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The Relation between Jeremy Bentham's Psychological, and his Ethical, Hedonism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

T. L. S. Sprigge
T. L. S. Sprigge
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh, [email protected]
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Abstract

The relationship between Bentham's ‘enunciative principle’ (that each person's sole ultimate motive is the maximization of their own happiness) and his ‘censorial principle’ (that it is the effects on the happiness of all affected which determines what they ought to do) is famously problematic. The problem's solution is that each person has an overwhelming interest in living in a community in which they, like others, are liable to punishment for behaviour condemned by the censorial principle (and in some cases rewarded for behaviour which it favours) either by the institutions of the state or by the tribunal of public opinion. The senses in which Bentham did and did not think everyone selfish are examined, and a less problematic form of psychological hedonism than Bentham's is proposed.

Type
Articles
Information
Utilitas , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , November 1999 , pp. 296 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

1 An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1970Google Scholar(The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), ch. 1, § 1.

2 See ‘A Table of the Springs of Action, Marginals: Uses’ (henceforth ‘ Table, Marginals: Uses’ and similarly), §§ 654–7, Deontology Together with A Table of the Springs of Action and Article on Utilitarianism, ed. Goldworth, Amnon, CW, Oxford, 1983Google Scholar(henceforth Deontology), pp. 59 f.

3 ‘For ultimate end, no man's act can have other than his own good, his pleasures and pains of sympathy being as much as any others his pleasures and pains.’ See ‘Table, Marginals: Uses’, § 760, Deontology, p. 69.

4 IPML, ch. 4.

5 IPML, ch. 4, § 6. Indeed, the very nature of the seven dimensions indicates the impossibility of a complete calculation, since if we could consider everyone who might be affected individually we would not need dimensions 5 to 7.

6 ‘Article On Utilitarianism: Long Version’, § 6, Deontology, p. 291. (The editor notes that Priestley did not actually use precisely this expression, of which Becarria may, in fact, be the source.)

7 ‘Article on Utilitarianism: Long Version’, § 21, Deontology, p. 297.

8 ‘[I]n the intention of the originator of it, if such he may be styled, the same sentiment of approbation is called for every action without distinction of which pleasure in any shape at the moment or any subsequent moment, is produced; such approbation being given on the single condition that by such action, pain or loss of pleasure to a greater extent be not produced.’ ‘Article on Utilitarianism: Long Version’, § 20, Deontology, p. 297.

9 For my own discussion of the matter see Sprigge, T. L. S., The Rational Foundations of Ethics, London, 1987, pp. 13–15Google Scholar.

10 IPML, 3.1; ‘Table, Table: Explanations’, § 12, Deontology, p. 94, and passim.

11 ‘Table, Marginals: Observations’, §§ 72–7, Deontology, p. 12, and ‘Table, Table: Observations’, § II, Deontology, pp. 99 f.

12 Deontology, p. 201.

13 See, e.g., ‘Table, Marginals: Added Observations’, § 346', Deontology, p. 35.

14 ‘Self-regarding predominate over social interests – undeniable while, hunger, thirst and sexual appetite exist. And as necessary to the preservation of the species as those appetites.’ ‘Table, Marginals: Added Observations’, §§ 517–18, Deontology, p. 50. See also First Principles Preparatory to Constitutional Code (henceforth First Principles), ed. Schofield, Philip, Oxford, 1989, CW, p. 233Google Scholarand The Works of Jeremy Bentham edited by John Bowring (henceforth Bowring), Edinburgh, 1838–1843, vol. 9, p. 6Google Scholar.

15 Halévy, Elie, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, trans. Morris, Mary, New York, 1928, pt. 1, ch. 1, esp. pp. 13–18Google Scholar.

16 See Constitutional Code, Bowring, vol. 9, pp. 7 f. (quoted in Baumgardt, David, Bentham and the Ethics of Today, Princeton, 1952, p. 417)Google Scholar. The ms. of the passage is in Bentham papers at Box 36, fos. 8–5. It was superseded by the material at First Principles, pp. 229–37. See also Bentham to his Fellow Citizens of France on Houses of Peers and Senates (1830), sect. 5, paras. 10–15, Bowring, vol. 5, pp. 430 f.

17 ‘Table, Marginals: Uses’, § 661, Deontology, p. 60.

18 There is a brief treatment of this in Dinwiddy, John, Bentham, Oxford, 1989, pp. 11–13Google Scholar.

19 Bentham, Jeremy, ‘Principles of the Civil Code’, ch. 3, in Theory of Legislation, trans, from the French of Étienne Dumont by Hildreth, R., 3rd edn., London, 1876, p. 96Google Scholar.

20 IPML, ch. 2.

21 The condemnation of this as a fallacy originated with Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica, Cambridge, 1903Google Scholar.

22 This is obvious from IPML, ch. 2, § 3. Later he interpreted an assertion of the principle of utility in the censorial sense as an expression of a volition on the speaker's part rather than a judgement proper (just like twentieth century emotivists such as C. L. Stevenson or A. J. Ayer). For he tells the reader that in saying ‘that the greatest happiness of the whole community ought to be the end or object of pursuit, in every branch of the law … what is it that I express – this and no more: namely that it is my wish, my desire, to see it taken for such by those who in the community in question are actually in possession of the powers of government.’ First Principles, p. 230.

23 This seems the general gist of IPML, ch. 1, §§ 4–10.

24 Actions with no hedonic effects at all are presumably impossible, on Bentham's views, since they can hardly fail to give even the most imprudent agent at least anticipative pleasure – while a precisely equal balance would constitute badness as the pleasure would not outweigh the pain.

25 In IMPL, ch. 3, Bentham listed only the first four sanctions, regarding the fifth as a case of the first. But he added it in Table. See ‘Table: Marginals’, § 38, and editor's note at Deontology, p. 8; also Deontology, p. 151, n. 1. (Should he have added a sanction of the pleasures and pains of antipathy? In fact, he did, as has been pointed out to me by the publisher's reader, in a letter to Etienne Dumont in 1821; see Correspondence, CW, vol. 10, p. 444Google Scholar.)

26 My grasp of Bentham's view of the moralist was much helped by Harrison, Ross, Bentham, London, 1983Google Scholar, ch. 10.

27 Indeed, the Panopticon proposal is the paradigm example of Bentham's use of this principle.

28 See, for example, ‘Article on Utilitarianism: Long Version’, § 12, Deontology, pp. 293 f.

29 ‘Table: Introduction’, Deontology, pp. 74–9, and Ogden, C. K., Bentham's Theory of Fictions, London, 1951, pp. 86–91Google Scholar. The complete theory deals also with verbs and other parts of speech.

30 Deontology, p. 91.

31 ‘Table, Table’, Deontology, pp. 79–86.

32 ‘Table, Marginals: Observations’, §§ 78–97, Deontology, pp. 12–14.

33 ‘Taken by itself, and for its own sake, labour is not ever an object of desire. As a means to ends, yes. For example, health, sport, or wealth, or the gratification of any other desire – yes.’ ‘Table, Marginals: Observations’, § 94, Deontology, p. 14.

34 Bentham divides motives into three main types: social (sympathy); dissocial (antipathy); and self-regarding, the rest of them.

35 See IPML, ch. 8, § 13.

36 Butler, Joseph, Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel, London, 1726, sermons 1–5Google Scholar.

37 See, for example, ‘Table, Table: Explanations’, § 12 Deontology, p. 94, and First Principles, CW, p. 233, Bowring, vol. 9, pp. 5 f.

38 See Deontology, p. 133.

39 See First Principles, CW, p. 233, Bowring, vol. 9, p. 5.

40 In his fine Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law, Oxford, 1990, pp. 20Google Scholarf., P. J. Kelly claims that Bentham's hedonism concerned the causation of action rather than its goals. However, Kelly seems to confuse the thesis that the efficient causation of voluntary action is always ‘the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain’ (p. 20) with the thesis that it is always pleasure or pain as presently experienced which is so, and his formulations mostly treat the former as Bentham's view, just as I do. Thus he has not really distanced Bentham from the view that ‘pleasure [or pain avoidance] is the sole object of action’ (p. 22) (even if there is some sense in which it is not always its ‘direct’ object) as he claims to do.

41 Sprigge, pp. 155–7. Compare Bradley, F. H., Collected Essays, Oxford, 1969, chs. 26–8Google Scholar.

42 Mainly in Sprigge, pt. 2.

43 This paper has been improved, especially bibliographically, by the comments of Utilitas's reader, to whom thanks. An earlier version of the paper is to be published in the Almanack 1998 of the Institute for History of Science and Technology, St Petersburg (conference proceedings).