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