Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the founder of the moral and political philosophy known as Utilitarianism, was born into what would nowadays be called an upper middleclass family. He was a precocious child, entering Westminster School at the age of seven and then Queen's College Oxford at twelve. He then qualified as a barrister, but never practised. He never married, and passed a long and comfortable life without any need to earn his living.
He published little during his long life, but left many unfinished works, and was enormously influential through his wide circle of friends and correspondents, notable amongst whom was James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill. They were known as the "Philosophical Radicals", who in the early 19th century were able to campaign successfully for reform. Bentham spent a great deal of his time and money on trying to establish a model prison, designed like the spokes of a wheel raiating out from a central hub, which he called a "Panopticon". Bentham was a great coiner of words!
In 1776 Bentham published "A Fragment on Government". This was in the way of being a rebuttal of Sir William Blackstone's magisterial "Commentaries on the Laws of England", in which the great jurist had extolled the glories of Britain's "matchless constitution". Bentham argued that our constitution was far from being perfect, but on the contrary was often illogical, inefficient and prone to corruption. In 1789 he extended this critique in his "Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation". (Incidentally, the titles of these works suggest that Bentham intended them to be part of something far more extensive). Laws, he argued, must be precise, enforceable, and tending to promote "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" - the principle of Utility.
Bentham was no respecter of tradition for its own sake, and was immune to any sentiments of religious belief or patriotism. He dismissed the proclamation of the "Rights of Man" by the French revolutionaries as "Nonsense on stilts"; nor did he have any time for theories of a "Social Contract": he considered our sole guide to any assessment of right and wrong must be whether the matter in question tends to increase the general happiness.
His approach was entirely individualistic: we each of us try to maximise our pleasure and minimise our pain. These terms are self-defining: pleasure is experiences I like, pain is experiences I dislike. I am the only true judge of my own pain and pleasure, and it is futile for me to attempt to prescribe pleasures for someone else. Neither may I claim any priority in arguing that my claim to pleasure is superior to anyone else's. For argumenta not based on the principle of utility he coined the word "Deontological". Thus, for instance, in the debate over capital punishment, the argument that execution serves to deter would-be murderers is a utilitarian argument, whereas the argument that deliberately killing another human being is always wrong regardless of the circumstances is deontological (as is the counter-argument that murderers deserve execution because of the vileness of their crime)
Bentham's view of the arts has been debated ever since, under the heading of "Poetry versus pushpin" the latter being a trivial game played in pubs. Can we ever prove that reading great literature is in any sense "better" than playing trivial games? or that, today, watching a Shakespeare play is preferable to watching a TV soap opera? Bentham thought not: the purpose of both is to cause pleasure, and whichever gives me the greater pleasure has therefore fulfilled its purpose for me.
How could a fully utilitarian adminstraion be achieved? At first Bentham seemed to place his hopes in some kind of benevolent despotism, but the logic of his arguments gradually drove him against this. Why, indeed, should a despot be concerned about anyone's happiness except his own? So increasingly Bentham was driven towards democracy as the best way forward.
Rigid utilitarianism was criticised at the time and since. The Romantics raised a cry of "There must be more to life than this!", and Thomas Carlyle compared to a herd of pigs, who saw more pigswill as the sole indicator of good, and less pigswill as evil. Karl Marx saw the argument as invalid because different social classes had directly opposing interests: what benefited the capitalists was detrimental to the workers, and vice versa. Many thought "utility" was too often measured purely in financial terms, as in the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act with its setting-up of workhouses. More recently philosophers have postulated the notion of a machine capable of giving sensations of intense pleasure: presumably it would be in our interest to remain plugged into the machine all the time; but surely this would not be desirable on a broader basis?
But if the principle of utility is not the best guide to right and wrong, then what is?
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