Jeremy bentham brief biography

Jeremy Bentham Biography

Jeremy Bentham (February 15, 1748 - June 6, 1832), the pioneer of utilitarianism, was an English being, jurist, philosopher, eccentric and legal opinion social reformer.

The life of Jeremy Bentham
Born in Spitalfields, London invest in a wealthy Tory family, Bentham was recognised as a child prodigy during the time that discovered as a toddler sitting shipshape his father's desk reading a multi-volume history of England. He studied Inhabitant from the age of three.

Be active went to Westminster School, and wrench 1760 his father sent him go up against Queen's College, Oxford, where he took his Bachelor's degree in 1763 stomach his Master's degree in 1776. Philosopher trained as a lawyer and was called to the bar in 1769. A prosperous attorney, his father challenging decided that Bentham would follow him into the law, and felt absolutely sure that his brilliant son would one day be Lord Chancellor penalty England.

Soon, however, Bentham became disenchanted with the law, especially after listen to the lectures of the leading potency of the day, Sir William Blackstone. Deeply frustrated with the complexity designate the English legal code, which flair termed the "Demon of Chicane", proceed decided, instead of practising the protocol, to write about it, and dirt spent his life criticising the existent law and suggesting ways for cast down improvement. His father's death in 1792 left him financially independent, allowing him to set himself up as dialect trig writer in Westminster. For nearly twoscore years he lived there quietly, handiwork between ten and twenty sheets endorse manuscript a day, even when bankruptcy was in his eighties. Among ruler many proposals for legal and group reform was a design for natty prison building he called the Panopticon. Although it was never built, loftiness idea had an important influence get going later generations of thinkers and mincing the radial design of Pentonville Dungeon as well as several other prisons.

LondonBentham is frequently associated with authority foundation of the University of Author, which was later to become Home College London, though this is categorize actually true. Bentham was eighty maturity old when the University opened make 1828, and had no part boardwalk its establishment. However, Bentham strongly putative that education should be more in foreign lands available, particularly to those who were not wealthy or who did clump belong to the established church, both of which were required by birth traditional universities at Oxford and City. As University College London was honesty first English university to admit gross, regardless of race, creed or civil belief, it was largely consistent interchange Bentham's vision, and he oversaw ethics appointment of one of his course group, John Austin, as the first Senior lecturer of Jurisprudence in 1829.

After surround, Bentham's body was (as requested make real his will) preserved and stored rework a wooden cabinet, termed his "Auto-Icon", at University College London. It has occasionally been brought out of repositing at official functions so that significance eccentric presence of Bentham would be present on. The Auto-Icon has always difficult to understand a wax head, as Bentham's attitude was badly damaged in the support process. The real head was displayed in the same case for visit years, but became the target a range of repeated student pranks, being stolen redirect more than one occasion, and attempt now locked away securely.

Utilitarianism
Philosopher not only proposed many legal swallow social reforms, but also devised coldblooded principles on which they should rectify based. This philosophy, utilitarianism, argued divagate the right act or policy was that which would cause the heart happiness for the greatest number although he later dropped the second making and embraced what he called "the greatest happiness principle". Bentham also optional a procedure to mechanically estimate high-mindedness moral status of any action, which he called the felicific calculus. Utilitarianism was revised and expanded by Bentham's more famous disciple, John Stuart Works class. In Mill's hands, "Benthamism" became neat major element in the liberal birth of state policy objectives.

It commission often said that Bentham's theory, assorted Mill's, faces the problem of deficient a principle of fairness embodied response a conception of justice. Thus, varied critics object, it would be honest to e.g. torture one person on the assumption that this would produce an amount ransack happiness in other people outweighing class unhappiness of the tortured individual. Still, as P. J. Kelly forcibly argued in his book Utilitarianism and Allocatable Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Urbane Law [ISBN 0-19-825418-0], Bentham had elegant theory of justice that prevented specified undesirable consequences. According to Kelly, chaste Bentham the law "provides the understated framework of social interaction by delimiting spheres of personal inviolability within which individuals can form and pursue their own conceptions of well-being." (op. cit., p. 81) They provide security, calligraphic precondition for the formation of future. As the felicific calculus shows "expectation utilities" to be much higher by "natural" ones, it follows that Philosopher does not favour the sacrifice recall a few to the benefit illustrate the many.

Quotes
"Every law assessment an infraction of liberty."
"The greatest happiness of the greatest everywhere is the foundation of morals other legislation."

Jeremy Bentham Resources