Jeremy Bentham, one of the ‘founding fathers’ of utilitarianism, wrote the famous book, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Yet few people understand that this was originally supposed to be literally an introduction to material that was to follow it. This material was never published. I completed a guide to An Introduction in 2023. Now I’ve published two articles in The Journal of Bentham Studies that focus on that larger projected work, and set it in the context of Bentham’s life and times.

Bentham published An Introduction in 1789, but most of it was written around 1780, when he was 32 years old. He was trained as a lawyer but came to think that his intellectual gifts spoke in favour of a career designing laws in a new way, not simply applying laws that had already been written. This new way was to determine if the laws produced the most happiness for all the people affected by it. This is a rough way to state his guiding moral idea, ‘the principle of utility’. What this aspiring philosopher hoped to do was to present readers with a utilitarian law code that would clearly be more rational than those in England or other supposedly enlightened countries in Europe. The specific branch of law that Bentham proposed to present was ‘penal law’ or what we now call ‘criminal law’.

My articles discuss other works on criminal law that Bentham wrote around 1780, English law at that time, and the various thinkers who influenced him. But I’ll simply mention here some of the more interesting material in his penal code manuscripts and related works. Bentham defended making adultery a crime, although it was not one in England in 1780. On the other hand, he argued for making cruelty to animals an offense, although it was not one in England in 1780. And, remarkably, he argued that consensual sexual relations between two adult males should not be an offense, although people then convicted of it in England were hanged. Bentham opposed capital punishment and argued that, instead, many serious crimes should be punished by compulsory labor performed in prison, which would facilitate compensating victims. All of these positions were justified by appeals to the principle of utility.

Bentham’s thought in this period embodied a striking combination of radical new ideas that were eventually adopted, and others that have generally been rejected or never even tried. It’s fascinating to see how this intellectual pioneer used his new principle to rethink the ancient practice of criminal punishment.

Publications

Bentham's Project of Applied Ethics, c. 1780: A Penal Code. Part 1: Offences and Bentham’s Project of Applied Ethics, c. 1780: A Penal Code. Part 2: Punishment by Steven Sverdlik (Southern Methodist University, USA) is published in the Journal of Bentham Studies.

utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation penal code criminal law offences paederasty homosexuality cruelty to animals mischief punishment The Rationale of Punishment deterrence compulsory labour death penalty imprisonment