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Nature and Natural Authority in Bentham*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

J. H. Burns
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Extract

My object in this paper is to suggest a few reflections on some themes in Bentham's work which others as well as (and even more than) I have noted, without perhaps developing them as fully as might with advantage be done. There will be nothing like full development in the limited compass of what is said here, but what is said may at least indicate possible directions for further exploration. The greater part of the paper will be concerned with the notion of natural authority; but I want to begin by taking a broader, though no doubt rather superficial, view of the role in Bentham's thinking of the concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘the natural’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , November 1993 , pp. 209 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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Footnotes

*

A revised version of a paper read to the Bentham Seminar, University College London, on 10 March 1993.

References

1 See, on homosexuality, Boralevi, L. C., Bentham and the Oppressed, Berlin and New York, 1984, ch. 3, esp. pp. 67–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, on the general theme of ‘Repugnancy to Nature’, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1970 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), pp. 27–8.Google Scholar

2 IPML(CW), p. 298 n.Google Scholar

3 Of Laws in General, ed. Hart, H. L. A., London, 1970 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), p. 120Google Scholar. Cf. Long, D. G., Bentham on Liberty: Jeremy Bentham's idea of liberty in relation to his utilitarianism, Toronto and Buffalo, 1977, ch. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the ‘universal law of liberty’, see also Lysaght, L. J., ‘Bentham on the aspects of a law’, Bentham and Legal Theory, ed. James, M. H., Belfast, 1973, pp. 118–20.Google Scholar

4 OLG (CW), p. 70.Google Scholar

5 Constitutional Code, vol. i, ed. Rosen, F. and Burns, J. H., Oxford, 1983 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), p. 188Google Scholar. The phrase ‘naked right’ is a direct translation of the Roman-law term jus nudum: I am grateful to Andrew Lewis for having brought this to my attention. See also Hart, H. L. A., Essays on Bentham: Studies in Jurisprudence and Political Theory, Oxford, 1982, ch. 7, pp. 162–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 OLG (CW), pp. 227–31.Google Scholar

7 Laird, J., The Device of Government: An Essay on Civil Polity, Cambridge, 1944.Google Scholar

8 ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, 8 vols., London, 1792–1827, v. 172Google Scholar; ‘An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs’, in Works, vi. 217.Google Scholar

9 See on this Burns, J. H., ‘Utilitarianism and Reform: Social Theory and Social Change, 1750–1800’, Utilitas, i (1989), 211–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Mack, M. P., Jeremy Bentham: An Odyssey of Ideas 1748–1792, London, 1962, p. 189Google Scholar; UC c. 107Google Scholar. Mack does not quote the third sentence; and, in the second, she omits the words ‘the young’ before ‘children’. These words are an interlinear insertion in the MS, and Bentham's afterthought is of some little significance: cf. p. 214 below.

11 The date 1780 is suggested, in an unknown hand, on a wrapper in which this group of MSS was at one stage enclosed; but a slightly later date is perhaps more likely.

12 The point has been most fully dealt with by Long (Bentham on Liberty, pp. 34–7Google Scholar), to whose discussion I am greatly indebted.

13 UC lxxxviii a.69Google Scholar. Cf. Long, , Bentham on Liberty, pp. 166–7Google Scholar, where, however, the MS reference is given as ‘87a.69’.

14 A Comment on the Commentaries and A Fragment on Government, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1977 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), p. 431Google Scholar; A Fragment on Government (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought), Cambridge, 1988, [hereafter, Cambridge edn.], p. 42.Google Scholar

15 Comment/Fragment (CW), 431 nGoogle Scholar; Cambridge edn., pp. 42–3 n. At this point it is worth recalling Bentham's indication elsewhere that the parent/child relationship is one of ‘absolute subjection’ in regard to young children: cf. p. 212 above.

16 Comment/Fragment (CW), p. 438Google Scholar; Cambridge edn., pp. 49–50.

17 Comment/Fragment (CW), p. 439Google Scholar; Cambridge edn., p. 50.

18 OLG (CW), pp. 22–3.Google Scholar

19 IPML (CW), pp. 250–1.Google Scholar

20 IPML (CW), pp. 67–8.Google Scholar

21 UC c. 108–9.Google Scholar

22 The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the superintendence of Bowring, John, 11 vols., Edinburgh, 1838–1843, [hereafter Bowring], ii. 542Google Scholar. Cf. UC xxv. 14Google Scholar: the words ‘to him’ are an editorial insertion in the Bowring text.

23 Rosen, F., Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy: A Study of the Constitutional Code, Oxford, 1983, pp. 187–8.Google Scholar

24 IPML (CW), p. 174.Google Scholar

25 Bahmueller, C. F., The National Charity Company: Jeremy Bentham's Silent Revolution, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981, p. 147Google Scholar; and cf. Bowring, , iii. 7.Google Scholar

26 UC cliiA. 109Google Scholar (from Essays relative to the subject of the Poor Law, 1796).Google Scholar

27 Ibid. 168.

28 UC cli. 4Google Scholar (‘Poor plan—contents [marginal outlines]’, 1796–1797).Google Scholar

29 UC clii. b.389Google Scholar (‘Systems Compared — Minors’, 1797).Google Scholar

30 UC cxxxiii. 102Google Scholar (‘Poor plan — heads; pauper education’, 1789)Google Scholar; cf. Bahmueller, , National Charity Company, p. 176.Google Scholar

31 UC cliii a. 93Google Scholar (‘Poor plan — pauper education’, 1798).Google Scholar

32 It may be worth noting that children are not among the victimized categories discussed by Boralevi, L. C. in Bentham and the Oppressed.Google Scholar