That is the point at which the utilitarian calculus will come into play, as it is too unwieldy a tool to be used in everyday circumstances. In other words, he discouraged their impartially taking into account all individual interests. He argued that an ethic applicable to ordinary human beings would be satisfied with limiting its claims. Does it mean that when he asks people for instance to stop eating animal products or when he seeks to persuade them to give a significant amount of their income to charities, he speaks from that particular vantage point?
Indeed, when put to the test of reality, utilitarianism seems far from being unanimously approved, even in countries where it gets better press than in France. Apart from his work in Deontology , he is not so much concerned by private ethics as by the political and judicial applications of his theory. Accordingly, he works at the macroethical government and society or megaethical international relations level.
As for Singer, it would seem that depending on the ethical issue he deals with, the addressee changes, as the following examples will illustrate. When he challenges the sanctity of human life, he suggests a new legislation on euthanasia, abortion or infanticide. When he calls for a UN shake-up and denounces the principle of national sovereignty as inadequate, he addresses the UN. The addressee, as suggested above, depends on the kind of change that he deems necessary.
As for the national level he reasons that:. The principle of equal consideration of interests points to a world in which all countries continue to accept refugees until they are reduced to the same standard of poverty and overcrowding as the third world countries from which the refugees are seeking to flee.
It concerns all levels, at one point or another. In each case he looks for the most appropriate level whether it be macroethics, microethics, megaethics on globalisation or mesoethics at the organizational or group level. His whole body of work perfectly illustrates his willingness to look into the impact not only on private ethics but also on societal, political, judicial and ethical concerns. Indeed, like John Stuart Mill in his day and time, though less successfully so, he once considered direct political commitment.
In , he ran for a seat in the Australian Parliament as a member of the Green Party. While at a personal level he applies the principles he promotes to himself by giving a significant amount of his income to international charities and by refraining from eating meat or using animal products. In An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation , the governing principles are identified as pain and pleasure.
They are presented as the prevailing features even before the concept of utility is mentioned, as evidenced by the following quote:. 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. For Bentham, it meant that all sentient beings should be included in the utilitarian calculus.
Though a mere footnote in Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation this argument has become a must in the propaganda of the animal movement, consequently promoting Bentham into the ranks of the major thinkers in animal philosophy.
Here is the famous passage:. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor.
It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of the legs, the pilosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum , are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate.
What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? In an extract that is often left out, understandably so, Bentham explains that animals may be killed to be eaten, as long as we do not hurt them in the process.
This is legitimated by the fact that they have no sense of the future:. If the being eaten were all, there is very good reason why we should be suffered to eat such of them as we like to eat: we are the better for it, and they are never the worse.
They have none of those long-protracted anticipations of future misery which we have. But is there any reason why we should be suffered to torment them? Not any that I can see. Are there any why we should not be suffered to torment them? Yes, several. Given that animals are sentient, we must not hurt them, though it may be admissible to kill them; which is not the same in moral terms. The principle of equal consideration of interests makes any sentient being the equivalent of other such beings.
However this principle does not apply if a being is incapable of suffering or of feeling either pain or happiness. This means that assessing the value of the constituent elements of interest pains and pleasures is a tricky business for the legislator; he must accurately observe the ways people behave, deduce the motives behind their actions, and encompass this knowledge in the sanctions of law. The aim is to tell individuals what they should not do, but also to provide them with motives pains and pleasures in prospect sufficient to divert their desires into channels best designed to serve the public interest.
In this way government could educate its citizens to make more effective choices, or at least guide them into more appropriate paths to achieve their real interests —43, I, Bentham recognised that neither the individual nor the legislator could strictly follow the process he described. As is well known, while adhering to the basic Benthamic analysis of motives, in Utilitarianism J. This tended to undermine the aggregative dimension of the theory laid down by Bentham.
Bentham occasionally suggested that pains and pleasures might be evaluated in relation to income or wealth, but he was aware of the limitations of this approach. It is in the nature of the case that the amount of increase in happiness will not be as great as the increase in wealth; the addition of equal increments of money will eventually bring successively less of an increase in happiness.
One of its practical consequences for a utilitarian such as Bentham is that, where choices present themselves between giving an additional increment to a rich man or to a poor man, more happiness will result from giving it to the poorer of the two. Also, the analysis underscores why money cannot be a direct measure of utility, since the utility represented by a particular sum of money will vary depending on the relative wealth of the person who receives it.
Moreover, it is evident that diminishing marginal utility is also a feature of the additional increments of pleasure a person may experience beyond a certain point; equal increments of pleasure will not necessarily add to the stockpile of happiness if a person has reached a saturation point. For Bentham, the unhappiness created by the loss of something will usually have a greater impact on a person than the happiness brought about by its gain to someone else —43, I, —7.
Of course, if the loser is a wealthy person and the gainer a poor man, this will not hold. But in the normal run of things, this is why Bentham gave a higher priority to the protection of property by law and why he held that the alleviation of suffering demands more immediate attention than plans to produce wealth —54, III, , Raising public funds through taxation for vital services would be justified by the principle, as would emergency expropriation of property in times of war or famine, usually with compensation paid to the property owner.
For Bentham, the significance of this principle as a practical guide could hardly be overstated. He came to see that such a principle could justify inordinate sacrifices by a minority, however that minority might be composed, in the interest of enhancing the happiness of a majority. He considered this a false conclusion, but one that needed to be addressed.
The less the numerical difference between the minority and majority, the more obvious the deficiency in aggregate happiness will be a, Logically, then, the closer we approximate the happiness of all the members of the community, the greater the aggregate of happiness.
The universal interest relates to interests that are shared by everyone, and only when it is impossible for government to contrive policies to achieve this end is a distribution of happiness less than universal or less than equal justified b, However, the number of decisions made by governments that are genuinely of universal reach are relatively few and may be limited to national defence and the framework of individual rights securities.
Beyond that, redistributive policies invariably involve unequal sacrifices and benefits. This means that the legislator must employ a utilitarian calculation in which the pain experienced by the few is reduced to the minimum necessary to produce benefits for the many; only on this basis may pleasures be summed and pains subtracted in order to produce the rationale to justify the best policy.
Related to this conception of the universal interest is the egalitarian commitment that in arriving at the appropriate law or policy the interests of each and all must count, and count equally , I, This does not mean that optimal utility is not the goal, but simply stresses that optimal utility will be more likely achieved where there is an approximate equality in the distribution of the basic requirements of happiness Postema Green forward, argue that calculations of total utility fail to respect the distinctiveness of persons and thereby place their interests at perpetual risk Rawls , 22—27; Nozick , 28—35; see the discussions in Ten , 13—37; Rosen , Chs.
If deterrence can be achieved by punishing an innocent bystander when the real culprit cannot be caught or brought to justice, then why should the bystander not be punished?
Because public utility would be maximised by making an example of an innocent bystander just as much as by punishing the person who was actually guilty of the offence but who has not been apprehended, it seems the utilitarian ought to support the punishment. But this is not only intuitively wrong, it is also wrong because there is a real danger that violations of security would lead to other such violations, with no principled basis to cease inflicting them. Basic securities must be afforded to each and every member of the community, and violations of these vital interests are not justified, whether they be perpetrated by other individuals or government, since they contravene the distributive elements of utilitarian theory.
From early on in his utilitarian theorizing, Bentham understood that the achievement of utilitarian objectives in practice required the translation of the utility principle into elements amenable to implementation in ways that the philosophically abstract principle itself could not be.
Concrete manifestations of happiness, for example, could be found in personal security and reduced crime rates, enhanced health and declining death rates, broader opportunities for education, the reduction of diseases caused by sewage pollution, and so on.
This deficiency did not, however, prevent him from developing the theoretical apparatus to direct the formulation of such laws. This was more than the Humean observation that utility is embedded in customary rules that have evolved over time. Where the jurist detects deficiencies, new rules and precepts must be developed that demonstrably accord with the utility principle.
The greatest happiness principle sets the over-arching objective and is the critical standard against which existing practices are to be judged. As such, it stands ever ready to be summoned forth whenever new guidelines are needed, subordinate ends conflict, or existing laws require amendment, refinement, or further elaboration.
However, in practice it is the secondary elements of the theory that do the work of producing beneficial outcomes. In this way, they give practical concreteness to the philosophically abstract end of the greatest happiness. The subordinate ends of civil law are security, subsistence, abundance, and equality, in this order of priority.
This is entirely consistent with the view that, properly understood, the utility principle entails a presumption in favour of an equal distribution, unless there is compelling empirical evidence that utility would not be served by such a policy.
However, he refused to countenance the idea that policies to redistribute wealth at the cost of security would be beneficial either to social prosperity or individual wellbeing. Bentham believed that facilitating individuals in the pursuit of their interests in a free market is what government should do, because this is the proven best way to maximise the public good.
Where laissez-faire does not produce the best result, however, the legislator must act in other direct and indirect ways to produce the optimal outcome. But radical schemes for property re-distribution are ruled out; the axiomatic requirement that each be treated equally, that the happiness of each be counted, justified policies to equalize the distribution of goods only where this could be achieved without disappointing legitimate expectations. Just as the primary purpose of civil law is economic security and national prosperity, so it draws powerful support from the protection afforded persons, property and expectations by the threat of punishment —43, III, To this end, utilitarian penal law is framed in terms of the principal objective of deterrence, but it also embraces the secondary ends of disablement, moral reformation, and compensation see Crimmins b.
The effectiveness of the theory in practice depends on two additional features: offences must be classified solely on the basis of the harm perpetrated, and there must be an appropriate proportion between crimes and punishments.
It is because of its failure to satisfy the first feature that Bentham rejected the prevailing criminalization of consensual sexual acts, and developed the first systematic defence of sexual liberty in the English language. In settling the required proportions of punishment, Bentham recognised he had burdened the legislator with a vastly complex task—the calculation of the correct quantity and type of pain needed to achieve the desired ends, in particular the objective of deterrence.
Bentham first examined the utility of the death penalty in the s when he delineated the principles of penal law —43, I, —50; see also , Ch. In sum, it is a special application of his utilitarian theory of punishment. The framework of analysis is presented as an objective, neutral exercise, by which the benefits and costs of the death penalty in cases of murder are assessed in comparison with life imprisonment with hard labour. All things considered, Bentham believed the weight of the calculation worked against the death penalty on the grounds of deterrence, the fact that it is inequable in its application, falling mainly on the shoulders of the poor, and because it is a form of punishment that is irremissible in the face of judicial error.
By , however, he abandoned the exceptions and argued that no offence warranted capital punishment UC cvii. Subordinate ends are also evident in the design and management of the panopticon prison: security and economy are foremost, but tempered by humanity and accountability.
This view of the panopticon has opened up some interesting lines of discourse on the encroaching methods of control and surveillance in contemporary liberal societies Brunon-Ernst The end of economy determined that the panopticon prison should be a private self-sustaining operation not requiring financial assistance from the public purse. Security determined that the community be protected from convicted criminals, and severity in punishment was to serve the ends of deterrence and reformation.
But security also required that the inmate be protected from cruel treatment, and humanity determined that prisoners should be deprived only of liberty not health or life. Prisoners were to be kept clean and their labour made productive and profitable, including the development of skills that might be useful to them when released. In support of these objectives, Bentham invoked several devices to effect transparency and accountability in prison government. And, just as the panopticon was to be monitored by the publication of regular reports, so reports of government activity were required to keep the democratic polity informed and facilitate the accountability of public officials.
When Bentham turned his thoughts to constitutional law in earnest in the s, partly inspired by constitution-making in parts of southern Europe, it was with the conviction that all states in which the institutions of representative democracy already existed or in which they could be introduced were fertile soil for the utilitarian pannomion.
The administrative, electoral and legislative details of this project occupied much of the last decade of his life, with its core ideas discussed in the pages of a variety of works in addition to the Code , such as Securities Against Misrule , First Principles Preparatory to Constitutional Code , and Official Aptitude Maximized; Expense Minimized.
The subsidiary principles of accountability, efficiency, and economy underpinned the institutional design and procedural operations elaborated in these writings. It is imperative, therefore, to devise mechanisms that will ensure that only by acting in the public interest could they promote their own interests.
Given the extensive powers Bentham envisaged the thirteen ministries of the reformed government would possess—far more power in the areas of public health, education, and relief of the poor and indigent than existed at the time—further safeguards would be required.
Intellectual and active aptitude were to be tested through an examination process, though this would come to naught if the appointed official did not possess the appropriate moral aptitude —43, IX, Other devices designed to ensure, encourage, and test the required aptitude of public officials include: 1 the precise definition of responsibilities attached to each office, against which the actions of officials could be judged by either a superordinate official or the public; 2 the principle of subordination, according to which every official was subordinate to another who could punish him for inefficiency in the performance of his tasks; 3 complete exposure to legal prosecution of all officials for wrong-doing; 4 the elimination of the practice of handing out unwarranted titles of honour to party supporters and other favourites; 5 complete publicity of government business and the elimination of secrecy; and 6 freedom of the press, speech and association see Rosen , Ch.
In the first sense of the term it is seemingly impossible for there to be a law that deliberately functions contrary to the will of the legislature. However, Bentham also held that all political authority, no matter what form it takes, is necessarily limited by its capacity to compel obedience from the people. And in Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence he explained that this implies two volitions, both of which are necessary components of a complete theory of sovereignty: on the one hand, the enactments of a legislature and, on the other, the will of the people to obey those enactments.
The POT would scrutinize the actions of elected representatives, public and judicial officials, prosecuting charges where they are found remiss in their responsibilities, censoring misrule and imposing penalties when applicable. In these terms, the POT would be the leading security against the misuse and abuse of power , Vital to the functioning of the POT is the dissemination of information.
In the first instance this would require the establishment of a public archive of government actions and activities containing records of law, policy, legislative debate, and statistics, which the government would be constitutionally required to make available to the public by a freedom of information provision in the constitutional code to ensure transparency. Secondly, it would require an unshackled press to ensure widespread publicity and the freedom to criticize unimpeded by censorship or gagging orders.
Here Bentham drew upon his essay On the Liberty of the Press, and Public Discussion to point out the dangers of laws designed to limit these liberties. Bentham did not consider that the effectiveness of the POT as a check on misrule could be undermined by secret government methods to limit the flow of information, nor did it occur to him that a press dominated by the views of one class could subvert the veracity of the information it disseminated. Health Risks of Processed Meat.
A Cruelty-Free Kitchen. Skip to content Famous Quotes and Poems. Like this: Like Loading Search for:. Important Books. Donate We welcome your donation to support our website and mission. Subscribe to Blog via Email Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. But is there any reason why we should be suffered to torment them? Not any that I can see. Are there any why we should not be suffered to torment them? Yes, several.
The day has been—I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past—in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.
The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villousity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate.
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