Politics/Philosophy: Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism

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?   

Theology: dating the Creation

    James Ussher (1581-1656), the Anglican Archbishop of Armagh in Ireland, is famous for calculating, from intensive study of the Old Testament, that God had created the world in 4004 B.C. But how and why did he arrive at such a strange date?

   There are no dates of any kind in the Gospels and the New Testament. Obviously, only Mary and Joseph could know exactly when Jesus was born. It should have been possible for Luke, or Paul, or some other early Christian to discover a date for the Crucifixion ("The 17th year of the Emperor Tiberius", or something on those lines?), but they were not historians in any modern sense and such details did not interest them. 

  Attempts were made to calculate the date of Jesus's birth in the 3rd century, and the system of numbering years with which we are all familiar, whether as BC/ AD or more recently BCE/ CE, gradually became used throughout Western Europe. But as scholarship advanced, an awkward problem emerged.

   We all know the early chapters of St Matthew's Gospel with its story of the three kings at the Nativity. (Incidentally, Matthew never calls them kings, only "wise men from the East", nor does he say how many there were: it's only the fact that they give three gifts that leads people to think there must have been three of them). But before finding the baby Jesus, they meet King Herod, and there the problem lies, for in Roman dating Herod died in the equivalent of 4 BC!

  By the Early Modern period, it was realised that the date of the nativity had been miscalculated; but what to do? It was clearly impossible to change the whole system of dating: far simpler just to acknowledge the error. So when Archbishop Ussher calculated a date for the creation of the world, he estimated it as 4004 BC rather than the more convenient 4000. (It is also why, in the past century, certain evangelists predicted the end of the world in 1996 rather than 2000)

   It is a mistake to believe that it was only with Darwin in the mid-19th century that people began to question Ussher's dating. In fact, many had been puzzling over this for over 150 years. More about this on a later Blog entry.  

Wales: Saint Non

 

St Non was a Welsh princess who gave birth to a baby boy on this rugged coastline on the extreme south-west corner of Wales. 

The boy was baptised with the name of David by a local holy man, St Elvis, and grew up to be the patron saint of Wales: the entire peninsula of his birth, its cathedral and tiny city, are named after him.

In the Middle Ages, pilgrims would first visit St Non's chapel, with its nearby holy well, before walking to the cathedral. Little now remains of these coastal pilgrim sites

but the Victorians built a charming little chapel as a replacement

St Non does not appear in my Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 

Coronation Memories

 I was at primary school in 1952 when the King died, and I can remember how we all wrote in our books, "We are sad because our King George the Sixth is dead. Now Princess Elizabeth will be our new Queen." Then the next year there was the coronation. We did not have a television, so I watched it at a friend's house. I remember the street parties, and we were all given presents: in my case a mug and a die-cast metal model of the coronation coach and horses. I lost both these many years ago.  

Thought for the day: English freedom

"The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during the election of Members of Parliament; as soon as the Members are elected; the people is enslaved, it is nothing. In the brief moments of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.”

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “The Social Contract” (1762)

Travel: Tangier

 My first-ever visit to Africa was extremely short, but with such a surrealist element to it that it has remained in my memory ever since. I had signed up for a tour of southern Spain, to Granada, Cordova and Seville (all richly deserving of a visit, but that’s another story), but included in the tour was a boat journey across to Tangier for an overnight stay. We were under the guidance of Pedro, a middle-aged dyspeptic Spaniard with a very cynical and sarcastic attitude to Moroccans. He told us how essential it was to follow his instructions precisely. 

The first surprise came when he told us to collect our bags and prepare to disembark: the unexpected aspect of this being that the boat was clearly still some distance out from the harbour. But we obediently followed him to the exit doors, which were down in the belly of the ship, where all the luggage was stored. But he was quite right, because a seething mass soon built up behind us, pushing and shoving to get to the front. In these situations, the British tradition is to form an orderly queue and wait patiently, which mean we lose out to nations who don’t observe these niceties, but fortunately our party contained a number of strong-minded American matrons who fought off any interlopers. Then finally we docked and the doors opened. The crowd surged forwards and found – nothing but a yawning gulf! There was no gangplank! After we had teetered on the brink for what seemed like ages, a gangplank was finally put in place, only for a mob of hairy stevedores to charge up it and fight their way in amongst the passengers in order to get at the luggage. Eventually just ONE passport official appeared, and insisted on looking at every page of each person’s passport before he would let them off, presumably to check that no-one had been visiting Israel. Thanks to Pedro’s experience, we weren’t held up too long, but other less fortunate people were still disembarking four hours later. 

There was more trouble a little while later, when a policeman asked to inspect the passports of one couple and promptly disappeared with them. Pedro was furious. “The next time a Moroccan policeman asks to see your passport”, he raged, “Tell him to push off! Tell him it is none of his business!” (Personally I wouldn’t like to try this tactic) It was Ramadan, which meant no Moroccans were allowed to eat or drink during the hours of daylight, though this did not apply to tourists. Drinking no water during August must be a serious trial. Shortly before the official nightfall, when it was actually still daylight, the streets emptied and all the shops closed in preparation for the evening meal. We were warned not to go outside, since only criminals would be out on the streets at this time. So I went back to my hotel room, which overlooked a number of flat-roofed homes. I watched them all lay out the food on tables on the roof, and then I suppose there was a broadcast over the radio to say that it was now officially night-time, because all the families suddenly started to eat at precisely the same moment. 

We were taken to Tetuan, a squalid little town where we saw people living in what appeared to be windowless cupboards opening onto the street. In the evening we were treated to a display of belly-dancing by a fat and unattractive woman, We had a local guide who took us round a tourist shop that dealt in sterling, and helped us bargain for goods. I found the bargaining custom very irritating. I watched one man in the party buy a leather purse, for which the asking price was £5, but was eventually beaten down to £2. Another tourist who was watching this transaction said, “I’d like one of those too”. The salesman promptly started at £5 again. I showed a passing interest in a rug, and was told the price was £80. I explained that since I only had £10 left, and he wasn’t going to let me have it for that, we should abandon the negotiations. He clearly thought I was a tough bargainer, and even when I left the shop he ran after me shouting, “Okay, £55!” I longed for British supermarkets and set prices. 

There was a bar on the boat which took us back to Spain. As soon as we pulled out of port, many of the Moroccans at once went to the bar and started boozing, thus not only breaking the Ramadan fast but also the laws against drinking alcohol. Pedro snorted with contempt. “They think they’re safe on a Spanish ship! It’ll be full of secret police! They’ll all be locked up when they go home!” All this was more than thirty years ago. No doubt things are different nowadays..

Wales: Ancient burial sites on Anglesey

 As the map below shows, the island of Anglesey is richly endowed with prehistoric sites.

We recently visited one of the best of these: Bryn Celli Ddu, in a field a few miles west of Menai Bridge, indicated on the map by an orange pointer.

   It is a burial chamber dating from the Neolithic period, about 4000 years ago. There is a mound with an entry at the eastern end,  

from which a short distance bent double brings you to the central chamber, where there is room for half a dozen people to stand upright.

The roof has been supported by concrete beams. There is what appears to be an upright monolith, but we were told it was actually a petrified tree trunk.

  Who built Bryn Celli Ddu and the other ancient constructions on Anglesey? Nobody knows.