JEREMY BENTHAM (UTILITARIANISM THEORY )

Dr. Jiwan Devi

Assistant Professor in Political Science

HRMMV Jalandhar

Paper –MA Sem-II

INTRODUCTION

• The most famous members of the group are Jeremy Bentham, James Mill and John Stuart Mill.
• Their primary theoretical interest lay in conceiving a framework of political rules leading to a science of politics.
• In practice they emphasized on the utmost necessity of legal and social reform and evolving efficient political institutions.
• Bentham not only wanted to reform the social and legal institutions of his day, but was also a strong supporter of democratic reform-of universal suffrage, shorter annual Parliaments and the secret ballot.

• He was the founder of a group called the Philosophical Radicals, who, influenced by the French revolution, and rejecting Burke's condemnation of it, advocated that social institution should be judged by the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
• Any social practice, which did not advance this happiness should be reformed.
• Bentham was born in 1748 in England in the family of a wealthy and successful attorney. After an Oxford education at Queen's College (1760-63), Bentham began attending the London law courts in 1763.

WRITINGS OF BENTHAM

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• In writings of Bentham published originally in English are -
• A Fragment on Government (1776),
• Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation(1 789)
• The Constitutional Code (1 830).

UTILITARIANISM APPROACHES

• Utilitarianism is one of the most powerful and persuasive approaches to normative ethics in the history of philosophy.
• Though not fully articulated until the 19^th century, proto-utilitarian positions can be discerned throughout the history of ethical theory.
• Though there are many varieties of the view discussed, utilitarianism is generally held to be the view that the morally right action is the action that produces the most good.
• There are many ways to spell out this general claim. What distinguishes utilitarianism from egoism has to do with the scope of the relevant consequences.

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CLASSICAL UTILITARIANISM

• The Classical Utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, identified the good with pleasure, so, like Epicurus, were hedonists about value.
• They also held that we ought to maximize the good, that is, bring about ‘the greatest amount of good for the greatest number’.
• Utilitarianism is also distinguished by impartiality and agent-neutrality

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• Everyone's happiness counts the same.
• When one maximizes the good, it is the good impartially considered.
• My good counts for no more than anyone else's good. Further, the reason I have to promote the overall good is the same reason anyone else has to so promote the good.
• It is not peculiar to me.

UTILITARIAN PRINCIPLES

• Bentham began the first chapter of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation thus "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign maters, 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 hand of 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: a man pretend to abjure their empire but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while.

DESCRIPTIVE AND NORMATIVE THEORY

• For Bentham, utilitarianism was both a descriptive and normative theory-it not only described how human beings act so as to maximum pleasure and minimum pain, but it also prescribed or advocated such action.
• According to the principle of utility (or the greatest happiness principle, or the felicity principle) the cause of all human action, that which motivates human beings to act, is a desire for pleasure.

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• Utility of happiness is defined ill terms of pleasure: a thing/action is useful if it brings about happiness:, that is, pleasure: By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness.
• A person's interest also has the same content that of pleasure- something is in the interest of a person when it tends to add to the sum total of his pleasures or diminish the sum total of his pains.

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BENTHAM LISTED SIMPLE PLEASURES

• In The principle Bentham listed fourteen kinds of simple pleasures that moved human being -including the pleasure of sense, wealth, skill, power, benevolence and malevolence.
• Diminishing pain also means more pleasure-there are twelve kinds of pain which individuals seek to avoid-for instance the pains of the senses, or of an ill name.

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IDENTIFIED FOUR GENERAL MOTIVES

• Bentham identified four general motives for human action. The purely social motive of benevolence moves only a few individuals.
• Such benevolence individuals pursue the happiness of others even at the cost of their own happiness, An individuals acting out of the semi-social motive of love of reputation or praise, pursues others' happiness only when it promotes his own as well.

• The majority of humankind act out of the asocial motive of self interest, when one's own happiness is pursued, taking care not to cause others pain but not pursuing their happiness either.
• Finally, there are some individuals moved by dissocial motives, who actually experience pleasure by harming others.

CALCULUS FOR DETERMINING

• Bentham also provided a calculus for determining the balance between pleasure and pain from any action.
• According to this felicific calculus, one must give a numerical value to the intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, and propinquity or remoteness.
• The the pleasures and pains of the persons affected by one's actions, and one must undertake title action only if the value of the pleasure is higher than the value of the pain. One should also [actor in the fecundity of the pleasure producing act, as well as the purity and extent of the pleasure being produced.

HOW TO SEEK HAPPINESS?

• Human beings seek happiness, their own and that of others.
• They ought to seek happiness, their own and of others. To seek, however, is one thing; the: question is, how can they attain what they seek.
• What is required, in general, for human beings to reach the happiness they are searching for?
• Human happiness, for Bentham, depended on the services men rendered to each other..

• Government can ensure these services by creating a system of rights and obligations.
• Political society exists because government is necessary to compel individual to render services to each other to increase their happiness-this then is how Bentham made the transition from his utilitarianism to his political philosophy

CONCLUSION

• Bentham believed in equality. Each adult was the best judge of his or her interests, and one person's preferences were to be given an equal weight as another's.
• The happiness of the life citizens' was to be the goal of any government-the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
• The government could determine the universal interest by beginning with given preferences, arriving at the result by computing the pleasures and pains of different individuals on the same scale.

• Bentham's also critics, unfortunately, the problem is that a largely laissez faire economy, coupled with new forms of disciplining and power in the social sphere seem to lead, in the Benthamite scheme of things, to the greatest happiness of title greatest number.