Jeremy Bentham [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher and political radical.
Although he never practiced law, he spent most of his life critiquing the existing
law and strongly advocating legal reform. Bentham is primarily known today for
his moral philosophy, especially his principle of utilitarianism which
evaluates actions based upon their consequences, in particular the overall happiness created for everyone affected by the action. He maintained
that putting this principle into consistent practice would provide
justification for social, political, and legal institutions. Although Bentham's
influence was minor during his life, his impact was greater in later years as
his ideas were carried on by followers such as John Stuart Mill, John
Austin, and other consequentialists.
Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to those parts of this article)
1. Life
2. Method
3. Human Nature
4. Moral Philosophy
5. Political Philosophy
6. Bibliography of Bentham's Work
1. Life
A leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law and one of the founders of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham was born in
Houndsditch, London on February 15, 1748. He was the son and grandson of attorneys, and his early family life was colored by a mix of
pious superstition (on his mother's side) and Enlightenment rationalism (from his father). Bentham lived during a time of major
social, political and economic change. The Industrial Revolution (with the massive economic and social shifts that it brought in
its wake) the rise of the middle class, and revolutions in France and America all were reflected in Bentham's reflections on existing
institutions. In 1760, Bentham entered Queen's College, Oxford and, upon graduation in 1764, studied law at Lincoln's Inn. Though
qualified to practice law, he never did so. Instead, he devoted most of his life to writing on matters of legal reform--though,
curiously, he made little effort to publish much of what he wrote.
Bentham spent his time in intense study, often writing some eight to twelve hours a day. While most of his best known work deals with
theoretical questions in law, Bentham was an active polemicist and was engaged for some time in developing projects that proposed
various practical ideas for the reform of social institutions. Although his work came to have an important influence on political
philosophy, Bentham did not write any single text giving the essential principles of his views on this topic. His most important
theoretical work is the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), in which much of his moral
theory--which he said reflected "the greatest happiness principle"--is described and developed.
In 1781, Bentham became associated with the Earl of Shelburne and, through him,
came into contact with a number of the leading Whig politicians and lawyers.
Although his work was admired by some at the time, Bentham's ideas were still
largely unappreciated. In 1785, he briefly joined his brother Samuel in Russia,
where he pursued his writing with even more than his usual intensity, and he
devised a plan for the now infamous "Panopticon"--a model prison where all prisoners would be observable by (unseen) guards at all
times--a project which he had hoped would interest the Czarina Catherine the Great. After his return to England in 1788, and for
some 20 years thereafter, Bentham pursued--fruitlessly and at great expense--the idea of the panopticon. Fortunately, an inheritance
received in 1796 provided him with financial stability. By the late 1790s, Bentham's theoretical work came to have a more significant
place in political reform. Still, his influence was, arguably, still greater on the continent. (Bentham was made an honorary citizen
of the fledgling French Republic in 1792, and his The Theory of Legislation was published first, in French, by his Swiss
disciple, Etienne Dumont, in 1802.)
The precise extent of Bentham's influence in British politics has been a matter of some debate. While he attacked both Tory and Whig
policies, both the Reform Bill of 1832 (promoted by Bentham's disciple, Lord Henry Brougham) and later reforms in the century (such
as the secret ballot, advocated by Bentham's friend, George Grote, who was elected to parliament in 1832) reflected Benthamite
concerns. The impact of Bentham's ideas goes further still. Contemporary philosophical and economic vocabulary (e.g.,
"international," "maximize," "minimize," and "codification") is indebted to Bentham's proclivity for inventing terms, and among his
other disciples were James Mill and his son, John (who was responsible for an early edition of some of Bentham's manuscripts), as
well as the legal theorist, John Austin.
At his death in London, on June 6, 1832, Bentham left literally tens of thousands of manuscript pages--some of which was work only
sketched out, but all of which he hoped would be prepared for publication. He also left a large estate, which was used to finance the
newly-established University College, London (for those individuals excluded from university education--i.e., non-conformists,
Catholics and Jews), and his cadaver, per his instructions, was dissected, embalmed, dressed, and placed in a chair, and to
this day resides in a cabinet in a corridor of the main building of University College. The Bentham Project, set up in the early
1960s at University College, has as its aim the publishing of a definitive, scholarly edition of Bentham's works and correspondence.
Back to Table of Contents
2. Method
Influenced by the philosophes of the Enlightenment (such as Beccaria, Helvétius, Diderot, D'Alembert, and
Voltaire) and also by Locke and Hume, Bentham's work combined an empiricist approach with a rationalism that emphasized conceptual
clarity and deductive argument. Locke's influence was primarily as the author of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,
and Bentham saw in him a model of one who emphasized the importance of reason over custom and tradition and who insisted on precision
in the use of terms. Hume's influence was not so much on Bentham's method as on his account of the underlying principles of
psychological associationism and on his articulation of the principle of utility, which was then still often annexed to theological
views.
Bentham's analytical and empirical method is especially obvious when one looks at some of his main criticisms of the law and of moral
and political discourse in general. His principal target was the presence of "fictions"--in particular, legal fictions. On his view,
to consider any part or aspect of a thing in abstraction from that thing is to run the risk of confusion or to cause positive deceit.
While, in some cases, such "fictional" terms as "relation," "right," "power," and "possession" were of some use, in many cases their
original warrant had been forgotten, so that they survived as the product of either prejudice or inattention. In those cases where
the terms could be "cashed out" in terms of the properties of real things, they could continue to be used, but otherwise they were to
be abandoned. Still, Bentham hoped to eliminate legal fictions as far as possible from the law, including the legal fiction that
there was some original contract that explained why there was any law at all. He thought that, at the very least, clarifications and
justifications could be given that avoided the use of such terms.
Back to Table of Contents
3. Human Nature
For Bentham, morals and legislation can be described scientifically, but such a description requires an account of human nature.
Just as nature is explained through reference to the laws of physics, so human behavior can be explained by reference to the two
primary motives of pleasure and pain; this is the theory of psychological hedonism.
There is, Bentham admits, no direct proof of such an analysis of human motivation--though he holds that it is clear that, in acting,
all people implicitly refer to it. At the beginning of the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham
writes that "[n]ature 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:
every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it." From this we see that, for
Bentham, pleasure and pain serve not only as explanations for action, but they also define one's good. It is, in short, on the basis
of pleasures and pains, which can exist only in individuals, that Bentham thought one could construct a calculus of value.
Related to this fundamental hedonism is a view of the individual as exhibiting a natural, rational self-interest--a psychological
egoism. In his "Remarks on Bentham's Philosophy" (1833), Mill cites Bentham's The Book of Fallacies (London: Hunt, 1824, pp.
392-3) that "[i]n every human breast...self-regarding interest is predominant over social interest; each person's own
individual interest over the interests of all other persons taken together." Fundamental to the nature and activity of individuals,
then, is their own well-being, and reason--as a natural capability of the person--is considered to be subservient to this end.
Bentham believed that the nature of the human person can be adequately described without mention of social relationships. To begin
with, the idea of "relation" is but a "fictitious entity," though necessary for "convenience of discourse." And, more specifically,
he remarks that "the community is a fictitious body," and it is but "the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it."
Thus, the extension of the term "individual" is, in the main, no greater and no less than the biological entity. Bentham's view,
then, is that the individual--the basic unit of the social sphere--is an "atom" and there is no
"self" or "individual" greater than
the human individual. A person's relations with others--even if important--are not essential and describe nothing that is, strictly
speaking, necessary to its being what it is.
Finally, the picture of the human person presented by Bentham is based on a psychological associationism indebted to David Hartley
and David Hume; Bentham's analysis of "habit" (which is essential to his understanding of society and especially political society)
particularly reflects associationist presuppositions. On this view, pleasure and pain are objective states and can be measured in
terms of their intensity, duration, certainty, proximity, fecundity and purity. This allows then both for an objective determination
of an activity or state and for a comparison with others.
Bentham's understanding of human nature reveals, in short, a psychological, ontological, and also moral individualism where, to
extend the critique of utilitarianism made by Graeme Duncan and John Gray ("The Left Against Mill," in New Essays on John Stuart
Mill and Utilitarianism, Eds. Wesley E. Cooper, Kai Nielsen and Steven C. Patten, 1979), "the individual human being is conceived
as the source of values and as himself the supreme value."
Back to Table of Contents
4. Moral Philosophy
As Elie Halévy notes, there are three principal characteristics of which constitute the basis of Bentham's moral and
political philosophy: the greatest happiness principle, universal egoism and the artificial identification of one's interests with
those of others. Though these characteristics are present throughout his work, they are particularly evident in the Introduction
to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, where Bentham is concerned with articulating rational principles that would provide
a basis and guide for legal, social and moral reform.
To begin with, Bentham's moral philosophy reflects what he calls at different times
"the greatest happiness principle" or "the
principle of utility"--a term which he borrows from Hume. In adverting to this principle, however, he was not referring to just the
usefulness of things or actions, but to the extent to which these things or actions promote the general happiness. Specifically,
then, what is morally obligatory is that which produces the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people, happiness
being determined by reference to the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. Thus, Bentham writes, "By the principle of utility
is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have
to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words, to
promote or to oppose that happiness." And Bentham emphasizes that this applies to "every action whatsoever." That which does not
maximize the greatest happiness (such as an act of pure ascetic sacrifice) is, therefore, morally wrong. (Unlike some of the previous
attempts at articulating a universal hedonism, Bentham's approach is thoroughly naturalistic.)
Bentham's moral philosophy, then, clearly reflects his psychological view that the primary motivators in human beings are pleasure
and pain. Bentham admits that his version of the principle of utility is something that does not admit of direct proof, but he notes
that this is not a problem as some explanatory principles do not admit of any such proof and all explanation must start somewhere.
But this, by itself, does not explain why another's happiness--or the general happiness--should count. And, in fact, he provides a
number of suggestions that could serve as answers to the question of why we should be concerned with the happiness of others.
First, Bentham says, the principle of utility is something to which individuals, in acting, refer either explicitly or implicitly,
and this is something that can be ascertained and confirmed by simple observation. Indeed, Bentham held that all existing systems of
morality can be "reduced to the principles of sympathy and antipathy," which is precisely that which defines utility. A second
argument found in Bentham is that, if pleasure is the good, then it is good irrespective of whose pleasure it is. Thus, a moral
injunction to pursue or maximize pleasure has force independently of the specific interests of the person acting. Bentham also
suggests that individuals would reasonably seek the general happiness simply because the interests of others are inextricably bound
up with their own, though he recognized that this is something that is easy for individuals to ignore. Nevertheless, Bentham
envisages a solution to this as well. Specifically, he proposes that making this identification of interests obvious and, when
necessary, bringing diverse interests together would be the responsibility of the legislator.
Finally, Bentham held that there are advantages to a moral philosophy based on a principle of utility. To begin with, the principle
of utility is clear (compared to other moral principles), allows for objective and disinterested public discussion, and enables
decisions to be made where there seem to be conflicts of (prima facie) legitimate interests. Moreover, in calculating the
pleasures and pains involved in carrying out a course of action (the "hedonic calculus"), there is a fundamental commitment to human
equality. The principle of utility presupposes that "one man is worth just the same as another man" and so there is a guarantee that
in calculating the greatest happiness "each person is to count for one and no one for more than one."
For Bentham, then, there was no inconsistency between the greatest happiness principle and his psychological hedonism and egoism.
Thus, moral philosophy or ethics can be simply described as "the art of directing men's action to the production of the greatest
possible quantity of happiness, on the part of those whose interest is in view."
Back to Table of Contents
5. Political Philosophy
Bentham was regarded as the central figure of a group of intellectuals called, by Elie Halévy, "the philosophic radicals";
both J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer can be counted among the "spiritual descendants" of this group. While it would be too strong to
claim that the ideas of the philosophic radicals reflected a common political theory, it is nevertheless correct to say that they
agreed that many of the social problems of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England were due to an antiquated legal
system and to the control of the economy by a hereditary landed gentry opposed to modern capitalist institutions. As discussed in
the preceding section, for Bentham, the principles that govern morals also govern politics and law, and political reform requires a
clear understanding of human nature. While he develops a number of principles already present in Anglo-Saxon political philosophy, he
breaks with that tradition in significant ways.
In his earliest work, A Fragment on Government (1776) (an excerpt from a longer work published only in 1928 as Comment on
Blackstone's Commentaries), Bentham attacked the legal theory of Sir William Blackstone. Bentham's target was, primarily,
Blackstone's defense of tradition in law. Bentham advocated the rational revision of the legal system, a restructuring of the process
of determining responsibility and of punishment, and a more extensive freedom of contract. This, he believed, would favor not only
the development of the community, but the personal development of the individual.
Bentham's attack on Blackstone targeted more than the latter's use of tradition however. Against Blackstone and a number of earlier
thinkers (including Locke), Bentham repudiated many of the concepts underlying their political philosophies, such as natural right,
state of nature, and "social contract." Bentham then attempted to outline positive alternatives to the preceding
"traditionalisms."
Not only did he work to reform and restructure existing institutions, but he promoted broader suffrage and self (i.e.,
representative) government.
Law, Liberty and Government: The notion of liberty present in Bentham's account is what is now generally referred to as
"negative"
liberty--freedom from external restraint or compulsion. Bentham says that "[l]iberty is the absence of restraint" and so, to the
extent that one is not hindered by others, one has liberty and is "free." Bentham denies that liberty is
"natural" (in the sense of
existing "prior to" social life and thereby imposing limits on the state) or that there is an a priori sphere of liberty in
which the individual is sovereign. In fact, Bentham holds that people have always lived in society, and so there can be no state of
nature (though he does distinguish between political society and "natural society") and no
"social contract" (a notion which he held
was not only unhistorical but pernicious). Nevertheless, he does note that there is an important distinction between one's public and
private life that has morally significant consequences, and he holds that liberty is a good--that, even though it is not something
that is a fundamental value, it reflects the greatest happiness principle.
Correlative with this account of liberty, Bentham (as Hobbes before him) viewed law as
"negative." Given that pleasure and pain are
fundamental to--indeed, provide--the standard of value for Bentham, liberty, because
"pleasant," was a good and its restriction,
because "painful," was an evil. Law, which is by its very nature a restriction of liberty and painful to those whose freedom is
restricted, is a prima facie evil. It is only so far as control by the state is limited that the individual is free. Law is,
Bentham recognized, necessary to social order and good laws are clearly essential to good government. Indeed, perhaps more than
Locke, Bentham saw the positive role to be played by law and government, particularly in achieving community well-being. To the
extent that law advances and protects one's economic and personal goods and that what government exists is self-government, law
reflects the interests of the individual.
Unlike many earlier thinkers, Bentham held that law is not rooted in a "natural law" but is simply a command expressing the will of
the sovereign. (This account of law, later developed by Austin, is characteristic of legal positivism.) Thus, a law that commands
morally questionable or morally evil actions, or that is not based on consent, is still
"law."
Rights: Bentham's views on rights are, perhaps, best known through the attacks on the concept of
"natural rights" that appear
throughout his work. These criticisms are especially developed in his Anarchical Fallacies (a polemical attack on the
declarations of rights issued in France during the French Revolution), written between 1791 and 1795 but not published until 1816, in
French. Bentham's criticisms here are rooted in his understanding of the nature of law. Rights are created by the law, and law is
simply a command of the sovereign. The existence of law and rights, therefore, requires government. Rights are also usually (though
not necessarily) correlative with duties determined by the law and, as in Hobbes, are either those which the law explicitly gives us
or those within a legal system where the law is silent. The view that there could be rights not based on sovereign command and which
pre-exist the establishment of government is rejected.
According to Bentham then, the term "natural right" is a "perversion of language." It is "ambiguous," "sentimental" and "figurative"
and it has anarchical consequences. At best, such a "right" may tell us what we ought to do; it cannot serve as a legal restriction
on what we can or cannot do. The term "natural right" is ambiguous, Bentham says, because it suggests that there are general
rights--that is, rights over no specific object--so that one would have a claim on whatever one chooses. The effect of exercising
such a universal, natural "right" would be to extinguish the right altogether, since "what is every man's right is no man's right."
No legal system could function with such a broad conception of rights. Thus, there cannot be any general rights in the sense
suggested by the French declarations.
Moreover, the notion of natural rights is figurative. Properly speaking, there are no rights anterior to government. The assumption
of the existence of such rights, Bentham says, seems to be derived from the theory of the social contract. Here, individuals form a
society and choose a government through the alienation of certain of their rights. But such a doctrine is not only unhistorical,
according to Bentham, it does not even serve as a useful fiction to explain the origin of political authority. Governments arise by
habit or by force, and for contracts (and specifically, some original contract) to bind, there must already be a government in
place to enforce them .
Finally, the idea of a natural right is "anarchical." Such a right, Bentham claims, entails a freedom from all restraint and, in
particular, from all legal restraint. Since a natural right would be anterior to law, it could not be limited by law, and (since
human beings are motivated by self interest) if everyone had such freedom, the result would be pure anarchy. To have a right in any
meaningful sense entails that others cannot legitimately interfere with one's rights, and this implies that rights must be capable of
enforcement. Such restriction, as noted earlier, is the province of the law.
Bentham concludes, therefore, that the term "[n]atural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical
nonsense,--nonsense upon stilts." Rights--what Bentham calls "real" rights--are fundamentally legal rights. All rights must be legal
and specific (that is, having both a specific object and subject). They ought to be made because of their conduciveness to "the
general mass of felicity," and correlatively, when their abolition would be to the advantage of society, rights ought to be
abolished. So far as rights exist in law, they are protected; outside of law, they are at best "reasons for wishing there were such
things as rights." While Bentham's essays against natural rights are largely polemical, many of his objections continue to be
influential in contemporary political philosophy.
Nevertheless, Bentham did not dismiss talk of rights altogether. There are some services that are essential to the happiness of human
beings and that cannot be left to others to fulfill as they see fit, and so these individuals must be compelled, on pain of
punishment, to fulfill them. They must, in other words, respect the rights of others. Thus, although Bentham was generally suspicious
of the concept of right, he does allow that the term is useful, and in such work as A General View of a Complete Code of
Laws, he enumerates a large number of rights. While the meaning he assigns to these rights is largely stipulative rather than
descriptive, they clearly reflect principles defended throughout his work.
There has been some debate over the extent to which the rights that Bentham defends are based on or reducible to duties or
obligations, whether he can consistently maintain that such duties or obligations are based on the principle of utility, and whether
the existence of what Bentham calls "permissive rights"--rights one has where the law is silent--is consistent with his general
utilitarian view. (This latter point has been discussed at length by H.L.A. Hart and David Lyons.)
Back to Table of Contents
6. References and Further Reading
The standard edition of Bentham's writings is The Works of Jeremy Bentham, (ed. John
Bowring), London, 1838-1843; Reprinted New York, 1962. The contents are as follows:
Volume 1: Introduction; An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Essay on the
Promulgation of Laws, Essay on the Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation, A Table
of the Springs of Action, A Fragment on Government: or A Comment on the Commentaries;
Principles of the Civil Code; Principles of Penal Law
Volume 2: Principles of Judicial Procedure, with the outlines of a Procedural Code; The Rationale
of Reward; Leading Principles of a Constitutional Code, for any state; On the Liberty of the Press,
and public discussion; The Book of Fallacies, from unfinished papers; Anarchical Fallacies;
Principles of International Law; A Protest Against Law Taxes; Supply without Burden;
Tax with Monopoly
Volume 3: Defence of Usury; A Manual of Political Economy; Observations on the
Restrictive and Prohibitory Commercial System; A Plan for saving all trouble and expense in the transfer
of stock; A General View of a Complete Code of Laws; Pannomial Fragments;
Nomography, or the art of inditing laws; Equal Dispatch Court Bill; Plan of Parliamentary
Reform, in the form of a catechism; Radical Reform Bill; Radicalism Not Dangerous
Volume 4: A View of the Hard Labour Bill; Panopticon, or, the inspection house;
Panopticon versus New South Wales; A Plea for the Constitution; Draught of a Code for the
Organisation of Judicial Establishment in France; Bentham's Draught for the Organisation of Judicial
Establishments, compared with that of a national assembly; Emancipate Your Colonies; Jeremy
Bentham to his Fellow Citizens of France, on houses of peers and Senates; Papers Relative to Codification
and Public Instruction; Codification Proposal
Volume 5: Scotch Reform; Summary View of the Plan of a Judiciary, under the name of the court
of lord's delegates; The Elements of the Art of Packing; "Swear Not At All"; Truth versus
Ashhurst; The King against Edmonds and Others; The King against Sir Charles Wolseley and
Joseph Harrison; Optical Aptitude Maximized, Expense Minimized; A Commentary on Mr
Humphreys' Real Property Code; Outline of a Plan of a General Register of Real Property; Justice
and Codification Petitions; Lord Brougham Displayed
Volume 6: An Introductory View of the Rationale of Evidence; Rationale of Judicial Evidence,
specially applied to English Practice, Books I-IV
Volume 7: Rationale of Judicial Evidence, specially applied to English Practice, Books V-X
Volume 8: Chrestomathia; A Fragment on Ontology; Essay on Logic; Essay on
Language; Fragments on Universal Grammar; Tracts on Poor Laws and Pauper Management;
Observations on the Poor Bill; Three Tracts Relative to Spanish and Portuguese Affairs; Letters
to Count Toreno, on the proposed penal code; Securities against Misrule
Volume 9: The Constitutional Code
Volume 10: Memoirs of Bentham, Chapters I-XXII
Volume 11: Memoirs of Bentham, Chapters XXIII-XXVI; Analytical Index
A new edition of Bentham's Works is being prepared by The Bentham Project at University College, University
of London. This edition includes:
The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Ed. Timothy L. S. Sprigge, 10 vols., London : Athlone
Press, 1968-1984. [Vol. 3 edited by I.R. Christie; Vol. 4-5 edited by Alexander Taylor Milne; Vol. 6-7 edited by
J.R. Dinwiddy; Vol. 8 edited by Stephen Conway].
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Ed. J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart, London:
The Athlone Press, 1970.
Of Laws in General. London: Athlone Press, 1970.
A Comment on the Commentaries and a Fragment on Government, Ed. J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart,
London: The Athlone Press, 1977.
Chrestomathia, Ed. M. J. Smith, and W. H. Burston, Oxford/New York : Clarendon Press ; Oxford
University Press, 1983.
Deontology ; together with A Table of the Springs of Action ; and the Article on
Utilitarianism. Ed. Amnon Goldworth, Oxford/New York : Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press, 1983.
Constitutional Code : vol. I . Ed. F. Rosen and J. H. Burns, Oxford/New York : Clarendon Press;
Oxford University Press, 1983.
Securities Against Misrule and Other Constitutional Writings for Tripoli and Greece. Ed. Philip
Schofield, Oxford/New York : Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press, 1990.
Official Aptitude Maximized : Expense Minimized. Ed. Philip Schofield, Oxford : Clarendon Press,
1993.
Colonies, Commerce, and Constitutional Law : Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria and Other Writings on Spain and
Spanish America. Ed. Philip Schofield, Oxford/New York : Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press, 1995.
Select list of secondary sources:
Halévy, Elie. La formation du radicalisme philosophique, 3 vols. Paris, 1904 [The Growth
of Philosophic Radicalism. Tr. Mary Morris. London: Faber & Faber, 1928.]
Harrison, Ross. Bentham. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983.
Hart, H.L.A. "Bentham on Legal Rights," in Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence (second series), ed.
A.W.B. Simpson (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 171-201.
Lyons, David. "Rights, Claimants and Beneficiaries," in American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 6
(1969), pp. 173-185.
MacCunn, John. Six Radical Thinkers, second impression, London, 1910.
Mack, Mary Peter. Jeremy Bentham: An Odyssey of Ideas 1748-1792. London: Heinemann, 1962.
Manning, D.J. The Mind of Jeremy Bentham, London: Longmans, 1968.
Plamenatz, John. The English Utilitarians. Oxford, 1949.
Stephen, Leslie. The English Utilitarians. 3 vols., London: Duckworth, 1900.
Back to Table of Contents
Author Information:
William Sweet
Email: |
|
