Bentham

This book is a concise introduction to the thought of Jeremy Bentham by the British scholar J. R. Dinwiddy (John Rowland Dinwiddy). Bentham was the founder of utilitarianism and a pioneer of the British legal reform movement, and his influence extends across ethics, jurisprudence, political theory, and social and administrative reform. The book systematically traces the connections among the components of Bentham's philosophy: the principle of utility as the basic measure for judging law and government, extending from questions of punishment and judicial procedure to discussion of rights, obligations, and the logic of legislation, and also covering democratic constitutional proposals, parliamentary reform, and the clearing away of "fictitious" concepts and linguistic fog. The author also devotes considerable space to the various common scholarly interpretations of Bentham's thought, distinguishing what later generations accepted from so-called "Benthamism" and what they misread or distorted, and finally assesses the continuing relevance of his ideas to modern political and legal issues. Dinwiddy long served as editor of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham and had a deep command of the original sources, so although the book is short, it balances textual grounding with the thread of the problems, and is widely regarded as a reliable introductory work for entering Bentham studies. It is suitable as the first stop before studying Bentham's own works, and it also helps readers place Bentham in the intellectual-historical chain from Hume and Blackstone to Mill.