Jeremy BenthamJeremy Bentham"Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense - nonsense upon stilts." Jeremy Bentham [Anarchical Fallacies]
Benthamism Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) Jeremy Bentham Oxford Companion to Philosophy Jeremy Bentham Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Jeremy Bentham Encyclopedia Britannica Jeremy Bentham Encarta Jeremy Bentham Wikipedia Jeremy Bentham Thoemmes Encyclopedia of the History of Ideas
hedonistic calculation of the utility of particular actions with a view to the greatest happiness of all
Jeremy Bentham: The Principle of Utility (16 pages in Timmons)
from the Bentham Project
At the end of the South Cloisters of the main building of UCL stands a wooden cabinet, which has been a source of curiosity and perplexity to visitors.
The cabinet contains Bentham's preserved skeleton, dressed in his own clothes, and surmounted by a wax head. Bentham requested that his body be preserved in this way in his will made shortly before his death on 6 June 1832. The cabinet was moved to UCL in 1850. See picture above.
Not surprisingly, this peculiar relic has given rise to numerous legends and anecdotes. One of the most commonly recounted is that the Auto-Icon regularly attends meetings of the College Council, and that it is solemnly wheeled into the Council Room to take its place among the present-day members. Its presence, it is claimed, is always recorded in the minutes with the words Jeremy Bentham - present but not voting. Another version of the story asserts that the Auto-Icon does vote, but only on occasions when the votes of the other Council members are equally split. In these cases the Auto-Icon invariably votes for the motion.
Bentham had originally intended that his head should be part of the Auto-Icon, and for ten years before his death (so runs another story) carried around in his pocket the glass eyes which were to adorn it. Unfortunately when the time came to preserve it for posterity, the process went disastrously wrong, robbing the head of most of its facial expression, and leaving it decidedly unattractive. The wax head was therefore substituted, and for some years the real head, with its glass eyes, reposed on the floor of the Auto-Icon, between Bentham's legs. However, it proved an irresistible target for students, especially from King's College London, and it frequently went missing, turning up on one occasion in a luggage locker at Aberdeen station. The last straw (so runs yet another story) came when it was discovered in the front quadrangle being used for football practice. Thereafter it was removed to the College vaults, where it remains to this day.
Many people have speculated as to exactly why Bentham chose to have his body preserved in this way, with explanations ranging from a practical joke at the expense of posterity to a sense of overweening self-importance. Perhaps the Auto-Icon may be more plausibly regarded as an attempt to question religious sensibilities about life and death. Yet whatever Bentham's true motives, the Auto-Icon will always be a source of fascination and debate, and will serve as a perpetual reminder of the man whose ideals inspired the institution in which it stands.
''By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every
action whatsoever, according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness
of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words to promote or
to oppose that happiness.''
[Introduction to the Principal of Morals and Legislation.]
''During the first assault of passion as under a thunder stroke the sentiments of virtue may yield
for a moment.''
[Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation]
''Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense -
nonsense upon stilts.''
[Anarchical Fallacies]
''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 we shall do.''
[Introduction to the Principal of Morals and Legislation.]
''The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.''
[Works]
The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. by John Bowring (Thoemmes, 1997)
Ross Harrison, Bentham (Routledge, 1999)
Essays on Bentham, ed. by H. L. A. Hart (Oxford, 1983)
Gerald J. Postema, Jeremy Bentham: Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy (Ashgate, 2001)
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Bentham, Jeremy, Panopticon: or, the Inspection-House : Containing the idea of a new principle of construction applicable to ... penitentiary-houses, prisons, houses of industry, work-houses, poor-houses, manufactories, mad-houses, hospitals, and schools. With a plan of management adapted to the principle / In a series of letters, written ... 1787, from Crecheff ... to a friend in England. Dublin : Thomas Byrne, 1791. |
Bentham, Jeremy, The Panopticon writings, edited and introduced by Miran Bozovic. London : Verso, 1995
Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 1975
J.R. Dinwiddy, Bentham (Oxford University Press, 1989) - in the 'Past Masters' series.
C.F.A. Marmoy, 'The "Auto-Icon" of Jeremy Bentham at University College London', Medical History, 2 (1958), 77-86.
R. Richardson and B. Hurwitz, 'Jeremy Bentham's self-image: an exemplary bequest for dissection', British Medical Journal, 295 (July-Dec. 1987).
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart, (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996).