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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
The principle of utility is Bentham's basic test for morals and legislation. But there is room for doubting what that principle is supposed to say. I shall argue that one important element of modern utilitarian doctrines Cannot be found in Bentham's.
Some aspects of his views will not be questioned here. He holds, for example, that acts should be appraised by their consequences alone. The effects that count are ‘pleasures’ and ‘pains’, that is, the effects upon human happiness, interest or welfare.
This is a revised version of the paper read to the Royal Institute of Philosophy on 23 October 1970. I am especially grateful to H. L. A. Hart and R. R. K. Sorabji for their comments on an earlier draft. The argument is developed further in this writer's forthcoming book on Bentham.
page 196 note 2 See, e.g., Brandt, R. B., Ethical Theory (1959) pp. 355, 415.Google Scholar
page 196 note 3 An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, chapter x, paragraph 10, including note e. This work will hereafter be cited as the Introduction, and all further references will be to it unless otherwise noted. They will take the form indicated by the following citation, which is equivalent to the one just given: x 10 incl. n. e. (The text and notation for ‘paragraphs’ and notes follow the 1970 edition by J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart in the new Collected Works published by the Athlone Press of the University of London. Users of the Bowring edition of Bentham's Works –the Introduction is in volume 1 — are cautioned to discount the two ‘chapters’ inserted after xii which result in renumbering xiii–xvii there as xv–xix).
page 197 note 1 See xiii 13–16.
page 197 note 2 Bentham believes that these pleasures are always outweighed by the pains involved; see Preface, n. a; xiii 2 n. a; and the material added at Works, 1 81Google Scholar. Bentham also flirts with the idea that animals' interests should be considered too, since (e.g.) they can ‘suffer’. But he never clearly comes to this conclusion; consider xvii 4 incl. n. b, in the light of the discussion below, section iv of this essay.
page 197 note 3 Bentham does not move in this direction, for reasons that will partly become clear as we proceed. See Essay 1, Principles of International Law (compiled from MSS. of 1786–9), in Works, ii 536–40Google Scholar, where he comes to the conclusion that the foreign affairs of independent states should be governed by ‘the common and equal utility of all nations’ – but by an argument that employs no universalistic principle.
page 197 note 4 Printed 1780, published with an added note 1789 (and ed. 1823).
page 198 note 1 The parochial restriction is explicit in An Essay on Political Tactics, ch. i, sect. 2, par. i (Works, ii 302)Google Scholar; Principles of International Law, Essay 1, par. 7 (Works, ii 537)Google Scholar; A Manual of Political Economy, ch. i, par 2 (Works, iii, 33)Google Scholar; Pannomial Fragments, ch. i, par. 2 (Works, iii, 211)Google Scholar; Codification Proposal, full title (Works, iv 535)Google Scholar; Official Aptitude Maximised, Expense Minimised, Paper 1, Preface, par. 2 (Works, v 265)Google Scholar; Introductory View of the Rationale of Evidence, ch. i, sect. 2, par. 3 (Works, vi 6)Google Scholar; Securities Against Misrule, ch. i, sect. 2, par. 1 (Works, viii 558)Google Scholar; Constitutional Code, bk i, Introduction (Works, ix 4–5)Google Scholar. The restriction is omitted in Principles of Judicial Procedure, ch. i, par. 1 (Works, ii 8)Google Scholar; The Rationale of Reward, Preliminary Observations, par. 1 (Works, ii 192)Google Scholar; Leading Principles of a Constitutional Code, sect, i, par. 1 (Works, 11 269)Google Scholar; Letters to Count Toreno (Works, viii 491).Google Scholar
page 199 note 1 For the sake of clarity, I shall usually quote Bentham's ‘paragraphs’ in full. In a note to the second edition Bentham formulates it as ‘that principle which states the greatest happiness of all those whose interest is in question, as being the right and proper, and only right and proper and universally desirable, end of human action: of human action in every situation, and in particular in that of a functionary or set of functionaries exercising the powers of Government’ (i 1 n. a.).
page 201 note 1 xvii 2. (The point of view is indicated in pars. 4 and 8.)
page 201 note 2 See iv 2 n. a. and the title page of A Table of the Springs of Action (Works, 1 195).Google Scholar
page 202 note 1 i 4.
page 202 note 1 Only in the sense that they are subject to its direction, influence or control; continuous active control could not be meant. All residents would presumably be included here, but neither the text nor extrapolations from it would satisfactorily cover difficult cases such as the law of one community applying to ‘members’ of another, e.g. those affected by immigration laws. However, such difficulties do not seem to rule out Bentham's reasoning along the lines suggested, for his position is only roughly developed in the text.
page 202 note 3 Here Bentham excludes other possibilities inherent in his basic principle; see below, section ix of this essay.
page 203 note 1 The foregoing account may be gleaned from the Concluding Note appended to the Introduction when finally published in 1789. That note would seem to be based upon the fuller work, Of Laws in General, which grew out of Bentham's reflections when he tried to complete Chap, xvii; and Of Laws itself should be consulted for a complete and balanced view. See the edition by Hart, H. L. A. in the new Collected Works (1971)Google Scholar, which replaces the first edition, which Everett, C. W. entitled The Limits of Furisprudence Defined (1945).Google Scholar
page 204 note 1 See also xvi 46. Regarding Bentham's reference to ‘motives’ here, see the discussion of sanctions in connection with xvii 8, in section vii below.
page 205 note 1 Title page (Works i 195).Google Scholar
page 205 note 2 Encyclopedical Table, or Table v (Works, viii opp. 128)Google Scholar; see also his commentary in Appendix iv, sect, viii (Works, viii 93–4).Google Scholar
page 205 note 3 Chap, iv par. 21, which should be read with Introduction, xvii 18 n. s.Google Scholar
page 205 note 4 See Deontology, chap, ii, par. 4; pp. 23–4 of the 1834 edition. Note that this is not Bentham's usual expression.
page 205 note 5 x 36–7.
page 206 note 1 iv 8. A note appended to iv, 2 in the second edition includes a verse he later framed to keep alive ‘these points, on which the whole fabric of morals and legislation may be seen to rest.
Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure, —
Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
Such pleasures seek if private be thy end;
If it be public, wide let them extend’.
The implication so far is that extent is reserved for public, or political, matters. But the conclusion of the verse partly takes this back:
‘Such pains avoid, whichever be they view;
If pains must come, let them extend to few’.
There is no other evidence to suggest that extent is always considered for pains though not always for pleasures, so it is not clear what to make of Bentham's versification.
page 207 note 1 At least metaphysically, because in Bentham's view, ‘the community’ refers to a ‘fictitious entity’. (See Bentham's Theory of Fictions, ed. C. K. Ogden.)
page 208 note 1 Bentham does a similar thing in the Fragment on Government, Preface, par. 54 (second par. under ‘Idea of a natural arrangement’). The ‘tendency’ to happiness is called ‘utility’, and the ‘divergency’ from it ‘mischievousness’. But ‘happiness’ is also said to be what ‘every man is in search of’, ‘the common end of all’. That passage, too, can be made coherent only if Bentham there assumes the convergence of interests discussed below.
page 210 note 1 xvii 9–14.
page 211 note 1 xvii 18. Bentham points out that there cannot be, say, stealing or trespass without legal property lines or treason without a state making law; so, there cannot be a mischievous act under such a description unless there are the relevant legal rules. Compare Rawls, John, ‘Two Concepts of Rules’, Philosophical Review, vol. LXIV (1955) 3–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bentham is aware that the decision to legislate cannot always be based on the antecedent mischief of acting one way rather than another; it must sometimes be based, for example, on the belief that a new social arrangement, needing new rules for its establishment, would be beneficial. The point that Bentham makes could be expanded. Before the legal establishment of a particular ‘rule of the road’ there might be no good utilitarian argument to favour, say, driving left over driving right. There might only be arguments to favour some safe and expeditious arrangement, for mischief could be prevented by setting up some such new rule. But we could still talk of ‘driving right’ and ‘driving left’ in the same sense after such a rule is established. The general point is therefore not conceptual, as Bentham and Rawls may suggest.
page 211 note 2 xvii 15–17. Bentham's arguments here anticipate a good deal of J. S. Mill's On Liberty. (One might also mention that Mill's confusing use of ‘self-regarding action’ in that work apparently derives from Bentham's unconfusing definition of the term in xvi 8.)
page 212 note 1 Compare Schneewind, J. B.'s discussion in Mill's Ethical Writings (1965) Introduction, p. 9.Google Scholar
page 212 note 2 See xiv 28.
page 212 note 3 See xvii 15; and also xvi 44.
page 211 note 3 Bentham's hedonism seems to allow, for example, that the pleasure one seeks to realise need not necessarily be one's own. But it is more complex than this suggests. Still, there are only two places in the Introduction where Bentham even superficially seems to talk like a psychological egoist: xvii 7 and 15. Both seem explainable without recourse to the egoistic construction which is incompatible with the rest of the text.
page 213 note 1 xvii 6–7.
page 214 note 1 Constitutional Code, Intro., bk i, sect, ii (Works, ix 5).Google Scholar
page 214 note 2 Ibid.
page 215 note 1 Ibid., pp. 5–6. Compare On the Liberty of the Press, Letter I (Works, ii 280)Google Scholar. Bentham seems to place excessive weight on risks.
page 215 note 2 Ibid., p. 5.
page 215 note 3 So Bowring records in the Bentham, 's ‘Memoirs’, Works, x 80Google Scholar. But the figures seem questionable, for the memoir is dated 1822, and the Fragment was published only forty-six years before, in 1776. However, the sixty-year figure does fit the space between the start of Bentham's utilitarian writings and his death in 1832, when he was still, apparently, working on materials for the Constitutional Code. (It should be noted, incidentally, that the Introduction to the Code, which I have drawn upon here, was never put in final form by Bentham; see Note by the Editor, Works, ix iii–iv).Google Scholar
page 215 note 4 Constitutional Code, Introduction, bk i, sects, i–ii (Works, ix 5–6).Google Scholar
page 216 note 1 Ibid., sect, ii (pp. 6–7).
page 216 note 2 See also Panopticon, Postscript, pt. ii, sect, ii (Works, iv 125–6)Google Scholar and Tracts on Poor Laws and Pauper Management (Works, viii 380)Google Scholar; but it should be observed that these works were published in 1791 and 1797. Compare the Rationale of Reward, bk i, ch. iv (Works, ii 199).Google Scholar
page 217 note 1 See n. 2, p. 205.
page 219 note 1 Preface, par. 2.
page 220 note 1 Among recent writers, Frederick Copleston is, as far as I have been able to determine, the only one to note the actual form of Bentham's ‘explicit and determinate account’; but he does not seem to grasp the implication and does not conjoin it with the division of ethics. See A History of Philosophy, vol. 8, pt. i, ch. i, sect. 3; pp. 26 ffGoogle Scholar in the Doubleday-Image ed. 1967).
page 220 note 2 See The Methods of Ethics, bk i, note appended to ch. vi; pp. 87–8 in the 7th ed. (1907/1962).Google Scholar