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This volume considers Jeremy Bentham’s Australian writings. In the first part of the volume, Bentham’s works are placed in their historical contexts, while the second part provides a critical assessment of the historical accuracy and plausibility of Bentham’s arguments against transportation from the British Isles. In the third part, attention turns to Bentham’s claim that New South Wales was founded illegally and to the imperial and colonial constitutional ramifications of that claim. The authors also discuss Bentham’s work of 1831 in which he supports the establishment of a free colony on the southern coast of Australia. In the final part, the authors shed light on the history of Bentham’s panopticon penitentiary scheme, his views on the punishment and reform of criminals and what role, if any, religion had to play in that regard, and discuss apparently panopticon-inspired institutions built in the Australian colonies.
This collection will appeal to readers interested in Bentham’s life and thought, the history of transportation from the British Isles and of British penal policy more generally, colonial and imperial history, Indigenous history, legal and constitutional history, and religious history.
The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 13 contains authoritative and fully annotated texts of all known and publishable letters sent both to and from Bentham between 1st July 1828 and his death on 6th June 1832. In addition to 474 letters, the volume contains three memorandums concerning Bentham’s health shortly before his death, his last will and testament, and extracts from both the autobiography and the manuscript diaries of Bentham’s nephew George. Among the letters that have already been published, most are drawn from the edition of The Works of Jeremy Bentham, prepared under the superintendence of Bentham’s literary executor John Bowring. A small number of letters have been reproduced from newspapers and periodicals.
This volume publishes, for the first time, the entire extant correspondence between Bentham and Daniel O’Connell, the Irish Liberator. Other new acquaintances include the barrister and law reformer, Charles Sinclair Cullen, and the Real Property Commissioner, John Tyrrell. Throughout the period, Bentham maintained regular contact with old friends and connections, but he also engaged in sporadic correspondence with such leading figures in government as the Duke of Wellington, Robert Peel, and Henry Brougham. Further afield, Bentham corresponded, amongst others, with the Marquis de La Fayette in France, Edward Livingston in the United States of America, and José Del Valle in Guatemala.
If one can use a somewhat exaggerated language, Mill’s writings are to liberal-democracy what Marx and Engels’ writings were to Communism. Both systems gave expression to 19th century man’s longing for equality and justice, both promised to liberate him from the shackles of oppression, authority and tradition. Instead of liberating man, Communism created the most brutal system in human history, and its spectacular fall in 1989 is one of history’s greatest events. Western world today shows that liberal-democracy is no longer a benign doctrine, which advocates free market, minimum state and individual liberties, but, like Communism, is an all-encompassing ideology which forces an individual to abdicate his freedom and soul in favor of a Communist-like collective.
As many critics of real Socialism could see the seeds of totalitarianism in the writings of Marx and Engels, so one can see the seeds of liberal totalitarianism in Mill’s writings. This new edition is intended to help readers to understand why democratic-liberalism came so close to its 19th century ideological rival.
The Limits of Utilitarianism was first published in 1982. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Many philosophers have argued that utilitarianism is an unacceptable moral theory and that promoting the general welfare is at best only one of the legitimate goals of public policy. Utilitarian principles seem to place no limits on the extent to which society may legitimately interfere with a person's liberties - provided that such actions can be shown to promote the long-term welfare of its members. These issues have played a central role in discussions of utilitarianism since the time of Bentham and Mill. Despite criticisms, utilitarianism remains the most influential and widely accepted moral theory of recent times.
In this volume contemporary philosophers address four aspects of utilitarianism: the principle of utility; utilitarianism vis-à-vis contractarianism; welfare; and voluntary cooperation and helping others. The editors provide an introduction and a comprehensive bibliography that covers all books and articles published in utilitarianism since 1930.
These are questions that have bedeviled scientists, doctors, and ethicists for decades, and in Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good, Cathy Gere presents the gripping story of how we have addressed them over time. Today, we are horrified at the idea that a medical experiment could be performed on someone without consent. But, as Gere shows, that represents a relatively recent shift: for more than two centuries, from the birth of utilitarianism in the eighteenth century, the doctrine of the greater good held sway. If a researcher believed his work would benefit humanity, then inflicting pain, or even death, on unwitting or captive subjects was considered ethically acceptable. It was only in the wake of World War II, and the revelations of Nazi medical atrocities, that public and medical opinion began to change, culminating in the National Research Act of 1974, which mandated informed consent. Showing that utilitarianism is based in the idea that humans are motivated only by pain and pleasure, Gere cautions that that greater good thinking is on the upswing again today and that the lesson of history is in imminent danger of being lost.
Rooted in the experiences of real people, and with major consequences for how we think about ourselves and our rights, Pain, Pleasure, and the Greater Good is a dazzling, ambitious history.
For the last half century, the philosophical debates over punishment have been deadlocked at two schools of thought: Utilitarianism and Retributivism. In his introduction, Koritansky provides an overview of the stymied debate by analyzing H. L. A. Hart’s argument for a philosophy unifying the theories of Utilitarianism and Retributivism. While Koritansky allows that both theories have contributed substantially to the contemporary understanding of punishment, he points out that Hart’s lack of success in combining these theories proves that both are less than ideal. From this starting point, Koritansky urges transcendence from these two theories in order to respond to new developments and circumstances surrounding the enactment of punishment today.
Conveniently divided into three sections, the book explores pagan and Christian premodern thought; early modern thought, culminating in chapters on Kant and classic Utilitarianism; and postmodern thought as exemplified in the theories of Nietzsche and Foucault. In all, the essays probe the work of Plato, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, Cesere Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault.
These essays devoted to the philosophy of punishment from the perspective of political thought delve deep into key contributions from thinkers of all eras to help further debates on punishment, provide the history of political thought in order to trace changes and effects on future theories, as well as expose the roots of the two prevailing schools of thought. This collection will engage all social scientists interested in the issue of punishment and energize the ongoing debate surrounding this complex issue.
The economic case for self-interest at the outer limits of being morally good.
Modern life is an exercise in discomfort. In the face of endless injustice, how much selfishness is permissible? How do we square suffering elsewhere with our hope to thrive at home? How does one strive for the greater good while guarding one's personal interests? The Price of Our Values argues that the answers to these questions are economic: by weighing our sense of the personal costs associated with the outer limits of our moral beliefs.
These tradeoffs—the want to be good, the personal costs of being good, and the points at which people abandon goodness due to its costs—are somewhat unsettling. But as economists Augustin Landier and David Thesmar show, they are highly predictable, even justified. Our values guide us, but we are also forced to consider economic costs to settle decisions.
The Price of Our Values is an economic reckoning with the universal unease of contemporary moral life. Wielding insights from the philosophical founders of the field, Landier and Thesmar provide frameworks for thinking about the place of values—justice, freedom, beauty— in the decisions of modern life. They do so in terms that seek to be consistent with both our good intentions and their limits.
As evidenced in the self-reliance of the great Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went so far as to refer to the early part of the nineteenth century as the age of Swedenborg, the socialist tendencies of Henry James, Sr., and the pragmatic philosophy of his highly esteemed son William James, Swedenborg has had a powerful impact on a number of prominent individual thinkers and their lasting traditions.
With love for one’s neighbor sharing pride of place among his ideas, it comes as no surprise that Swedenborg’s outlook on human interaction worked its way into the various social reform movements that vitalized the American landscape during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the more politically oriented single-tax movement of Henry George to the utopian aspirations of Charles Fourier and the more spiritually inclined social gospel and pastoral clinical movements, those who took Swedenborg’s principles of usefulness to heart sought ways to reflect the divine design in human society.
John Haller’s treatment of the era draws a magnifying glass to those intellectual titans whose fortitude in the face of psychological and social adversities stands as a testament to the robustness of Swedenborg’s concept of usefulness. As James F. Lawrence, Dean of the Center for Swedenborgian Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, so aptly states in his foreword, “this book tells stories and builds perspectives that will prove without a doubt to be very useful.”
Utility and Rights was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
At issue in the clash between utilitarianism and the theory of rights is a fundamental question about the theoretical underpinnings of moral and political philosophy. Is this structure to be utility-based—grounded in the general welfare—or is it to be based on individual moral and political rights, as critics of utilitarianism increasingly insist? The argument centers, in part, upon the fact that utilitarianism, with its emphasis upon outcomes and total utility in the world, seems to employ a value theory that offers no protection to persons and their vital interests.
The essays in this volume grapple with the main issues in this controversy. They share a common concern with the nature of rights and the ways in which various moral theories can accommodate them; some measure the degree to which utilitarianism can or cannot be modified to include rights. Eight of the eleven essays were written expressly for this book; all of the authors are deeply engaged in the debate over utility and rights, and their essays build upon and extend current thinking on the subject. R. G. Frey's lucid introduction will make the book appropriate for advanced students as well as for scholars in moral, political, and legal theory.
"One ubiquitous criticism of utilitarianism is that it cannot make sense of moral rights at all. This collection is the first that explicitly addresses these issues, and it marks a major step in the debate."–Dale Jamieson, University of Colorado
R. G. Frey is senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of Interests and Rights and Rights, Killing, and Suffering.
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