Bentham (Arguments of the Philosophers)

312 Pages·1999·1.43 MB·English

by  Ross Harrison

BENTHAM
The Arguments of
the Philosophers
EDITOR: TED HONDERICH
The purpose of this series is to provide a contemporary assessment and
history of the entire course of philosophical thought. Each book
constitutes a detailed, critical introduction to the work of a philosopher
of major influence and significance.
Plato J. C. 3. Gosling
Augustine Christopher Kirwan
The Presocratic Philosophers Jonathan Barnes
Plotinus Lloyd P Gerson
The Sceptics R. J. Hankinson
Socrates Gerasimos Xenophon Santas
Berkeley George Pitcher
Descartes Margaret Dauler Wilson
Hobbes Tom Sore11
Locke Michael Ayers
Spinoza R. J. Delahunty
Bentham Ross Harrison
Hume Barry Stroud
Butler Terence Penelhum
John Stuart Mill John Skotupski
Thomas Reid Keith Lehrer
Kant Ralph C. S. Walker
Hegei M. J. Inwood
Scbopenbauer D. W. Hamlyn
Kierkegaard Alastair Hannay
Nietzsche Richard Schacht
Karl Marx Allen W. Wood
Gottlob Frege Hans D. Sluga
Meinong Reinhardt Grossmann
Husseri David Bell
G. E. Moore Thomas Baldwin
Wittgenstein Robert J. Fogelin
Russell Mark Sainsbury
William James Graham Bird
Peirce Christopher Hookwav
Santayana Timothi L. S. Sprigge
Dewey I. E. Tiles
Bergson *A. R. Lacey
J. L. Austin G. J. Warnock
Karl Popper Anthony O’Hear
Ayer John Foster
Sartre Peter Caws
BENTHAM
The Argzlments of the Philosophers
Ross Harrison
London and New York
First published 1983 by Routledge & Kegan Paul plc
This edition reprinted in hardback 1999
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
0 1983 Ross Harrison
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd,
Chippenham, Wiltshire
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Libraty Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congreu Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN O-41 5-20362-7
ISBN O-4 15-20392-9 (set)
Publisher’s note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original book may be apparent
Contents
Preface vii
A Note on the Texts ix
Abbreviations XXV
I The End 1
II The Pestilential Breath of Fiction 24
III The Clew to the Labyrinth 47
IV Nonsenseu pon Stilts 77
V The Duty and Interest Junction Principle 106
VI A Clear View of Interest 135
VII The Greatest Happiness Principle 167
VIII The People is my Caesar 195
IX The Benthamite State 225
X Private Deontology 263
Bibliography 278
Index 283
V

Preface
The series in which this work appears, the Arguments of the
Philosophers, should, ideally, identify the arguments of a parti-
cular philosopher and then subject them to relentless, modern,
critical examination. The work which follows diverges from
this ideal type in having rather more attention given to the identi-
fication than to the criticism of its subject’s arguments. Once the
arguments are identified, criticism would indeed follow easily and
naturally, given that much recent thought has provided, or depen-
ded upon, assumptions which are inimical to several of the basic
elements of Bentham’s thought. However, I have not felt that
this was what was primarily needed at present in a book on
Bentham. Before being reinterred, it is first necessary that the
whole body be exhumed; and outlining the complete shape of
Bentham is what I have therefore taken to be my principal task. It
seems to me that Bentham is insufficiently well known. Philosop-
hers tend to concentrate on a few elements, indeed on one single
chapter, in his works. The greater number of students of other
disciplines who read Bentham concentrate on their own particular
aspects. Yet it seems to me, and it is a thesis of the work which
follows, that the work as a whole exhibits a coherence in which
better sense can be made of the parts when seen in the context
of a more overall view. The more familiar ethical and political
thinking, for example, should be seen in the context of less
familiar work on metaphysics and the theory of meaning. Yet, as
well as this more abstract thought, it must be remembered that
Bentham was a practical thinker; according to the theory, the test
of theory was practice. So the theoretical work, whether meta-
physical or moral, needs to be seena nd understood in the context
of particular practical proposals. These proposals, in turn, rest on
vii
PREFACE
rigorously developed theory. So in the work which follows I have
attempted to uncover and bring out some idea of the thought as a
whole, dealing with all those parts which could be called in any
sensep hilosophical, and attempting to display their interrelations.
Since this has absorbed the space available, I have left prolonged
and extensive criticism as an exercise for the reader. As its title
suggests,t his book is a book about Bentham, not a work of modern
philosophy.
Since there is considerable interest in Bentham outside Depart-
ments of Philosophy, I have tried to write it in a way which
presupposes no knowledge of philosophy. However, the bias of
the work is clearly analytical rather than historical, although I
hope that I have managed to convey some senseo f the particular,
historically rooted, problems on which Bentham worked. It follows
from what I have just said about the general thesis that different
people will find different parts more familiar or more easy going.
However, if it is true that the more familiar parts make better
sense in the context of the work as a whole, in particular in terms
of the metaphysical core, then I would gently suggest to those
students of political thought, more at home in chapters V and
VIII, or to those students of ethical theory, more at home in
chapter VII, that they should try as well chapters III and IV where
this metaphysical core is exhibited. It may seem wilfully paradoxi-
cal to save Bentham’s best known doctrine, the principle of utility,
for chapter VII ; yet although wilful, it is not intended as a paradox.
Chapter I is of a different character to the others. It is an over-
ture. Some of the themes are played, but there is no voice, no argu-
ment, no one on the stage singing. It is designed to set a mood, a
mood that there might be something in Bentham after all, or at least
something interestingly puzzling about his thought. It is also de-
signed to give some basic biography and intellectual context. How-
ever, those who like to enter when the curtain rises and start with
the action are advised to start with chapter II.
Like many others working on Bentham, I am grateful for the help
of the members of the Bentham project at University College Lon-
don and the staff of the manuscript library at the College. I am
particularly grateful to Jimmy Bums, John Dinwiddy, and Claire
Gobbi. My own ideas on Bentham have benefited greatly from con-
versations with Gerry Postema and, particularly, David Lieberman.
Ross Harrison
Cambridge
. . .
Vlll
A Note on the Texts
Bentham is textually more difficult to work with than most great
philosophers. Normally there is a relatively easily identifiable
central work or works, unproblematically written by the man him-
self. With Bentham, however, there is a straggling mass of material
which varies greatly not only in subject matter and intrinsic value
but also in its mode of production. Much of the published material
upon which any study of Bentham must inevitably be based was
not written by Bentham himself in the form in which we now have
it. After writing his first books he developed the habit of devoting
his main effort to the production of piles of manuscript which
were to be made into books by other people. This is how, in fact,
his reputation was made. The chief work which he saw through
the press for himself, the Introduction to the Principles ofMorals
and Legislation, although now usually regarded as his main work,
failed to excite any notice or comment on its first publication.
Bentham then shortly after turned over his great mass of manu-
script to a French-speaking editor, Etienne Dumont, who thirteen
years later produced from it and the Introduction a classic which
did sell well, and was widely and highly regarded, the Trait&s de
lkgislation civile et pinale. Its success,h owever, was partly due to
the fact that Dumont took what would nowadays be regarded as
an unacceptably dynamic view of the functions of an editor. It
also, of course, appeared in a different language. Dumont pro-
duced several successorst o the Trait.&, based on other parts of
the manuscript, and these were then all subsequently translated
or retranslated back into English by other disciples. Together with
works produced directly from the manuscript in English by his
followers, this material edited by others forms an important part
of the corpus of work on which Bentham’s fame rests, and which
ix
ANOTEONTHETEXTS
is the basis for study of his thought. Yet there is at least infelicity,
and quite possibly downright inaccuracy, in attributing to Ben-
tham remarks which are often at two removes from his pen.
Much of the retranslated Dumont ended up in the collected
edition of Bentham’s works produced shortly after his death and
normally called the Bowring edition. As well as reprinting already
printed material, this edition also published for the first time
works taken directly from manuscript, and edited to varying
standards by varying hands. Starting with Elie Halevy’s great work
La jeunesse de Bentham, it has become a custom to demonstrate
by means of parallel texts just how damagingt o Bentham’s thought
the work of his editors has been ; and David Baumgardt has given a
sample of four parallel texts showing the transmission of Bentham’s
manuscript, via Dumont to the Bowring edition, and so to J.S. Mill
(Baumgardt 1952 pp. 26-7). Werner Stark has produced detailed
case studies of Bowring’s editorial activities on the economic
manuscripts, showing how at times Bowring seems to have shuf-
fled the manuscript as if it were a pack of cards (Stark i 46,49).
More recently, the new edition of the directly from
Deontology
the manuscripts reveals that Bowring was incapable of leaving a
single sentence in the form in which Bentham wrote it when he
produced his nineteenthcentury edition.
In these circumstances, once one leaves the early works which
Bentham saw through the press for himself, it might seem that the
only appropriate course would be to ignore all work published in
the nineteenth century, including the whole of the Bowring
collected edition, and work entirely from manuscript and the new
collected edition which is at present in the processo f production.
Yet the former is, I think, impossible - Bentham took a very long
life to write manuscripts, and he seemst o have written them faster
than the normal reader can read them - while the latter would
mean, at the best, a very long wait before any general study of
Bentham’s thought would be possible. However, I do not think
myself that the situation is as bad as this, and in the following
study I have been prepared to use material published by editors
and acolytes in the last century, I think that the material needs
to be handled with care, and have accorded it a lower status when
used as evidence. When I can, I have relied on more certain material,
but when I have needed it, I have been prepared to supplement
this with use of the more suspect material. I have also devised a
reference system which should allow the reader to keep track of
the different streams of material, and so enable him to discount
material to a greater or lesser extent according to how suspicious
he is. In the rest of this note I explain and attempt to justify my
X