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J. F. Colls, M. A. Gathercole, and Utilitarianism Unmasked: A Neglected Episode in the Anglican Response to Bentham

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

Stephen Conway
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Extract

At the beginning of 1844, the Revd John Flowerdew Colls, Anglican minister of Duke Street Chapel, St James's Park, London, published Utilitarianism unmasked, a vitriolic attack on Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the philosopher, jurisprudent, and advocate of reform. ‘The writer's main object’, the advertisement which prefaces the work grandiloquently announces, ‘has been to expose, in all its naked deformity, the hollowness and deceitfulness of the so-much-vaunted principle falsely called the Greatest happiness principle’, which formed the basis of Bentham's philosophical system. But apart from a few desultory remarks on utilitarianism – such as a belaboured attempt to connect it with Robert Owen's socialism (p. 33) – Colls devoted his energies to undermining Bentham's ideas by pouring scorn and ridicule on Bentham himself.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , July 1994 , pp. 435 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

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