Philosophical concepts and applications

Bentham

Jeremy Bentham is an interesting character in that he entered the legal profession after graduating from Oxford University in 1763 but was appalled by the level of corruption that he witnessed; consequently, he left his law firm in order to investigate and work to rectify the underlying social ills that could result in such a widespread miscarriage of integrity. Largely, his efforts in this regard are considered to be near to as much success as one man could hope for: two days after his death in 1832, British Parliament passed the Reform Bill, which wrested political power from the ruling nobility and afforded it to the general public. Largely, this bill came as a result of his continual activism.

Fundamentally, Bentham's approach to social reform began with the recognition that the corruption of his day was centrally an outgrowth of unsound philosophical notions. The origins of natural law, natural rights, and the social contract theory he perceived to be utterly lacking in their core presuppositions. He saw these theories as relying upon notions of self-evidence and that they, in fact, were merely reflections of broader social norms rather than philosophical truths. As a result, Bentham supplied his own principle of utility, which relied upon a qualitative understanding of hedonism and unfolded into a backing for social justice on a broad scale.

Understanding Bentham's objection to the leading philosophical pulls of his time, however, requires the recognition that many of his ultimate conclusions are quite analogous to those reached from the notions of natural law and natural rights. But he believed that founding societies upon principles of self-evidence was a definitive step in the wrong direction: "Natural rights, he says, is simple nonsense; natural and imprescriptible rights is 'rhetorical nonsense -- nonsense upon stilts.'" In other words, Bentham recognized that there was likely truth to the notion that all men should be treated as equals, but that in using this principle to deduce that all men were equal was an obvious case of begging the question. He writes, "This notion of an actually existing unconnected state of nature, it too wild to be seriously admitted." Essentially, he denies that there is any reasonable basis for theories depending upon idealistic conceptions of the temporal foundations of society. Instead, Bentham suggests that political organizations need to be judged by their practical applicability and their ultimate outcomes. So, the reverence of many of his predecessors and contemporaries for the past is unfounded because, "Whilst an old individual may have more experience than a young, an older period in history must have less."

The basis for Bentham's theory of government necessarily starts from his ethical propositions; both of these depend upon his principle of utility -- he called this the "greatest happiness" principle. Bentham identifies happiness with pleasure, and supposes that the rightness or wrongness of actions can only be accurately comprehended upon a scale of pleasure and pain -- happiness and unhappiness. This makes him a hedonist, but he is a utilitarian hedonist in that he believes that human actions should be measured along these guidelines based upon their definitive outcomes. The outcome of purely moral actions spreads this principle throughout all of society: "It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." However, Bentham faces an immediate problem with such a premise: it is unclear as to whether the greatest happiness obtained is of the greatest quantity by virtue of its quality, or simply by the number of individuals who experience it. He rectifies this ambiguity by asserting that pleasures only truly differ from one another in their amount, never in their particular form. In this way, he attempts to quantify pleasure -- or happiness -- so that it may be used to measure the rightness or wrongness of actions within a society.

Still another difficulty with Bentham's greatest happiness position is that we are left to wonder whether an action would be moral simply by producing the most pleasurable outcomes in general, or the most pleasurable outcomes with respect to the general population. For instance, some action by the government could produce numerous pleasures for a small portion of the population, or it could produce a small bit of pleasure for the entire populous; Bentham seems to endorse both outcomes, but it is easy to imagine situations in which the two might conflict. He leaves us with no way to address this dilemma. Perhaps Bentham believed that he properly attended to this objection by contending that pleasure comes in one variety -- only being separated by time interval and intensity -- but it is still possible to enjoy a finite number of singular pleasures, and he fails to indicate how such pleasures should be distributed throughout a just society.

Bentham's hedonism is psychological as well. He writes, "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." Such a position implies that human beings are by their very nature pleasure-seekers; this, obviously, suggests a level of egoism to each individual person's actions. The trouble with this psychological stance is that it then questions Bentham's ethical stance -- the greatest happiness of the greatest number -- because for this to be applicable to society it requires selfless actions. He recognizes this and offers the practical solution of societal sanctions.