ABSTRACT
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was a philosophical radical who aimed to rid moral philosophy of reliance on what he considered to be irrational notions, mystical and religious justifications, and abstract moral rules, such as natural law or natural rights. Moreover, he was also a social and political radical who simultaneously hoped to transform English institutions by ridding them of their ill-conceived conventions and traditions which he held responsible for much social injustice and unhappiness. In fact, his major work is entitled The Principles of Morals and Legislation. Both of these aims were to be accomplished by adherence to the one ultimate moral principle, the principle of utility, which refers to:
Bentham, therefore, was a hedonist-a position he arrived at by adherence to his belief in empirical science. That is, human beings encounter the world through our senses, and our actions are determined entirely by the experience and/or anticipation of pleasure and pain. Realistically, therefore, maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain (i.e., increasing happiness) is the only justifiable moral principle. And the principle is applicable at the individual level with respect to one’s private morality as well as at the public level so that legislators ought to design laws in light of people’s propensity to promote their own happiness, and all government officials should base their policy decisions on the criterion of maximizing public welfare. Therefore, although Bentham was a psychological egoist (he believed that people tend to act in their own self-interest), he was not an ethical egoist. He believed that moral actions are those that produce the greatest happiness for oneself and others. For Bentham, the great appeal of the principle of utility is that it puts moral philosophy on an objective base. The justification of its ultimate principle does not rely on deontological abstractions or appeals to the revealed word of God but on the objective consideration of real-world consequences. But how is this objective consideration to be accomplished?
