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Unit 9: Jeremy Bentham

Bentham was confident that his utilitarian principles could be the basis of law. At one point, he Notes
even advertised that he could draw up a new code of law for any nation on earth, cutting across
diverse cultural and psychological contexts. In An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation, Bentham wrote:
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and
pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine
what shall we do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the
chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do,
in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will
serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their
empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while ... the principle of utility
recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object
of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law.
Bentham contended that human beings by nature were hedonists. Each of their actions was
motivated by a desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Every human action had a cause and a
motive. “Take away all pleasures and all pain and you have no desire and without a desire there
can be no action” (Bentham ibid: 40). The principles of utility recognized this basic psychological
trait, for it “approves or disapproves every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it
appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question
... not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government”.
Bentham viewed hedonism not only as a principle of motivation, but also as a principle of action.
He listed 14 simple pleasures and 12 simple pains, classifying these into self-regarding and other-
regarding groups, a distinction that J.S. Mill borrowed in elaboration of the concept of liberty.
Only two, benevolence and malevolence, were put under other-regarding action. Under self-
regarding motives, Bentham listed physical desire, pecuniary interest, love of power and self-
preservation. Self-preservation included fear of pain, love of life and love of ease.
In addition to these, Bentham also laid down social and dissocial categories. The social category
was subdivided into social and semi-social. Social motive based on goodwill was associated with
the pleasure and pain of sympathy, the pleasure and pain that an individual derived from
contemplating the (un)happiness of others, without being affected personally. Semi-social motives
included the love for regulations, the desire for amity, and a feeling for religion. Each had a social
connotation, namely the overall happiness of others, but these were primarily self-regarding. The
dissocial motive was essentially one of displeasure, associated with the pleasure and pain of
antipathy and resentment. For Bentham, there was an interest corresponding to every motive.
Bentham described four sanctions or sources of pain and pleasure. The first of these was physical
sanction: the source of constraints which arose from human nature and natural circumstances. The
second was political and legal sanction: the source of constraints was in the form of rewards and
punishments that were meted out by the political authority. The third was moral or popular
sanction, meaning the influence(s) on individual behaviour exerted by collective opinion, or by
the (dis) approval of those the person was in contact with. The fourth and final sanction was
religious sanction, stemming from the hope of divine rewards or the fear of divine punishment.
Bentham was confident that a society in which the individual tried to maximize his own happiness
would be far better than one in which he had to maximize the happiness of others. In this context,
he believed that Christianity placed excessive reliance on altruism, for if the precepts of Jesus were
taken literally, that would lead to the destruction of society. Like Epicures, Bentham regarded
security as the ideal. For Bentham, security preceded liberty. They were both anti-religion. Bentham’s
dislike, or even hostility, towards religion, and the Church of England in particular, was because
of his awareness of the superstitious and irrational side of human nature. It was for this reason
that he regarded religion as an enemy of reason. In this, he voiced the views of the mainstream

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