ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and evaluates the metaphysics which Jeremy Bentham himself developed for this task; the metaphysics which served as his own 'clew' to thread the labyrinth in which he found himself when starting his own study of the law. It attempts to bring out that is not just that Bentham had some new ideas but that they were important in that they were quite probably correct. Part of Bentham's projected capital work was printed in 1780, and published with a new preface as An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1789. Bentham's new device of paraphrasis displays, therefore, the primacy of the sentence or proposition in the analysis of meaning, An analysis such as Locke's which takes the term, or individual word, as primary is found to be inadequate. Bentham found that the Lockean instrument was insufficient for his purposes, and that he had, after all, to innovate.
