Jeremy Bentham
The good is the greatest happiness of the greatest number: pleasures and pains can be calculated.
Life
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was an English jurist and reformer, the founder of utilitarianism. He held that the good is measured by the pleasures and pains an action produces for everyone it touches, and he wanted laws, prisons and education reformed on that basis. He matters for debates on morality, happiness and the place of animals in our moral concern.
Main works
Grounds morals and law on the principle of utility: pleasure and pain are the only standards of action.
Criticises social contract theory and defends utility as the basis of government.
A prison design in which a single inspector can watch all inmates without being seen.
In his own words
« 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. »
« The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceHe judged religion by its effects on happiness and found natural religion unfounded and harmful.
Bentham (with Grote), Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind (1822)
Words and ideas must be traced back to sensations of pleasure and pain and to observable things; he treats abstractions as useful fictions.
Bentham, Chrestomathia (1816)
The right act is the one that gives the greatest happiness to the greatest number (principle of utility).
Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)