The Principles of Morals and Legislation by Jeremy Bentham Essay Example for Free

The Principles of Morals and Legislation by Jeremy Bentham Essay Introduction Jeremy Bentham has written numerous texts but none has had the towering impact on philosophical and legal thinking as his 1789 work titled â€Å"An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislations†. The book spells out a comprehensive theme on the moral and ethical sub structure on which utilitarian philosophy is built.   This is followed by an in depth analysis into the social and legal concerns of crime and punishment. What makes Benthams work extremely useful is the fact that both issues tackled by him have been highly controversial and extremely important topics throughout the modern era and continue to be fiercely debated and dwelt upon to this day. Bentham tackles the principle of utility and aims to link it with the legal verb. To Bentham, society sees highest achievable positive stimulus coupled with the lowest acceptable negative stimulus as something good, or worthwhile. On the other hand, societys perception of bad or corrupt is anything which leads to high negative stimulus and nil amount of positive feeling. These feelings are tangible and intangible, that is, they might be felt through the senses or may leave a mark on his/her soul.   Bentham assumes that these perceptions are integrated into the laws and regulations of a principality and suggests a criterion that calculates the positive and/or negative impact of any decisions flowing from the courts. Bentham identifies the magnitude of the decision, its time scale, its dependability, its qualitative aspects, its fruitfulness, its chastity, and the degree to which it engulfs the stakeholders as the binding tools using which the impact that a certain decision will have can be calculated and on the basis of which the idea of punishment can be studied and its effectiveness as a tool for social correction and betterment can be estimated, including its positive and negative effect on society. Bentham urges law makers and those who interpret of the law to measure the effectiveness of the punishment for it is possible that society, made up of many â€Å"selfs†, may perceive otherwise and the attempt to suppress a negative act may lead to greater manifestation of negativity in the society and its inhabitants. Bentham bases his hypothesis in view of his observation that laws and punishments lacking logic and common sense are not needed as they would lead to society towards greater negativity with far reaching consequences. Bentham then goes on to refute the notion that laws are a product of age, faith, literary compositions, fantasies of the human mind, distaste and fellow feeling. Instead laws, as Bentham sees them, should be constructed by careful examination of the positive and negative stimulus that these prospective laws would have on the society. Rugged Individualism is dangerous for Bentham sees it as a condition where the pursuit of happiness by the self will have adverse effects on those around him, leading to disorder. Thus, laws should be enacted in view of creating the maximum amount of positive stimulus and the lowest acceptable amount of negative feeling in favor of the highest number of people. Analysis Benthams views on the selfs pursuit of positive stimulus is up for scrutiny and synthesis. For Bentham, the self has two primary objectives, being to escape negative feeling and obtain the highest amount of positive feeling. Bentham argues that the pursuit for positive feeling is so strong that the individual self may seem keen to use others as a stepping stone so as to attain it. It is for this reason that Bentham argues against grouping of individuals for these metrics do not hold for long due to the selfs rugged pursuit of individual positive feeling. Thus, by all definitions, the self follows â€Å"utilitarianism†. Bentham banks upon many factors to support his view that humans have certain unique drivers that attempt to spread positivism or negativity amongst those around him. Long lasting political corridors are an example. Bentham makes use of the principles sympathy and antipathy by observing that the self fails to respond to certain actions as it does not feel threatened by them. However, if it does measure these actions in view of the personal effects it may have on itself, its reaction is going to be quite powerful. However, Benthams view of the self as a rigid decision maker on social issues is not without error. By narrowing down to what is right and what is wrong, the external influences on the self are disregarded. Bentham suggests that principle is something that points out some external consideration, as a means of warranting and guiding the internal sentiments of approbation and disapprobation. (Bentham, 75) Thus, the fact that external considerations are the ignition for shaping internal sentiments suggests that morality is also shaped by the environment in which the self resides. It is possible though that moral principle is distasteful. By disagreeing to accept principles, the self returns to its pre civilized state of affairs, that is, returns to its instinct. The tie between the catholic school of thought and the modern day autocratic system of government is explained by Benthams statement that plainness is against the law of human governance as explained by nature itself. To Bentham, both school of thoughts aim to force a code of ethics on the population as a whole, a task which is impossible to begin with. This point is best explained when criticizes using the words though many persons of this class have wielded the reins (sic) of empire, we read of none who have set themselves to work, and made laws of purpose. (Bentham, 73) Bentham goes on and projects a better measure on how to instill ethical considerations into society and improve the standard of governance, both stemming from a monarchist system of government. The Rule of Right under which the royals provided justifications that God had entrusted to them the power to rule was an important issue during Bentham’s lifetime. His theory of Utilitarianism had an answer to all problems of sociology except those arising out of monarchist rule. He argued that when a reformist asked for ethical change in society, the masses responded for this was perceived as something good. Thus, society would be justly governed if the maximum amount of positivism and the lowest amount of negativism would follow from it, Bentham argues that the pursuance of pleasure or positive feeling is paramount to any government. This pursuit of pleasure should extend towards administrative, law making, law enforcement and law making matters. This is evidenced by him saying It is not to be expected that this process should be strictly pursued previously to every moral judgment. (Bentham, 88) By giving thought to the ethical and moral consequences of judicial decision making, Bentham argued for radical reform. Thus, it was possible that simplicity could be sacrificed and ethics kept and thus ensure a fair administrative environment. This would also bring an end to the so called rule of right and its religious fervor.   Thus, Bentham managed to lay the groundwork on which future insight into the field of social morality was constructed. Bentham has a very simple yet powerful explanation to the classification of human positivism or negativism. To him, pleasure and pain are either simple or complex and thus never migrate into other stratifications. The basic observation on the pursuit of happiness and soreness has been termed as very shallow prompting Bentham when he says that â€Å"the simple ones are those which cannot any one of them be resolved into more, (Bentham, 90). Thus, for instance, Benthams remark that the end of the law is to augment happiness is a fair code of administration. (Bentham, 97). However, sometimes safety comes at a cost of pleasure and both sides of the coin are aptly discussed in his book. As the old maxim goes, â€Å"for every dark and light area there is a gray area†. Thus, it was a great feat that Jeremy Bentham managed to break new ground in the study of the origin of the rudiments of the individual’s drive and ethics. He provided a theoretical framework under which it became possible for a government to pursue pleasure for all and regard it as fair administration. While positive stimulus builds character, the probability that good might turn into the opposite s always high and present. Dishonesty has been and continues to be a major issue in governance. Further dwelling upon ways to record these good and bad characters reveals that any government which has positive stimulus at its corner stone ends up being corrupted by the individual’s circumstance. This work by Jeremy Bentham provides a while new insight into the world of ethics. Conclusion The Introduction to the Principles of Morals and legislations by Bentham has formed the sub structure on which the rest of English Utilitarian philosophy is built. It is an important commentary on the principle of utility, theory of action, and the tie between law and morality. Bentham examines morality as a subset of human reaction. The author seeks to enact social reform by trying to bring goal congruence between the interests of the individual and the masses. The history of social reform has not seen a great yet low profile philosopher like Jeremy Bentham. This might be due to the length and width of this draining work. Despite that, his work on utilitarianism has evolved as an important pillar in moral philosophy and his work laid the groundwork for this future development. You have succeeded in understanding the book if one manages to understand utilitarianism, its workings, and how egoism and neutralism converge when viewed in an ethical context. This would help the reader in scrutinizing the theory, internally and externally. However, a thorough reading of this text would ensure that works on this topic by later writers like Mill would seem quite easy to comprehend. Work Cited Bentham, Jeremy. Principles of Morals and Legislation. United States of America: Prometheus Books. ISBN: 0879754346.