Jeremy Bentham

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the impact of Jeremy Bentham on Britain's judicial system. This paper discusses the England's corrupt legal system during the 18th and 19th centuries which Bentham succeeded in considerably reforming. This paper analyzes the political thinker's approach to social reform. The writer of this paper delves into Bentham's insightful views and opinions pertaining to political liberty, hedonism and psychological egoism. This paper also examines Bentham's considerable impact on the British Parliament which upon Bentham's death passed the Reform Bill, which extricated political power from the ruling nobility and bestowed it upon British population.

From the Paper:

"The basis for Bentham's theory of government necessarily starts from his ethical propositions; both of these depend upon his principle of utility he called this the "greatest happiness" principle. Bentham identifies happiness with pleasure, and supposes that the rightness or wrongness of actions can only be accurately comprehended upon a scale of pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness. This makes him a hedonist, but he is a utilitarian hedonist in that he believes that human actions should be measured along these guidelines based upon their definitive outcomes. The outcome of purely moral actions spreads this principle throughout all of society: "It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong."

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