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Individual Sacrifice and the Greatest Happiness: Bentham on Utility and Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

F. Rosen
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Abstract

This article considers Bentham's response to the criticism of utilitarianism that it allows for and may even require the sacrifice of some members of society in order to increase overall happiness. It begins with the contrast between the principle of utility and the contrasting principle of sympathy and antipathy to show that Bentham regarded the main achievement of his principle as overcoming the subjectivity he found in all other philosophical theories. This subjectivism, especially prevalent in theories of rights, might well lead to the sacrifice of the individual. The principle of utility was presented as an ‘objective’ theory that avoided the difficulties of other moral and political theories. The article also considers the importance of universally applicable ends, such as security and equality, as part of the principle of utility, and especially Bentham's view of maximizing pleasure as being a distributive rather than an aggregative idea. The article concludes by criticizing H. L. A. Hart's interpretation of the role of equality and rights in Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and argues that Mill's doctrine of moral rights builds on foundations originally established by Bentham, foundations which would preclude the sacrifice of individuals.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , July 1998 , pp. 129 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

1 By ‘classical utilitarianism’ in this paper I mean the version formulated by Jeremy Bentham and developed by John Stuart Mill. ‘Classical utilitarianism’ may also refer to a longer tradition extending from David Hume to Henry Sidgwick, although for the problems examined here Bentham and Mill are the key thinkers.

2 The most commonly cited statement of this opinion appears in Williams, Bernard, ‘A critique of utilitarianism’, in Smart, J. J. C. and Williams, Bernard, Utilitarianism: For and Against, Cambridge, 1973, pp. 98fGoogle Scholar. That it has become a commonplace remark may be seen, for example, in the recent comment by Peter Vallentyne that ‘traditional act utilitarianism holds, for example, that it is morally obligatory to torture or kill an innocent person, when doing so increases the happiness of others more than it decreases the happiness of the innocent person’ (‘Taking Justice Too Seriously’, Utilitas, vii (1995), 207Google Scholar). Not all philosophers accept this view. See, for example, the recent discussion of ‘Jim and the Indians’ in Bedau, Hugo Adam, Making Mortal Choices, New York and Oxford, 1997, pp. 71ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Rosen, F., ‘Utilitarianism and the Punishment of the Innocent: The Origins of a False Doctrine’, Utilitas, ix (1997), 23–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Oxford, 1972, p. 27Google Scholar.

5 Hart, H. L. A., ‘Natural Rights: Bentham and John Stuart Mill’, Essays on Bentham, Jurisprudence and Political Theory, Oxford, 1982, pp. 98fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See Bentham, J., An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., Oxford, 1996 (afterwards referred to as IPML), p. 11nGoogle Scholar.

7 See Rosen, F., Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, A Study of the Constitutional Code, Oxford, 1985, pp. 200–3Google Scholar; ‘Majorities and Minorities: A Classical Utilitarian View’, Majorities and Minorities, Nomos XXXII, ed. Chapman, J. W. and Wertheimer, Alan, New York, 1990, pp. 29–31Google Scholar.

8 See IPML, pp. 11–16 and 21–33.

9 See ibid., pp. 17–21. Bentham, appreciated the importance of asceticism in religion and politics, but as a philosophical principle he concluded that it was ‘at bottom … the principle of utility misapplied’ (p. 21)Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 25. In a footnote added after the main text had been printed, Bentham, reflected further on this key opposing principle and expressed the view that it might have been more accurately characterized as ‘the principle of caprice’, or, as he called it a few lines later, ‘the phantastic principle’ (p. 21n)Google Scholar.

11 See ibid., p. 31.

12 Ibid., p. 32.

13 Ibid., p. 33.

14 Bentham does not in fact list natural or moral rights under the principle of sympathy and antipathy. It was probably the case that no prominent earlier writer had claimed that such rights were the foundation of morals and legislation. But Bentham does list moral sense, common sense, understanding, rule of right, fitness of things, law of nature, law of reason, right reason, natural justice, natural equity, good order, truth, and doctrine of election. There is little doubt that he would have classed natural or moral rights under this category. For the well-known remark that natural rights were ‘simple nonsense’ and natural and imprescriptible rights, ‘nonsense upon stilts’, see ‘Anarchical Fallacies’ in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Bowring, J., 11 vols., Edinburgh, 1838–1843, ii.501 (afterwards Bowring)Google Scholar. In Constitutional Code, vol. I, ed. Rosen, F. and Burns, J. H., Oxford, 1983, (CW), p. 188nGoogle Scholar, Bentham refers to moral rights as follows: ‘A thick cloud envelopes the discourse, under it endless confusion reigns.’

15 IPML, p. 25.

16 Ibid., p. 12.

17 Ibid., p. 12n. See also Rosen, F., ‘Introduction’, pp. lii–liiiGoogle Scholar where Bentham's formulation of the principle of utility is linked to that of David Hume.

18 Ibid., p. 11.

19 Ibid. By adopting the perspective of the legislator Bentham did not mean to suggest that the principle of utility did not serve as a criterion of rightness for an individual's actions. But the criterion of rightness is not simply equivalent to individual perceptions of the sum of one's pleasures.

20 See ibid., pp. 34, 38.

21 Ibid., p. 38.

22 Bentham, J., Codification Proposal (1822) (Bowring, iv. 561)Google Scholar.

23 For the best philosophical account of these subordinate ends, and especially security, see Kelly, P. J., Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law, Oxford, 1990Google Scholar.

24 IPML, p. 12.

25 Bentham, J., A Comment on the Commentaries and A Fragment on Government, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1977, (CW), pp. 190–1Google Scholar.

26 Constitutional Code, vol. I (CW), pp. 18f.

27 Ibid., p. 19.

28 IPML, p. 38.

29 Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, 33 vols., ed. Robson, J. M., Toronto, 1969, x. 257Google Scholar.

30 H. L. A. Hart, pp. 98f. See also more recently, Skorupski, John, John Stuart Mill (The Arguments of the Philosophers), London, 1989, pp. 287f., 325ffGoogle Scholar.

31 Rosen, , Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, pp. 202f., 211ffGoogle Scholar.

32 For Bentham, the principle of equal distribution was subordinate to the principle of the equal security of expectations which set limits to the practical pursuit of substantive equality by means of compulsory redistribution and the attendant goal of ‘levelling down’. See Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice. In the example provided by Crisp, R., Mill on Utilitarianism, London, 1997, p. 169Google Scholar, Bentham, for example, would have chosen the equal rather than the unequal outcome, provided no issue of security had been raised. That is to say, he would choose 100 units of welfare equally distributed between two groups over 110 units unequally distributed, where the majority receives more at the expense of the minority.

33 Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism in Collected Works, x. 257fGoogle Scholar.

34 Ibid., p. 258.

35 Ibid., p. 258n.

36 Cf. Crisp, pp. 79–80.

37 See Rosen, F., ‘Utilitarianism and the Punishment of the Innocent’, p. 32Google Scholar.

38 An early draft of this paper was read at the Second International Conference of the SIEU at Lisbon on 11–15 June 1997. A later version was delivered at the Bentham 250 conference at the University of Texas at Austin on 15–16 February 1998, and at the University of Granada on 6 March 1998. I am indebted to José de Sousa e Brito for inviting me to the Lisbon conference, to Professor James Fishkin for organizing the meeting in Texas, and to Professor Manuel Escamilla for the invitation to present the paper in Granada. My thanks to Dr Philip Schofield and Dr Roger Crisp for detailed comments on the first version, but neither is responsible for the argument that appears here.