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Bentham's Equality-Sensitive Utilitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Gerald J. Postema
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Abstract

Rosen argues that Bentham's utilitarian doctrine was sensitive to distributive concerns and would not countenance sacrifice of fundamental individual interests for aggregate gains in happiness in society. This essay seeks to extend and deepen Rosen's argument. It is argued that Bentham's equality-sensitive principle of utility is an expression of an individualist conception of human happiness which contrasts sharply with the orthodox utilitarian abstract conception. Evidence for this interpretation of the basic motivation of Bentham's doctrine is drawn from his view of the relationship between happiness and expectations, from various expressions of his ‘each to count for one’ formula, and from his reformulations of the principle of utility itself late in his career.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , July 1998 , pp. 144 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

1 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA, 1971, p. 27Google Scholar.

2 Hart, H. L. A., ‘Bentham's Principle of Utility and Theory of Penal Law’, in Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., Oxford, 1996, Collected Works (hereafter IPML), p. xciGoogle Scholar.

3 Rosen, F., Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, Oxford, 1983, ch. 11Google Scholar.

4 Rosen, , ‘Individual Sacrifice and the Greatest Happiness: Bentham on Utility and Rights,’ Utilitas, x (1998), 143Google Scholar.

5 In The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Bowring, J., 11 vols., Edinburgh, 1838–1843, vol. i, p. 302Google Scholar (hereafter Bowring). ‘The more perfect the enjoyment of all these particulars,’ says Bentham, ‘the greater the sum of social happiness’ (ibid.).

6 See, for example, Bowring, i. 304–7.

7 Rosen does not offer any explicit evidence for the claim that Bentham was sceptical about interpersonal comparisons of pleasures. I am inclined to think he did not intend to assert the claim in this strong form.

8 Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, in Collected Works, ed. Robson, J., 33 vols., Toronto, 1961–1991, vol. x, ch. 5, note 4Google Scholar.

9 Constitutional Code, Bowring, , ix. 107Google Scholar. See also Bowring, iv. 540 (see note 15 below).

10 Utilitarianism, ch. 5, para. 36.

11 Hutcheson, Francis, Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725)Google Scholar, in British Moralists: 1650–1800, ed. Raphael, D. D., vol. i, Oxford, 1969, pp. 284, 283Google Scholar (author's italics suppressed). Joachim Hruschka points out that Hutcheson probably followed Gershom Carmichael's commentary on Pufendorf (Hruschka, J., ‘The Greatest Happiness Principle and Other Early German Anticipations of Utilitarian Theory,’ Utilitas, iii (1991), 171)Google Scholar. But Carmichael gives ‘dignity’ a clearly utilitarian gloss: ‘dignity, being a person's utility for many other people’ (Supplernenta et Observationibus ad C. V. Sam. Pufendorfi libros duos De Officio Hominis et Civis, Glasgow, 1718, p. 75.)Google Scholar It is not clear what to make of Hutcheson's silence regarding Carmichael's gloss, but without it, Hutcheson's phrase is open to anti-utilitarian interpretations. This alone would have given Bentham strong reason to attach the ‘each for one’ gloss to his principle of utility.

12 Hart, H. L. A., Essays on Bentham, Oxford, 1982, p. 99Google Scholar. Mill says explicitly that the equality involved is merely ‘the truths of arithmetic … applicable to the valuation of happiness’ (Utilitarianism, ch. 5, note 4).

13 Ayer, A. J., Philosophical Essays, London, 1959, p. 257Google Scholar.

14 I here paraphrase Anderson, Elizabeth, Value in Ethics and Economics, Cambridge, MA, 1993, p. 27Google Scholar.

15 In his Codification Proposal Bentham asks, ‘on what ground, in the eyes of a common guardian, can any one man's happiness be shown to have any stronger or less strong claim to regard than any others? If, on the ground of delinquency, in the name of punishment, it be right that any man be rendered unhappy, it is not that his happiness has less claim to regard than another man's, but that it is necessary to the greatest happiness of the greatest number that a portion of the happiness of that one be sacrificed’ (Bowring, iv. 540)Google Scholar.

16 Not always, however. IPML ch. 4 (concerning how to measure ‘the value of a lot of pleasure’) is perhaps the most familiar text in which the abstract conception appears to be at work. Still, in a related manuscript, Bentham admits that his use of ‘value’ here is misleading, because it normally implies an assessment of quality rather than mere quantity, represented mathematically, which is his meaning here. (‘Value of a Pleasure or Pain’ (1778) in Bentham's Political Thought, ed. Parekh, B., London, 1973, p. 113, note c.Google Scholar)

17 UC lxx(a). 20; UC xcvi. 74; UC lxxii. 1; A Comment on the Commentaries and A Fragment on Government, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1977, Collected Works, p. 231Google Scholar. See Postema, G. J., Bentham and the Common Law Tradition, Oxford, 1986, pp. 151–4Google Scholar.

18 UC lxix. 239; UC lxx(a). 20; Postema, p. 212.

19 Bentham, does speak of persons as ‘receptacles’ of happiness and unhappiness in a passage in his late ‘Article on Utilitarianism’ (1829)Google Scholar, in Bentham, J., Deontology, A Table of the Springs of Action, and Article on Utilitarianism, ed. Goldworth, Amnon, Oxford, 1983, Collected Works, p. 310Google Scholar. However, his tone is clearly ironic and implicitly critical. He says that people, who, through an egregious misunderstanding of his greatest happiness of the greatest number principle, ignore the claims of each person to consideration are also inclined to regard people as mere receptacles of happiness and unhappiness.

20 I find Rosen's distributive reading of ‘minimize official expense’ strained and ‘maximize official aptitude’ can be taken in either aggregative or distributive senses. Does it make sense to permit trade-offs of official aptitude? Perhaps. Might it not make sense to economize on demands for impartiality, say, or practical judgement, and use our resources, and define official responsibilities, such that our needs for impartiality and practical judgement are optimally met. Isn't this a kind of aggregative rather than distributive use of ‘maximize’?

21 Both distributive and aggregative senses are at work in Bentham's characterization of the four subordinate ends of legislation in the following passage: ‘Maximizing universal security – securing the existence of and sufficiency of the matter of adequate subsistence of all the members of the community, maximizing the quantity of the matter of abundance in all its shapes, securing the nearest approximation to absolute equality in the distribution of the matter of abundance and the other modifications of the matter of property.’ BL Add. MS 33550, fo. 52; quoted in Kelly, P., Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, Oxford, 1990, p. 106Google Scholar.

22 First Principles Preparatory to a Constitutional Code, ed. Schofield, P., Collected Works, Oxford, 1989, p. 235Google Scholar.

23 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1817), Bowring, iii. 459Google Scholar. See also his Constitutional Code: ‘The happiness of the most helpless pauper constitutes as large a portion of the universal happiness, as does that of the most powerful, the most opulent member of the community. Therefore the happiness of the most helpless and indigent has as much title to regard at the hands of the legislator, as that of the most powerful and opulent’ (Bowring, ix. 107)Google Scholar.

24 Compare Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, ch. 5, para. 36Google Scholar. Because Bentham more clearly embraces the ‘individualist’ rather than ‘abstract’ conception of happiness, his inference to equality of the means of happiness is less problematic than Mill's.

25 Bentham, , Leading Principles of a Constitutional Code, for Any State (1823), in Parekh, p. 196Google Scholar.

26 BL Add. MSS 33550, fo. 52.

27 UC clx. 160; quoted in Kelly, , Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice, p. 123Google Scholar. Bentham adds: ‘for as consistently involved with the supposition no man can in this case have more of the means of subsistence than another, so consistently with his existence no man can have less’ (ibid.).

28 A Comment on the Commentaries and A Fragment on Government, p. 393.

29 I follow here Rosen's more extensive discussion in ch. 11 of his Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy.

30 In Deontology, pp. 309f.

31 See, Pannomial Fragments, Bowring, iii. 211Google Scholar; Leading Principles of a Constitutional Code, Parekh, p. 196Google Scholar; Constitutional Code, Bowring, ix. 5Google Scholar.

32 ‘I recognize, as the all-comprehensive, and only right and proper end of Government, the greatest happiness of the greatest number of the members of the community: of all without exception, in so far as possible: of the greatest number, on every occasion on which the nature of the case renders it impossible by rendering it matter of necessity, to make sacrifice of a portion of the happiness of a few, to the greater happiness of the rest.’ Constitutional Code, vol. i, ed. Rosen, F. and Burns, J. H., Collected Works, Oxford, 1983, p. 136Google Scholar. See also First Principles Preparatory to a Constitutional Code, pp. 3, 234f; Pannomial Fragments, Bowring, iii. 211Google Scholar; Leading Principles of a Constitutional Code, Parekh, p. 196Google Scholar.

33 Parliamentary Candidate's proposed Declaration of Principles: or say, A Test proposed for Parliamentary Candidates, London, 1831, p. 7Google Scholar (second emphasis added); quoted in Rosen, F., Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, p. 212Google Scholar.