by acknowledging altruistic as well as egoistic pleasures and recognizing that pleasure often consists primarily in avoiding pain. He defined the community as "the sum of the interests of its members" and stated that utilitarianism aims at the "greatest happiness of the greatest number."

To determine the specific utility of actions, Bentham proposed a "felicific calculus" by which one can balance the pleasures and pains consequent upon one's acts. The value of an action will be greater or less in terms of the intensity and duration of pleasure and its certainty and possibility. One should also consider how an act will affect other people. In addition, the circumstances should be taken into account but not the motives, which do not matter.

Bentham's Personality

Bentham was a man of considerable irony and personal eccentricity. Given honorary citizenship by the new Republic of France in 1792, he scorned the French Revolution's "Declaration of the Rights of Man," commenting that all talk of rights was "nonsense" and talk of absolute rights was "nonsense on stilts." Although he spent 7 or 8 hours daily on his writing for more than 50 years, virtually all his published books are the product of editors. He habitually worked on several projects simultaneously without finishing them, and often there were several incomplete versions of the same topic. Bentham was fortunate in having editors of dedication and genius such as Étienne Dumont, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill. Bentham gave the editors total freedom; consequently some of the works bearing his name were thoroughly rewritten by others from conflicting versions or even scraps and notes.

Bentham's eccentricity took the form of obsession with certain ideas. Prison reform was a central concern of his for several years, and he solicited and received charters and money from the King for a model prison, the "Panopticon." Bentham attributed the failure of this project to royal envy and added to his thousands of written pages on the subject a treatise on the conflict between Jeremy Bentham and George III "by one of the disputants." Throughout his life Bentham conducted a lengthy, and largely unsolicited, correspondence with various heads of state suggesting methods of legal and constitutional reform. Late in life he became concerned with how the dead could be of use to the living; in the work Auto Icon he suggested that, with proper embalming, every man could become his own monument and that notables might be interspersed with trees in public parks. In his will, which contributed to establishing University College, London, he stipulated that his clothed skeleton and wax head be preserved. He died on June 6, 1832.

Further Reading

The standard edition of Bentham's writings is The Works of Jeremy Bentham, edited by John Bowring (11 vols., 1838-1843). Studies of Bentham include Charles Milner Atkinson, Jeremy Bentham: His Life and Work (1905); Elie Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (trans. 1928); David Baumgardt, Bentham and the Ethics of Today (1952); Mary Peter Mack, Jeremy Bentham: An Odyssey of Ideas (1963).

Additional Sources

Dinwiddy, J. R. (John Rowland), Bentham, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Henry Thorton (1760-1815), Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), James Lauderdale (1759-1839), Simonde de Sismondi (1773-1842), Aldershot, Hants, England; Brookfield, Vt., USA: E. Elgar, 1991.

Oxford Dictionary of Politics:

Jeremy Bentham

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(1748-1832) Economist, political and legal philosopher, and social reformer. Born in Houndsditch in London, the son of a prosperous attorney and entrepreneur, sent to Westminster school at the age of 7 and then to Queen's College Oxford at the age of 12, Jeremy Bentham graduated at the age of 16. To further his legal education, he attended the Court of Kings Bench in the student's seat secured by his ambitious father. The law, however, was not his sole concern, despite a lifelong commitment to legal reform, and to penal reform in particular. And, although admitted to the Bar, he did not actually practise law. Instead, he became an eclectic, studying the experimental sciences of chemistry and physics as well as the classics, ranging widely from Cicero to Homer. He also read widely in European philosophy, particularly Hume, Montesquieu, Joseph Priestley, Hartley, and Beccaria, adopting as a consequence a familiar and orthodox empiricism. In 1768, during the course of this reading, he came across the expression ‘the greatest good of the greatest number’ in Priestley's Essay on Government. This discovery led to a kind of inner ecstasy. From this point, Bentham became the leading and tireless English advocate of utilitarianism. It was part of Bentham's utilitarianism that each person was to count as one and no more than one, a form of radical egalitarianism which made him unpopular with many contemporaries, a radicalism both confirmed and developed by his association with James Mill which began in 1808. And, although Bentham did not write or campaign publicly for universal suffrage until 1817, after this point he was firmly committed to representative democracy, open government, and annual parliaments, even though he never wavered in his critique of French revolutionary radicalism and its classic doctrines of imprescriptible natural rights and of a revocable social contract. In the hands of the French, these doctrines were not only politically dangerous, but also philosophically nonsensical. As a liberal constitutional thinker, Bentham can also be plausibly interpreted as a precursor of those who defend the modern welfare state. In his view, the ends of legislation quite properly included subsistence, security, abundance, and equality, and, at different times and in different places, Bentham can also be found advocating sickness benefit, free education, and minimum wages. Perhaps the final word, however, should be left to John Stuart Mill, a radical who was specifically educated to fully develop the legacy of Bentham. In his view, Bentham was the great questioner of established and customary procedures. With his restless and questioning mind, he had been primarily responsible for breaking ‘the yoke of authority’ and for making it necessary for each person to have reasons for his opinions and not merely impulses derived from tradition, habit, or authority. In fact, before Bentham and his utilitarianism, no one had really dared to question the habits of the British constitution and the idiosyncrasies of the English legal system. Bentham's own massive enthusiasm was the instigation of much beneficial practical reform. Without him, and despite his obsessive concerns with the model prison the Panopticon, the cause of liberal-reformism would have been so much weaker and would certainly have rested upon far less substantial intellectual concerns.

— John Halliday

Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832). English utilitarian and philosophical radical. Educated at Oxford University, Bentham qualified as a barrister before he was 20, though he never practised. He was highly critical of English law for its obscurantism, and devoted his life to systematizing it on the basis of utility. In his first substantial publication, A Fragment on Government (1776), Bentham launched a broadside against Blackstone's defence of England's constitution. His most important contribution to moral philosophy was contained in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), where he elaborated his theory of utility in terms of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In his ‘felicific calculus’, he demonstrated how alternative courses of action could be evaluated by estimating the total quantity of pleasure they would generate. His intellectual leadership of the philosophical radicals was a critical factor in achieving many of the legal, social, industrial, economic, and political reforms that took place in England during the 19th cent.

Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832) English philosopher of law, language, and ethics. Born in London, Bentham was educated at Oxford, and studied law, for which he developed a profound mistrust. His major preoccupation became the flimsy theoretical foundations of law and the abuses to which the law gives rise. His first important publication, A Fragment on Government (1776), was a small part of his enormous Comment on the Commentaries of the jurist Blackstone, the classic statement of the conservative legal theory that was one of Bentham's principal aversions. The main theoretical work Bentham published during his lifetime was the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789). Bentham was the founder of utilitarianism, and made famous the formula that the proper end of action is to achieve the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Much of his work tried to elaborate that doctrine and to show how utilitarianism could be developed into a calculus of pleasures (a hedonic or felicific calculus) whereby the effects of actions could be judged and right policy thereby identified. Utilitarianism was to provide a coherent and rational foundation for social and legal policy, whereas such fictions as natural rights, the social contract, and natural law served only to introduce incoherent and indefensible systems privileging some set of ‘intuitions’. Bentham's concern with law included a far-reaching critique of the abstractions and fictions within which law is often couched, and a penetrating understanding of the ways words force attitudes on the things they denote. He promoted a generally nominalistic and pragmatic theory of language, while his conception of definition by paraphrasis anticipates Frege in holding that the fundamental unit of meaning is not the individual word, but the sentence in which it occurs.

Bentham exercised enormous influence as the leader of a like-minded group of ‘philosophical radicals’, a group that included James and John Stuart Mill. He founded the Westminster Review as a counterpoise to the more conservative journals of the time, and was also the founder of University College London, where his embalmed body, topped by a wax head, is still revealed on special occasions.

Columbia Encyclopedia:

Jeremy Bentham

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Bentham, Jeremy, 1748-1832, English philosopher, jurist, political theorist, and founder of utilitarianism. Educated at Oxford, he was trained as a lawyer and was admitted to the bar, but he never practiced; he devoted himself to the scientific analysis of morals and legislation. His greatest work was his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), which shows the influence of Helvétius and won Bentham recognition throughout the Western world. His utilitarianism held that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the fundamental and self-evident principle of morality. This principle should govern our judgment of every institution and action. He identified happiness with pleasure and devised a moral arithmetic for judging the value of a pleasure or a pain. He argued that self-interests, properly understood, are harmonious and that the general welfare is bound up with personal happiness. Bentham's contribution to theoretical ethics has had less lasting effect than his thorough application of utilitarian principles to economics, jurisprudence, and politics. Devoting himself to the reform of English legislation and law, he demanded prison reform, codification of the laws, and extension of political franchise. The 19th-century reforms of criminal law, of judicial organization, and of the parliamentary electorate owe much to the influence of Bentham and his disciples.

Bibliography

See his Correspondence, ed. by T. L. Sprigge et al. (9 vol., 1968-89); biographies by R. Harrison (1985) and J. Dinwiddy (1989); study by G. J. Posthema (1989).

Oxford Companion to the Mind:

Jeremy Bentham

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(1748–1832). Born in London and educated at Westminster School, he entered the Queen's College, Oxford, at the age of 12. Although he studied law at Lincoln's Inn and was called to the Bar in 1772, he never practised law, but he wrote on its theory. He held that laws should be socially useful and should not merely reflect custom, that men are hedonists (pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain), and that desires may be classified into self and other-regarding: the function of law is to provide punishments and rewards to maintain a just balance between them. His famous dictum is that all actions are right and good which promote 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number', this principle being the basis of utilitarianism.

Bentham was a founder of University College London, where his mummified body may still be seen, dressed in his own clothes. He collaborated closely with James Mill, whom he met in 1808. He also founded the Westminster Review.

(Published 1987)


Jeremy Bentham achieved prominence as a philosopher, a jurist, a reformer, and as the founder of Utilitarianism.

Bentham was born February 15, 1748. He was educated at Oxford and admitted to the bar but decided against the practice of law. Bentham chose to pursue a career in legal, political, and social reform, applying principles of ethical philosophy to these endeavors.

He was greatly influenced by the work of Claude Adrien Helvetius, a French philosopher who believed that all persons are intellectually equal and that differences arise solely from educational opportunities. Helvetius also formulated a theory that good is measured by the degree of self-content experienced by a person, and that self-interest is the compelling force for all action. This latter belief had a profound effect on Bentham, who incorporated the idea in the formulation of the basic principles of Utilitarianism.

In 1789, Bentham gained public attention with publication of his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, which set forth his fundamental principles. He believed that the greatest happiness for the greatest number is the basis of morality. Happiness and pleasure were the same, and included social, intellectual, and moral as well as physical pleasures. Each pleasure has certain characteristics, including intensity and duration, and Bentham established a scale of measurement to judge the worth of a pleasure or a pain. Each person strives to do what makes him or her happiest. The happiness of an individual and the general welfare are complementary; the achievement of the greatest amount of happiness is the goal of morality.

Bentham applied his views to reform legislation, feeling that the purpose of the law was to maximize total happiness within the limitations of government. As a result, Bentham achieved great advances in prison reform, criminal law, civil service, and insurance and was active in the compilation of laws into comprehensible text.

Bentham attempted to persuade President James Madison to adopt a code of laws devised by Bentham with rules and previous cases added as illustrations of the utilization of the legal theory involved. Madison rejected the idea in 1811, but in the 1830s, a group of American reformers adopted several of Bentham's policies with the objective of formulating a simplified code of law.

Bentham was also instrumental in establishing the University of London. He had many followers, including the eminent British philosopher John Stuart Mill.

He died June 6, 1832, in London.


Quotes By:

Jeremy Bentham

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Quotes:

"The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong."

"Every law is an infraction of liberty."

"Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished."

"The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the inhabitants of the earth pursue it consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a Hell."

"The schoolmaster is abroad! And I trust to him armed with his primer against the soldier in full military array."

"He who thinks and thinks for himself, will always have a claim to thanks; it is no matter whether it be right or wrong, so as it be explicit. If it is right, it will serve as a guide to direct; if wrong, as a beacon to warn."

See more famous quotes by Jeremy Bentham

Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Jeremy Bentham

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Jeremy Bentham
Born 15 February 1748(1748-02-15)
London, England
Died 6 June 1832(1832-06-06) (aged 84)
London, England
Era 18th century
19th century
School Utilitarianism, legal positivism, liberalism
Main interests Political philosophy, philosophy of law, ethics, economics
Notable ideas Greatest happiness principle
Signature

Jeremy Bentham (play /ˈbɛnθəm/; 15 February 1748 – 6 June 1832) was an English author, jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism and animal rights, and the idea of the panopticon.[1]

His position included arguments in favour of individual and economic freedom, usury, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and the decriminalising of homosexual acts.[2] He argued for the abolition of slavery and the death penalty and for the abolition of physical punishment, including that of children.[3] Although strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights, calling them "nonsense upon stilts."[4]

He has come to be considered the founding figure of modern utilitarianism, through his own work and that of his students. These included his secretary and collaborator on the utilitarian school of philosophy, James Mill; James Mill's son John Stuart Mill; John Austin, legal philosopher; and several political leaders, including Robert Owen, a founder of modern socialism. He has been described as the "spiritual founder" of University College London (UCL),[5] though he played little direct part in its foundation.

Contents

Life

Portrait of Bentham by the studio of Thomas Frye, 1760–1762

Bentham was born in Houndsditch, London, into a wealthy family that supported the Tory party. He was reportedly a child prodigy: he was found as a toddler sitting at his father's desk reading a multi-volume history of England, and he began to study Latin at the age of three.[6] He had one surviving sibling, Samuel Bentham, with whom he shared a close bond.

He attended Westminster School and, in 1760, at age 12, was sent by his father to The Queen's College, Oxford, where he completed his Bachelor's degree in 1763 and his Master's degree in 1766. He trained as a lawyer and, though he never practised, was called to the bar in 1769. He became deeply frustrated with the complexity of the English legal code, which he termed the "Demon of Chicane".

When the American colonies published their Declaration of Independence in July 1776, the British government did not issue any official response but instead secretly commissioned London lawyer and pamphleteer John Lind to publish a rebuttal.[7] His 130-page tract was distributed in the colonies and contained an essay titled "Short Review of the Declaration" authored by Bentham, a friend of Lind's, which attacked and mocked the Americans' political philosophy.[8]

Among his many proposals for legal and social reform was a design for a prison building he called the Panopticon. He spent some sixteen years of his life developing and refining his ideas for the building, and hoped that the government would adopt the plan for a National Penitentiary, and appoint him as contractor-governor. Although the prison was never built, the concept had an important influence on later generations of thinkers. Twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that the Panopticon was paradigmatic of several 19th-century 'disciplinary' institutions.

Bentham became convinced that his plans for the Panopticon had been thwarted by the King and an aristocratic elite acting in their own interests. It was largely because of his brooding sense of injustice that he developed his ideas of "sinister interest" – that is, of the vested interests of the powerful conspiring against a wider public interest – which underpinned many of his broader arguments for reform.

More successful was his cooperation with Patrick Colquhoun in tackling the corruption in the pool of London which led to the Thames Police Bill of 1798 which was eventually passed in 1800, leading to the formation of the Thames River Police, which was the first preventive police force in the country and was a precedent for Robert Peel's reforms 30 years later.[9]

Bentham was in correspondence with many influential people. Adam Smith, for example, opposed free interest rates before he was made aware of Bentham's arguments on the subject. As a result of his correspondence with Mirabeau and other leaders of the French Revolution, he was declared an honorary citizen of France.[10] Bentham was an outspoken critic of the revolutionary discourse of natural rights and of the violence that arose after the Jacobins took power (1792). Between 1808 and 1810, he held a personal friendship with Latin American Independence Precursor Francisco de Miranda and paid visits to Miranda's Grafton Way house in London.

In 1823, he co-founded the Westminster Review with James Mill as a journal for the "Philosophical Radicals" – a group of younger disciples through whom Bentham exerted considerable influence in British public life.[11] One such young writer was Edwin Chadwick, who wrote on hygiene, sanitation and policing and was a major contributor to the Poor Law Amendment Act.[12] Bentham employed him as a secretary and bequeathed him a large legacy.

An insight into his character is given in Michael St. John Packe's The Life of John Stuart Mill:

During his youthful visits to Bowood House, the country seat of his patron Lord Lansdowne, he had passed his time at falling unsuccessfully in love with all the ladies of the house, whom he courted with a clumsy jocularity, while playing chess with them or giving them lessons on the harpsichord. Hopeful to the last, at the age of eighty he wrote again to one of them, recalling to her memory the far-off days when she had "presented him, in ceremony, with the flower in the green lane" [citing Bentham's memoirs]. To the end of his life he could not hear of Bowood without tears swimming in his eyes, and he was forced to exclaim, "Take me forward, I entreat you, to the future – do not let me go back to the past."[13]

A psychobiographical study by Philip Lucas and Anne Sheeran, which takes into account Bentham's eccentricities, egocentricity, obsessive and narrow preoccupations, and apparently diminished imaginative and emotional capacity, concludes that he may have had Asperger's syndrome.[14]

Work

Utilitarianism

Bentham's ambition in life was to create a "Pannomion", a complete utilitarian code of law. He not only proposed many legal and social reforms, but also expounded an underlying moral principle on which they should be based. This philosophy of utilitarianism took for its "fundamental axiom, it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong".[15] Bentham claimed to have borrowed this concept from the writings of Joseph Priestley,[16] although the closest that Priestley in fact came to expressing it was in the form "the good and happiness of the members, that is the majority of the members of any state, is the great standard by which every thing relating to that state must finally be determined".[17]

The "greatest happiness principle", or the principle of utility, forms the cornerstone of all Bentham's thought. By "happiness", he understood a predominance of "pleasure" over "pain". He wrote in The Principles of Morals and Legislation:

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think ...[18]

Another way to think about the principle of utility in the context in which Bentham explains it is, "usefulness." That is, Bentham talks about utility as a function of usefulness--how useful a product is determines how much we are willing to give up to obtain the product or service. The more useful the product is to us, the more value as a result we are willing to pay or exchange for the product (based on a money or barter economy, of course). The usefulness in exchange according to Bentham is the key incentive for purchase or exchange.[citation needed]

He also suggested a procedure for estimating the moral status of any action, which he called the Hedonistic or felicific calculus. Utilitarianism was revised and expanded by Bentham's student John Stuart Mill. In Mill's hands, "Benthamism" became a major element in the liberal conception of state policy objectives.

In his exposition of the felicific calculus, Bentham proposed a classification of 12 pains and 14 pleasures, by which we might test the 'happiness factor' of any action.[19] Nonetheless, it should not be overlooked that Bentham's 'hedonistic' theory (a term from J.J.C. Smart), unlike Mill's, is often criticized for lacking a principle of fairness embodied in a conception of justice. In "Bentham and the Common Law Tradition", Gerald J. Postema states, "No moral concept suffers more at Bentham's hand than the concept of justice. There is no sustained, mature analysis of the notion ..."[20] Thus, some critics object, it would be acceptable to torture one person if this would produce an amount of happiness in other people outweighing the unhappiness of the tortured individual. However, as P.J. Kelly argued in his book, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law, Bentham had a theory of justice that prevented such consequences. According to Kelly, for Bentham the law "provides the basic framework of social interaction by delimiting spheres of personal inviolability within which individuals can form and pursue their own conceptions of well-being."[21] It provides security, a precondition for the formation of expectations. As the hedonic calculus shows "expectation utilities" to be much higher than natural ones, it follows that Bentham does not favour the sacrifice of a few to the benefit of the many.

Bentham's Principles of Legislation focuses on the principle of utility and how this view of morality ties into legislative practices. His principle of utility regards "good" as that which produces the greatest amount of pleasure and the minimum amount of pain and "evil" as that which produces the most pain without the pleasure. This concept of pleasure and pain is defined by Bentham as physical as well as spiritual. Bentham writes about this principle as it manifests itself within the legislation of a society. He lays down a set of criteria for measuring the extent of pain or pleasure that a certain decision will create.

The criteria are divided into the categories of intensity, duration, certainty, proximity, productiveness, purity, and extent. Using these measurements, he reviews the concept of punishment and when it should be used as far as whether a punishment will create more pleasure or more pain for a society. He calls for legislators to determine whether punishment creates an even more evil offence. Instead of suppressing the evil acts, Bentham is arguing that certain unnecessary laws and punishments could ultimately lead to new and more dangerous vices than those being punished to begin with. Bentham follows these statements with explanations on how antiquity, religion, reproach of innovation, metaphor, fiction, fancy, antipathy and sympathy, begging the question, and imaginary law are not justification for the creation of legislature. Instead, Bentham is calling upon legislators to measure the pleasures and pains associated with any legislation and to form laws in order to create the greatest good for the greatest number. He argues that the concept of the individual pursuing his or her own happiness cannot be necessarily declared "right", because often these individual pursuits can lead to greater pain and less pleasure for the society as a whole. Therefore, the legislation of a society is vital to maintaining a society with optimum pleasure and the minimum degree of pain for the greatest amount of people.

Economics

Bentham's opinions about monetary economics were completely different from those of David Ricardo; however, they had some similarities to those of Thornton. He focused on monetary expansion as a means of helping to create full employment. He was also aware of the relevance of forced saving, propensity to consume, the saving-investment relationship, and other matters that form the content of modern income and employment analysis. His monetary view was close to the fundamental concepts employed in his model of utilitarian decision making. His work is widely regarded to be at the forefront of modern welfare economics.

Bentham stated that pleasures and pains can be ranked according to their value or "dimension" such as intensity, duration, certainty of a pleasure or a pain. He was concerned with maxima and minima of pleasures and pains; and they set a precedent for the future employment of the maximisation principle in the economics of the consumer, the firm and the search for an optimum in welfare economics.[22]

Animal rights

Bentham is widely regarded as one of the earliest proponents of animal rights, and has even been hailed as "the first patron saint of animal rights".[23] He argued that the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, should be the benchmark, or what he called the "insuperable line." If reason alone were the criterion by which we judge who ought to have rights, human infants and adults with certain forms of disability might fall short, too.[24][25] In 1789, alluding to the limited degree of legal protection afforded to slaves in the French West Indies by the Code Noir, he wrote:

The day has been, I am sad to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing, as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?[26]

However, Bentham's position is a little more complex. Though he clearly objected to the causing of needless pain to animals (and, indeed, humans) and although the famous quotation above is frequently used as a slogan by animal rights activists, Bentham in fact approved of conducting medical experiments on animals, providing that said experiments had in mind particular objects which would be of benefit to humanity, and had a reasonable chance of success. In a letter to the Morning Chronicle on 9 March 1825, Bentham thus wrote:

I have never seen, nor ever can see, any objection to the putting of dogs and other inferior animals to pain, in the way of medical experiment, when that experiment has a determinate object, beneficial to mankind, accompanied with a fair prospect of the accomplishment of it. But I have a decided and insuperable objection to the putting of them to pain without any such view. To my apprehension, every act by which, without prospect of preponderant good, pain is knowingly and willingly produced in any being whatsoever, is an act of cruelty; and like other bad habits, the more the correspondent habit is indulged in, the stronger it grows, and the more frequently productive of its bad fruit. I am unable to comprehend how it should be, that to him to whom it is a matter of amusement to see a dog or horse suffer, it should not be matter of like amusement to see a man suffer; seeing, as I do, how much more morality as well as intelligence, an adult quadruped of those and many other species has in him, than any biped has for some months after he has been brought into existence.[27]

Gender and sexuality

Bentham said that it was the placing of women in a legally inferior position that made him choose, at the age of eleven, the career of a reformist.[28] Bentham spoke for a complete equality between sexes.

The essay Offences Against One's Self, argued for the liberalisation of laws prohibiting homosexual sex.[29] The essay remained unpublished during his lifetime for fear of offending public morality. It was published for the first time in 1931.[30] While Bentham clearly is not condoning homosexual activities, he does not believe them to be unnatural, describing them as "irregularities of the venereal appetite." The essay chastises the society of the time for making a disproportionate response to what Bentham appears to consider a largely private offence – public displays or forced acts being dealt with rightly by other laws.

Auto-icon

Bentham's Auto-icon

As requested in his will, Bentham's body was dissected as part of a public anatomy lecture. Afterward, the skeleton and head were preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet called the "Auto-icon", with the skeleton stuffed out with hay and dressed in Bentham's clothes. Originally kept by his disciple Thomas Southwood Smith,[31] it was acquired by University College London in 1850. It is normally kept on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the college, but for the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, it was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where it was listed as "present but not voting".[32]

Bentham had intended the Auto-icon to incorporate his actual head, mummified to resemble its appearance in life. However, Southwood Smith's experimental efforts at mummification, although technically successful, left the head looking distastefully macabre, with dried and darkened skin stretched tautly over the skull. The Auto-icon was therefore given a wax head, fitted with some of Bentham's own hair. The real head was displayed in the same case as the Auto-icon for many years, but became the target of repeated student pranks. It is now locked away securely.[33]

A 360-degree rotatable, high-resolution 'Virtual Auto-Icon' is available at the UCL Bentham Project's website.

Bentham and UCL

Bentham is widely associated with the foundation in 1826 of the University of London (the institution which in 1836 became University College London), though he was 78 years old when the University opened and played only an indirect role in its establishment. His direct involvement was limited to his buying a single £100 share in the new University, making him just one of over a thousand shareholders.[34]

Bentham and his ideas can nonetheless be seen as having inspired several of the actual founders of the University. He strongly believed that education should be more widely available, particularly to those who were not wealthy or who did not belong to the established church, both of which were required of students by Oxford and Cambridge. As the University of London was the first in England to admit all, regardless of race, creed or political belief, it was largely consistent with Bentham's vision. There is some evidence that, from the sidelines, he played a "more than passive part" in the planning discussions for the new institution, although it is also apparent that "his interest was greater than his influence".[34] He failed in his efforts to see his disciple John Bowring appointed professor of English or History, but he did oversee the appointment of another pupil, John Austin, as the first professor of Jurisprudence in 1829.

The Flaxman Gallery at University College London, showing Henry Tonks's painting of Bentham approving the plans of the University buildings.

The more direct associations between Bentham and UCL – the College's custody of his Auto-icon and of the majority of his surviving papers – postdate his death by some years: the papers were donated in 1849, and the Auto-icon in 1850. A large painting by Henry Tonks hanging in UCL's Flaxman Gallery depicts Bentham approving the plans of the new University, but it was executed in 1922 and the scene is entirely imaginary. Since 1959 (when the Bentham Committee was first established) UCL has hosted the Bentham Project, which is progressively publishing a definitive edition of Bentham's writings.

UCL now endeavours to acknowledge Bentham's influence on its foundation, while avoiding any suggestion of direct involvement, by describing him as its "spiritual founder".[5]

Publications

Bentham was an obsessive writer and reviser, but was constitutionally incapable, except on rare occasions, of bringing his work to completion and publication.[35] Most of what appeared in print in his lifetime (see this list of published works) was prepared for publication by others. Several of his works first appeared in French translation, prepared for the press by Étienne Dumont. Some made their first appearance in English in the 1820s as a result of back-translation from Dumont's 1802 collection (and redaction) of Bentham's writing on civil and penal legislation.

Works published in Bentham's lifetime include:

  • "Short Review of the Declaration" (1776). An attack on America's Declaration of Independence.
  • Fragment on Government (1776). This was an unsparing criticism of some introductory passages relating to political theory in William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. The book, published anonymously, was well received and credited to some of the greatest minds of the time. Bentham disagreed with Blackstone's defence of judge-made law, his defence of legal fictions, his theological formulation of the doctrine of mixed government, his appeal to a social contract and his use of the vocabulary of natural law. Bentham's "Fragment" was only a small part of a "Commentary on the Commentaries", which remained unpublished until the twentieth century.
  • Introduction to Principles of Morals and Legislation (printed for publication 1780, published 1789).
  • Defence of Usury (1787). Jeremy Bentham wrote a series of thirteen “Letters” addressed to Adam Smith, published in 1787 as Defence of Usury. Bentham’s main argument against the restriction is that “projectors” generate positive externalities. G.K. Chesterton identified Bentham's essay on usury as the very beginning of the 'modern world.' Bentham’s arguments were very influential. “Writers of eminence” moved to abolish the restriction, and repeal was achieved in stages and fully achieved in England in 1854. There is little evidence as to Smith’s reaction. He did not revise the offending passages in The Wealth of Nations, but Smith made little or no substantial revisions after the third edition of 1784.[36]
  • Panopticon (1787, 1791).
  • Emancipate your Colonies (1793)
  • Traité de Législation Civile et Penale (1802, edited by Étienne Dumont. 3 vols)
  • Punishments and Rewards (1811)
  • A Table of the Springs of Action (1815)
  • Parliamentary Reform Catechism (1817)
  • Church-of-Englandism (printed 1817, published 1818)
  • Elements of the Art of Packing (1821)
  • The Influence of Natural Religion upon the Temporal Happiness of Mankind (1822, written with George Grote and published under the pseudonym Philip Beauchamp)
  • Not Paul But Jesus (1823, published under the pseudonym Gamaliel Smith)
  • Book of Fallacies (1824)
  • A Treatise on Judicial Evidence (1825)

On his death, Bentham left manuscripts amounting to an estimated 30,000,000 words, which are now largely held by UCL's Special Collections (c.60,000 manuscript folios), and the British Library (c.15,000 folios). John Bowring, a British politician who had been Bentham's trusted friend, was appointed his literary executor and charged with the task of preparing a collected edition of his works. This appeared in 11 volumes in 1838–1843: Bowring based his edition on previously published editions (including those of Dumont) rather than Bentham's own manuscripts, and he did not reprint Bentham's works on religion at all. Bowring's work has been criticised, although it includes such interesting writings on international relations as Bentham's A Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace written 1786–89, which forms part IV of the Principles of International Law.

In 1952–54, Werner Stark published a three-volume set, Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings, in which he attempted to bring together all of Bentham's writings on economic matters, including both published and unpublished material. Although a significant achievement, the work is considered by scholars to be flawed in many points of detail,[37] and a new edition of the economic writings is currently in preparation by the Bentham Project.

In 1959, the Bentham Committee was established under the auspices of University College London with the aim of producing a definitive edition of Bentham's collected works. It set up the Bentham Project to undertake the task, and the first volume was published in 1968. To date, 29 volumes have appeared; the complete edition is projected to run to well over seventy. The Project is currently attempting to digitise the Bentham papers and crowdsource their transcription: see Transcribe Bentham below.

Transcribe Bentham

Transcribe Bentham is an award-winning crowdsourced manuscript transcription project, run by University College London's Bentham Project,[38] in partnership with UCL's UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL Library Services, UCL Learning and Media Services, the University of London Computer Centre, and the online community. The project was launched in September 2010 and is making freely available, via a specially designed transcription interface, digital images of UCL's vast Bentham Papers collection — which runs to some 60,000 manuscript folios — in order to engage the public and recruit volunteers to assist in transcribing the material. Volunteer-produced transcripts will contribute to the Bentham Project's production of the new edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, and will be uploaded to UCL's digital Bentham Papers repository,[39] widening access to the collection for all and ensuring its long-term preservation. Manuscripts can be viewed and transcribed by signing-up for a transcriber account at the Transcription Desk,[40] via the Transcribe Bentham website.[41]

Transcribe Bentham has garnered international attention - such as in a feature article in The New York Times[42], and a radio broadcast on Deutsche Welle World radio.[43] The project was shortlisted for the 2011 Digital Heritage Award,[44] and received an Award of Distinction in the Digital Communities category of the 2011 Prix Ars Electronica.[45] The open-source code for the Transcribe Bentham transcription tool is available for reuse and customisation.[46]

See also

References

  1. ^ For his advocacy of animal rights, see the following:
  2. ^ Bentham, Jeremy. "Offences Against One's Self", first published in Journal of Homosexuality, v.3:4(1978), p.389-405; continued in v.4:1(1978).
    • Also see Boralevi, Lea Campos. Bentham and the Oppressed. Walter de Gruyter, 1984, p. 37.
  3. ^ Bedau, Hugo Adam (1983). "Bentham's Utilitarian Critique of the Death Penalty". The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 74 (3): 1033–1065. doi:10.2307/1143143. 
  4. ^ Harrison, Ross (1995). "Jeremy Bentham". In Honderich, Ted. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford University Press. pp. 85–88. http://www.utilitarian.net/bentham/about/1995----.htm.  Also see Sweet, William (11 April 2001). "Jeremy Bentham". The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/bentham.htm. Retrieved 7 January 2011. 
  5. ^ a b UCL Academic Figures.
  6. ^ "Jeremy Bentham". University College London. Archived from the original on 1 January 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070101105009/http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/info/jb.htm. Retrieved 4 January 2007. 
  7. ^ Declaring Independence: The Origin and Influence of America's Founding Document. Edited by Christian Y. Dupont and Peter S. Onuf. University of Virginia Library (Charlottesville, VA: 2008) pp. 32–33. ISBN 978-0-9799997-0-3.
  8. ^ "Short Review of the Declaration" (1776) as found in The Declaration of Independence: A Global History by David Armitage
  9. ^ Everett 1966, pp. 67–69
  10. ^ Bentham, Jeremy, Philip Schofield, Catherine Pease-Watkin, and Cyprian Blamires (eds), Rights, Representation, and Reform: Nonsense upon Stilts and Other Writings on the French Revolution, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002, p. 291.
  11. ^ Joseph Hamburger, Intellectuals in politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophical Radicals (Yale University Press, 1965); William Thomas, The philosophic radicals: nine studies in theory and practice, 1817–1841 (Oxford, 1979)
  12. ^ Everett 1968, p. 94
  13. ^ St. John Packe, Michael. The Life of John Stuart Mill. 1952, p. 16.
  14. ^ Lucas and Sheeran 2006.
  15. ^ Bentham, Jeremy (1776). A Fragment on Government. London. , Preface (2nd para.).
  16. ^ Bentham, Jeremy (1821). On the Liberty of the Press, and Public Discussion. London. p. 24. 
  17. ^ Priestley, Joseph (1768). An Essay on the First Principles of Government. London. p. 17. 
  18. ^ Bentham, Jeremy (1789). The Principles of Morals and Legislation. p. 1.  (Chapter I)
  19. ^ Bentham, Jeremy. The Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) Ch IV.
  20. ^ Postema, Gerald J. (1986). Bentham and the Common Law Tradition. Oxford. p. 148. 
  21. ^ Kelly, P. J. (1990). Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law. Oxford. p. 81. 
  22. ^ Spiegel (1991). "The growth of Economic Thought", Ed.3. Duke University. ISBN 0-8223-0973-4., p. 341-343.
  23. ^ Benthall, Jonathan. "Animal liberation and rights", Anthropology Today, volume 23, issue 2, April 2007, p. 2.
  24. ^ Bentham, Jeremy. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789. Latest edition: Adamant Media Corporation, 2005.
  25. ^ Benthall, Jonathan. "Animal liberation and rights", Anthropology Today, volume 23, issue 2, April 2007, p. 1.
  26. ^ Bentham, Jeremy. Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, second edition, 1823, chapter 17, footnote.
  27. ^ Jeremy Bentham, letter to the Morning Chronicle, 9 March 1825, p. 1
  28. ^ Miriam Williford, Bentham on the rights of Women
  29. ^ Boralevi, Bentham and the Oppressed. p. 40
  30. ^ Boralevi, Bentham and the Oppressed. p. 37
  31. ^ C.F.A. Marmoy, "The 'Auto-Icon' of Jeremy Bentham at University College, London". University College London. Archived from the original on 10 February 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070210065136/http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/info/marmoy.htm. Retrieved 3 March 2007.  "It seems that the case with Bentham's body now rested in New Broad Street; Southwood Smith did not remove to 38 Finsbury Square until several years later. Bentham must have been seen by many visitors, including Charles Dickens."
  32. ^ "History-Chemical History of UCL-The Autoicon". University College London. http://www.chem.ucl.ac.uk/resources/history/chemhistucl/hist03.html. Retrieved 6 July 2007. 
  33. ^ "UCL Bentham Project". University College London. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/who/autoicon. Retrieved 22 July 2011. 
  34. ^ a b Harte, Negley "The owner of share no. 633: Jeremy Bentham and University College London", in Catherine Fuller (ed.), The Old Radical: representations of Jeremy Bentham (London: UCL, 1998), pp. 5-8.
  35. ^ Lucas and Sheeran 2006, pp. 26-7.
  36. ^ Bentham, Jeremy. Jan 2008. Gulphs in Mankind’s Career of Prosperity: A Critique of Adam Smith on Interest Rate Restrictions. Econ Journal Watch 5(1): 66–77. [1]
  37. ^ See Philip Schofield, "Werner Stark and Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings", History of European Ideas, vol. 35 (2009), pp. 475-494.
  38. ^ "The Bentham Project". Ucl.ac.uk. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/bentham-project. Retrieved 2012-04-26. 
  39. ^ "UCL digital Bentham collection". Ucl.ac.uk. 1996-08-20. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/bentham. Retrieved 2012-04-26. 
  40. ^ "Transcribe Bentham: Transcription Desk". Transcribe-bentham.da.ulcc.ac.uk. http://www.transcribe-bentham.da.ulcc.ac.uk/td/Transcribe_Bentham. Retrieved 2012-04-26. 
  41. ^ "Transcribe Bentham". Ucl.ac.uk. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/transcribe-bentham. Retrieved 2012-04-26. 
  42. ^ "New York Times feature on ''Transcribe Bentham'&#39". Nytimes.com. 2010-12-28. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/books/28transcribe.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1. Retrieved 2012-04-26. 
  43. ^ wysiwyg* Software Design GmbH. "Deutsche Welle World radio feature on ''Transcribe Bentham''". Dw-world.de. http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_single_mediaplayer/0,,14808024_start_0_end_0_type_audio_struct_3126_contentId_6424149,00.html. Retrieved 2012-04-26. 
  44. ^ Digital Heritage Award 2011 shortlist
  45. ^ Austria. "Prix Ars Electronica 2011 winners". Aec.at. http://www.aec.at/prix/en/gewinner/2011/#digital-communities. Retrieved 2012-04-26. 
  46. ^ "''Transcribe Bentham'' software code". Code.google.com. http://code.google.com/p/tb-transcription-desk/. Retrieved 2012-04-26. 

Bibliography

  • Boralevi, Lea Campos (1984). Bentham and the Oppressed. Berlin: De Gruyter. 
  • Burns, J. H. (1989). "Bentham and Blackstone: A Lifetime's Dialectic". Utilitas 1: 22. doi:10.1017/S0953820800000042. 
  • Dinwiddy, John (2004). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-4520-8. 
  • Everett, Charles W. (1966). Jeremy Bentham. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. 
  • Gunn, J.A.W. (1989). "Jeremy Bentham and the Public Interest", in J. Lively & A. Reeve (eds.) Modern Political Theory from Hobbes to Marx: Key Debates, London, pp. 199–219
  • Harris, Jonathan (1998). "Bernardino Rivadavia and Benthamite "discipleship"". Latin American Research Review 33: 129–49. 
  • Harrison, Ross (1983). Bentham. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0-7100-9526-0. 
  • Kelly, P.J. (1990). Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-825418-0. 
  • Lucas, Philip; Sheeran, Anne (2006). "Asperger’s Syndrome and the Eccentricity and Genius of Jeremy Bentham". Journal of Bentham Studies 8.  Available online
  • Postema, Gerald J. (1986). Bentham and the Common Law Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-825505-5. 
  • Robinson, Dave; Groves, Judy (2003). Introducing Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Icon Books. ISBN 1-84046-450-X. 
  • Rosen, F. (1983). Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy: A Study of the "Constitutional Code". Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-822656-X. 
  • Rosen, Frederick (1990). "The Origins of Liberal Utilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham and Liberty". In R. Bellamy, ed., Victorian Liberalism: Nineteenth-century Political Thought and Practice, London, pp. 5870
  • Rosen, Frederick (1992). Bentham, Byron, and Greece: constitutionalism, nationalism, and early liberal political thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-820078-1. 
  • Rosen (ed.), Frederick (2007). Jeremy Bentham. Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-2566-7. 
  • Schofield, Philip (2006). Utility and Democracy: The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820856-3. 
  • Schofield, Philip (2009). Bentham: a guide for the perplexed. London: Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-9589-1. 
  • Semple, Janet (1993). Bentham's Prison: a Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-827387-8. 
  • Twining, William (1985). Theories of Evidence: Bentham and Wigmore. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-1285-9. 

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Benthamism (utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham)
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William Blackstone (philosophy)

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