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Utilitarianism and Reform: Social Theory and Social Change, 1750–1800*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

J. H. Burns
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Extract

The object of this article is to examine, with the work of Jeremy Bentham as the principal example, one strand in the complex pattern of European social theory during the second half of the eighteenth century. This was of course the period not only of the American and French revolutions, but of the culmination of the movements of thought constituting what we know as the Enlightenment. Like all great historical episodes, the Enlightenment was both the fulfilment of long-established processes and the inauguration of new processes of which the fulfilment lay in the future. Thus the seminal ideas of seventeenth-century rationalism (in moral and social theory the idea, above all, of natural law) realized and perhaps exhausted their potentialities in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The ideas with which this article is concerned, however—conveniently grouped and labelled as the ideas of utilitarianism—only began to achieve systematic development in these later decades of the eighteenth century. Within that period—during the first half and more of Bentham's long life—attempts to apply those ideas to the solution of social problems met largely with failure and frustration. Yet unrealized potentialities remained, the realization of which was reserved for a time when the world of the philosophes no longer existed. The movements for social and political reform which have played so large a part in modern history since the French Revolution may be judged in widely differing ways; but whatever the verdict, these movements surely cannot be understood without due consideration of that part of their origins which lies in eighteenth-century utilitarianism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , October 1989 , pp. 211 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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Footnotes

*

A revised version of a paper originally presented at the Fourth Conference of British and Soviet Historians, Moscow, 1966.

References

1 The Fabric of Felicity: the Legislator and the Human Condition, London, 1967.Google Scholar

2 The article is reprinted in Oeuvres complètes de Diderot, 20 vols., Paris, 1875–1877, xv. 417–36Google Scholar, though it was not in fact written by Diderot himself, but by Jean-François, marquis de Saint-Lambert (1716–1803): cf. Diderot, , Oeuvres complètes, Paris, 1975–, vii (Encyclopédie, III), 677, n.2.Google Scholar Diderot did however contribute the article ‘Législation’, reprinted on the page just cited.

3 Diderot, , Oeuvres complètes, Paris, 1975–, vii. 677.Google Scholar

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5 Oeuvres completes de Diderot, 1875–1877, xv. 429.Google Scholar

6 La formation du radicalisme philosophique, 3 vols., Paris, 1902, iii. 334Google Scholar; The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, London, 1928 (reprinted 1972), p. 487.Google Scholar

7 Cf., e.g., Cassirer, Ernst, Die Philosophie der Aufklärung, Tübingen, 1932Google Scholar; Cobban, Alfred, In Defence of Humanity: the Role of the Enlightenment in Modern History, London, 1960Google Scholar; Gay, Peter, The Party of Humanity: Studies in the French Enlightenment, London, 1964.Google Scholar For Bentham's appreciation of Helvetius, cf. The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the superintendence of… John Bowring, 11 vols., Edinburgh, 1838–1843 [hereafter Bowring], x. 54Google Scholar; The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. i, ed. Sprigge, T. L. S., London, 1968 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), pp. 262, 282, 367Google Scholar; Correspondence, vol. ii, ed. Sprigge, T. L. S., London, 1968 (CW), pp. 99, 117, 121.Google Scholar

8 De l'Esprit, 1758, p. 643.Google Scholar

9 De l'Homme, 3 vols., Amsterdam, 1774, iii. 41.Google Scholar

10 Cf. A Comment on the Commentaries and A Fragment on Government, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1977 (CW), editorial introduction, pp. xixff.Google Scholar

11 Cf. Burns, J. H., ‘Bentham's Critique of Political Fallacies’ in Parekh, B. (ed.), Jeremy Bentham: Ten Critical Essays, London, 1974, pp. 154–67.Google Scholar

12 See Bentham's draft letters, Correspondence (CW), i. 366–68.Google Scholar

13 Letters to d'Alembert, Morellet and Chastellux show that the Theory of Punishment was still a major preoccupation in the spring of 1778: Correspondence (CW), ii. 117–22.Google Scholar In a letter to his brother dated 10/11 September 1778, Bentham refers to having ‘begun’ his ‘Code of Criminal Law’: ibid., 169–70.

14 Cf. the 1789 Preface to An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1970 (CW), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 9: ‘…truths that form the basis of political and moral science are not to be discovered but by investigations as severe as mathematical ones, and beyond all comparison more intricate and extensive.’

16 Cf., e.g., ibid., p. 1.

17 The forme/matière distinction was used particularly by Bentham in manuscripts of the 1780s: cf., e.g. UC xxix, xxxii, xxxiii.

18 For the text see Bowring, , iv. 1–33Google Scholar; and for the contemporary effect of the pamphlet, cf. Correspondence (CW), ii. 90–3, 100, 102–4, 149–50.Google Scholar

19 Panopticon; or, the Inspection-House, London, 1791Google Scholar: Bowring, , iv. 37–172.Google Scholar The Hard Labour Bill of 1778 had been prompted by the need to make new provision for long-term prisoners when the American war interrupted the system of transportation to the colonies. Transportation was resumed in the 1780s, with Australia as the convicts' destination; and Bentham's Panopticon scheme was put forward as a better alternative.

20 Samuel Bentham (1757–1831) made his way to Russia during the autumn and winter of 1779–80 and spent, on this occasion, eleven years there. His brother joined him in 1785 and spent two years at or near Krichev, preparing for the presentation of his Code to the empress Catherine—an event which never took place. Cf. The Correspondence of Jeremy Bantham, vol. iii, ed. Christie, I. E., London, 1971 (CW), passimGoogle Scholar; also Christie, I. E., ‘Samuel Bentham and the Western Colony at Krichev, 1784–1787’, The Slavonic and East European Review, xlviii (1970), 232–47.Google Scholar

21 Cf., e.g., Correspondence (CW), i. 165 ff.; ii. 218, 223.Google Scholar

22 Correspondence (CW), ii. 183 (27 10 1778).Google Scholar One of what Bentham filed as his ‘Legislaturientes Epistolae’ was intended for Franklin (UC clxix. 118).Google Scholar

23 Cf. n. 18 above.

24 For the marriage project, cf. Correspondence (CW). i. 297 (Bentham to his brother, 22–23 February 1776); and for his expectations from Lansdowne's patronage, the very long letter of 24 August 1790, The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. iv, ed. Milne, A. T., London, 1981 (CW), pp. 145–70.Google Scholar

25 Correspondence (CW), ii. 122, 124Google Scholar; and cf. ibid., 99 n, 201 and n. Mikhail Tatischev, mentioned in the letters just cited, made the English translation, published in 1768, of Catherine's 1767 Instructions to the Commissioners for Composing a New Code of Laws.

26 The theme is discussed in chap. II (‘Obstacles to Reform’) of James Steintrager's Bentham, London, 1977.Google Scholar

27 Cf. Burns, J. H., ‘Bentham and the French Revolution’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th. ser., xvi (1966), 95–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James, M. H., ‘Bentham's Political Writings, 1788–95’, Bentham Newsletter, iv (1980), 22–4.Google Scholar

28 Bowling, , ii. 299–373Google Scholar; and cf. Correspondence (CW) iv, as index.Google Scholar

29 Bowring, , iv. 285–496Google Scholar; and cf. Correspondence (CW), iv, as index, esp. 124–26.Google Scholar

30 Cf. Bowring, , iv. 309Google Scholar for Bentham's somewhat hesitant endorsement of popular election. In the Constitutional Code of 1830, judges—like other public functionaries generally—are to be appointed on the basis of ‘Official aptitude’ determined by the principles of public examination, pecuniary competition, and responsible location—i.e. appointment by an ‘effectually responsible superordinate’: ed. Rosen, F. and Burns, J. H., Oxford, 1983 (CW), pp. 22–3Google Scholar (II. art. 17). They may however be ‘dislocated’ by the sovereign people as ‘Constitutive Authority’: ibid., pp. 90–2 (V.2, arts. 2, 5).

31 Correspondence (CW), iv. 340–42, 351–52, 361–62.Google Scholar

32 Bowring, , ii. 489–534.Google Scholar

33 UC clxx. 176 (1793).Google Scholar