History of European Ideas 35 (2009) 391–394
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History of European Ideas
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Review essay
Bentham and Benthamism
Schofield Philip, Utility and Democracy. The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham, Oxford University Press, Oxford
(2006)., 370 pp.
Blamires Cyprian, The French Revolution and the Creation of Benthamism, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke (2008)., 442 pp.
In an article published in 1999, John Pocock recalled a conversation with James Burns, the first General Editor of
Bentham’s Collected Works. Pocock wrote, ‘‘[J. Burns] remarked that it was his duty to persuade me that Bentham was a
human being, and I replied that I should be glad to be convinced that he was not a monster from inner space.’’1 Indeed,
Bentham’s admiration for Helvétius alongside Hume, his rejection of the principles of the British constitution and his
iconoclast religious thought stood out in Pocock’s narrative of the Enlightenment in national context. That Bentham
continues to pose a challenge to the intellectual historian is due both to the fact that the textual cannon is still under
construction and to the self-contained nature of his thought. These difficulties are compounded when it is remembered that
Bentham’s life stretched over 80 momentous years of British, European and World history. Two recent works, Philip
Schofield’s Utility and Democracy. The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham and Cyprian Blamires’s The French Revolution and the
Creation of Benthamism address these issues – in very different ways – and indicate possible ways out of these difficulties.
They also contribute significantly to Bentham scholarship.
Since the 1960s, the editorial work conducted at the Bentham Project has led to the publication of nearly 30 volumes of
work and correspondence drawing on the seemingly bottomless boxes of manuscripts held at University College London. The
gradual uncovering of a substantially different figure from that of the Victorian edition of the Works (edited by John Bowring
up to 1843), has posed problems of interpretation and forced scholars to establish a hierarchy between sources, be they
manuscript, edited by friends such as Dumont, Grote and J.S. Mill, or published by the author himself. David Lieberman has
summed up this quandary: ‘‘For the intellectual historian, [there is] an ever-widening gap between the ‘historical Bentham’
(meaning the figure known in the 19th century through the vehicles of Dumont’s Traités de législation civile et pénale and John
Stuart Mill’s revisions) and the ‘authenticity Bentham’ (meaning the figure now recovered from the manuscripts and new
edition).’’2
Professor Schofield, who is the current General Editor of the Collected Works and has worked on the Bentham Project at
UCL since 1984 states the textual difficulties from the outset and establishes the following ‘‘hierarchy of preferred sources,
choosing to rely, where possible, first on texts which have been published in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham; second,
on texts which Bentham himself printed or published in his lifetime; and third on Bentham’s original manuscripts.’’ (PS, p.
vii). Though this is a perfectly valid scientific choice, it does not, however, put an end to difficulties. Some volumes of the
Collected Works were edited solely from manuscript sources which Bentham not always planned to publish,3 while others
have had to rely at least in part on texts published by third parties, such as Etienne Dumont.4 Though there will always be
room for debate in reconstructing the ‘‘authenticity Bentham’’, Schofield’s book invites readers to question the status of the
texts throughout and to take Bentham’s intentions and publishing strategies into account.
Cyprian Blamires has been one of the first scholars to study the life and thought of Etienne Dumont, Bentham’s first
disciple and his earliest translator into French. He wishes to separate what he calls ‘‘the original Bentham’’ from
1
John G. A. Pocock ‘‘Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, Revolution and Counter-Revolution; a Eurosceptical Enquiry’’, History of Political
Thought, 20(1) (1999), 125–39, 129n.
2
David Lieberman, ‘‘Economy and Polity in Bentham’s Science of Legislation’’, in Economy, Polity and Society. British Intellectual History, 1750–1950, eds.
Stefan Collini, Richard Whatmore, Brian Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 107–34, 108.
3
For a volume which was not clearly meant for publication in the form it was found in the manuscripts, see Jeremy Bentham, First Principles Preparatory to
Constitutional Code, ed. Philip Schofield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
4
For a volume which had to rely on Dumont’s versions as well as on original manuscripts, see Jeremy Bentham, Political Tactics, ed. Michael James,
Cyprian Blamires and Catherine Pease-Watkin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
0191-6599/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2009.04.005
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Review essay / History of European Ideas 35 (2009) 391–394
‘‘Benthamism’’, which he defines as the reconstruction of his thought effected by Etienne Dumont and which became popular
in 19th-century Britain through retranslations into English (CB, p. 3). His study focuses on the Traités de législation civile et
pénale published in 1802. He calls Dumont ‘‘a marketing expert [. . .], an erstwhile preacher and journalist attuned to the
requirements of an audience’’ who ‘‘repackaged [Bentham and his ideas] in a series of elegant abstracts’’ (CB, p. 7). This
statement is mostly supported by studies of the history of the composition of the works and of the paratext which Dumont
added to his published translations – the prefaces and footnotes which he acknowledged as his. Blamires invites further
work on the ways in which Bentham’s thought was received and spread – not only in Britain, but throughout the world, in the
early 19th century. However, there is little textual analysis of the translations themselves, and sparse indications of
Dumont’s working method. Such a detailed study would have allowed readers to go beyond the idea of Dumont as a skilful
‘‘marketing expert’’ and show in more detail how he inscribed his mark on the way utilitarian philosophy was formulated.
The challenges facing scholars are not only due to the necessity to establish a hierarchy between sources, but also to the
systematic and self-contained nature of Bentham’s thought. This characteristic feature makes purely historical and
contextual explanations difficult to sustain – however indispensable they might be to make sense of a thought which
unfolded from 1770 to 1832. Despite the fact that the two books differ strongly in their focus, what is most striking is their
disagreement on what constitutes the ‘authenticity Bentham’, to take up Lieberman’s phrase.
Schofield partly solves the first problem by choosing a broadly chronological outline while devoting about half of the
chapters to transversal issues or notions. He begins by presenting the ‘‘ontological insights which [. . .] underpinned
[Bentham’s] whole career as a thinker’’ (PS, p. 9):‘‘the theory of real and fictitious entities’’ (PS, pp. 1–27) and the principle of
utility (PS, pp. 28–50). His account of these two cornerstones of Bentham’s philosophy substantiates recent scholarship
while drawing on a wealth of unpublished manuscripts. Schofield draws simultaneously on earlier and later writings to show
the unity of Bentham’s system but does not obscure the ways in which the system itself evolved over the years, especially in
the case of the principle of utility. In a way which unwittingly parallels Halévy’s famous opposition between natural and
artificial harmony of interests, Schofield shows that there is an enduring tension between two interpretations of the
principle of utility: one which gives the primacy to the individual’s definition of his or her own interests and the arithmetic
definition of utility, and one which confidently assumes that a utilitarian legislator can and must organise individual
interests towards collective utility. In different political contexts over his lifetime, Bentham favoured one interpretation or
the other, Schofield argues (PS, p. 50). The mutability of Bentham’s system is illustrated in the chapter devoted to the
successive displays of Bentham’s hostility to natural-right theories (PS, pp. 51–77). Schofield’s account of the foundations of
Bentham’s thought is rigorous and allows for the philosopher’s change of focus over the long years of his career, thus
preparing the readers for his hesitations over democracy, for instance. Rejecting any teleological notion of ‘‘conversion’’ or
‘‘transition’’ to political radicalism, Schofield proposes the idea of ‘‘application’’ (PS, p. 140) to account for the various ways in
which Bentham’s system responded to changing political circumstances.5
Blamires does not focus on the gradual unfolding of Bentham’s thought but on how Etienne Dumont had come to
understand it by 1802, the year when the Traités were eventually published. For him, the key to Bentham’s thought is not to
be found in philosophical principles but in a concrete architectural device, that of the Panopticon. He identifies ‘‘the original
Bentham’’ with the inventor of the Panopticon, understood not primarily as a penal device but as a structure allowing the
minimisation of public expenditure in a variety of circumstances (CB, p. 53). He thus makes the economic principles of
maximisation/minimisation the focus of Bentham’s thought, while stating that this encapsulates his relevance for the
twenty-first century. While there has been a tendency to question the centrality of economic calculations in recent Bentham
scholarship, other writers such as Stephen Engelman and Christian Laval have recently stressed the relevance of Bentham’s
thought to neo-liberal theory.6 Blamires notes the paramount significance of the Panopticon both as a central conceptual
feature in Bentham’s thought (especially in his constitutional theory) – and as a key episode to understand his relationship to
the political establishment. The latter point is also made by Schofield, who shows persuasively that the concept of ‘‘sinister
interests’’ – which became central in Bentham’s political radicalism – emerged in the dual context of his campaign to have
the Panopticon built and of his analysis of legal principles (PS, ch. 5). The image promoted by Dumont in his works drawn
from Bentham’s manuscripts was certainly different. Dumont portrayed Bentham primarily as a ‘‘jurisconsulte anglais’’
whose principle of utility should provide a guide to legal reformers throughout Europe. But how far this betrayed the
philosopher’s original intentions – as Blamires argues – is debatable. Reforming the legal system along utilitarian lines had
been Bentham’s ambition from the early 1770s and remained his primary objective until his death.
Bentham and Dumont met in 1788 through Lansdowne and, encouraged by him, both took a keen interest in the events
unfolding in France. Dumont translated some of the essays Bentham addressed to the French from 1789, but did not begin
the systematic task of compiling and translating his manuscripts until 1792. However different their background and
objectives might have been, Dumont and Bentham were deeply influenced by their contribution to democratic debate and
scarred by the events following the September massacres. The role of the French Revolution in the formation of utilitarianism
is a central theme in Schofield’s and Blamires’s books. With Catherine Pease-Watkin, they each contributed, though at
5
For a fuller exploration of this topic, see also P. Schofield, ‘‘The French Revolution and Political Radicalism’’, History of European Ideas 30 (2004), 381–401.
See Stephen G. Engelmann, Imagining Interest in Political Thought (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003) and Christian Laval, L’homme économique. Essai
sur les racines du néolibéralisme (Paris: Gallimard, 2007).
6
Review essay / History of European Ideas 35 (2009) 391–394
393
different stages, to Rights, Representation and Reform, the Collected Works edition of the volume containing Bentham’s
writings for France during that period.7
Schofield devotes a chapter (PS, pp. 78–108) to the successive steps of Bentham’s interest in the French revolution,
providing a companion essay to Rights, Representation and Reform. Schofield wishes to shift the focus away from the
protracted debate on Bentham’s supposed ‘conversion’ or ‘transition’ to democracy, and therefore stresses the wealth of
topics he wrote upon during that period: colonies, the economy, and above all legal reform. The chapter illustrates the
extent to which Bentham’s opinions on the desirability of democratic reform in France and in England changed from 1788
to 1795. Schofield concludes: ‘‘he was tentatively exploring possibilities; he had not developed a systematic argument in
favour of democratic reform, even though he was clearly aware that the principle of utility implied an equal right or claim to
happiness.’’ (PS, p. 107). For the first time though, as Schofield makes clear, Bentham articulated a utilitarian argument in
favour of democracy. He convincingly argues that this does not amount to a ‘conversion’, but acknowledges the formative
part played by this episode in Bentham’s later constitutional thought (see PS, pp. 231–240 and later pp. 276–277, pp.
308–309).
For those who are aware of the ongoing debate on the influence on the French Revolution on Bentham’s thought, the title
of Blamires’s book is at first misleading: it does not deal with Bentham’s interest in French events, but on the formative
influence the Revolution had on Etienne Dumont. Whereas Bentham surveyed what happened in France from afar, Dumont
was directly involved in Mirabeau’s ‘workshop’8 until June 1790. After presenting the Genevan roots of Dumont’s thought,
Blamires devotes two chapters to ‘‘Dumont in the French Revolution’’ (CB, pp. 132–180) and ‘‘Dumont’s Goodbye to
Revolution’’ (CB, pp. 200–232). He recalls Dumont’s work with Mirabeau from 1788 onwards, to show how Genevan
nationalism and an admiration for the British constitution combined in shaping Dumont’s revolutionary writings for
Mirabeau. Drawing on a variety of sources in French and in English, Blamires thoroughly documents Dumont’s involvement
in French events. He shows that Dumont’s politics must be taken seriously and deserves study in its own right. He concludes
that the French Revolution converted Dumont to Benthamism for it allowed him to understand his friend’s ideas as a
peaceful way out of the Ancien Régime and towards liberal political and legal reform.9 This line of interpretation runs
throughout Blamires’s account of the genesis and contents of the Traités de législation civile et pénale. Non-French readers
have so far had to rely on several selective 19th-century retranslations of the Traités into English.10 For the first time, this
book provides a full account of the original, not only as a collection of disconnected essays, but as a consistent intellectual and
political project. It also covers new ground in relating how the Traités were received in Genevan liberal circles, notably by
Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant, leaving the reader to wonder whether Dumont’s ‘‘marketing strategy’’ was
successful, even among his countrymen.
Though Blamires’s sweeping description of ‘‘the real Bentham’’ is provocative and not always rigorous, the book is much
stronger on Dumont, providing a well-documented account of his life and thought. It is therefore a pity that both the title and
the cover (picturing in the author’s words ‘‘Volkswagen’s Transparent Factory at Dresden, modern embodiment of the
transparency Jeremy Bentham was seeking in his Panopticon’’) leave the Genevan out of the picture.
In focusing on and thoroughly documenting Bentham’s political thought, Schofield brings much new and challenging
material. As he demonstrates, epistemological, religious and legal thought are at the heart of his politics. Focusing on internal
factors, Schofield tends to minimise contextual explanations for the making of the radical Bentham. The key moments he
identifies in the formation of Bentham’s political thought are the discovery of ‘sinister interests’ in the 1800s (PS, pp. 109–
136) and his persuasion in favour of a republic around 1818 (PS, pp. 221–249), this original analysis deriving from a close
reading of manuscript sources.
First, Bentham had to be persuaded that existing rulers could not bring about the utilitarian reforms that would increase
the greatest happiness of the greatest number. This persuasion developed in manuscripts on legal reform through the
creation of the phrase ‘‘sinister interests’’ (the interest of the few when it opposes that of the greatest number). The extension
of that concept to the field of politics led Bentham to abandon his earlier hopes that an Enlightened administration could
implement top-down utilitarian reforms. Schofield shows that the phrase ‘‘sinister interests’’ was first used in 1797 in the
context of frustrating dealings with the administration about the building of a Panopticon prison, then developed in writings
on the law of procedure and evidence, and eventually transferred to the field of politics, where it was used to demonstrate
that only a democratic system would ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest number (an insight which had been
briefly formulated at the time of the French Revolution). The discovery of the concept of ‘‘sinister interests’’ then, Schofield
argues, paved the way for a systematic analysis of the corruption and influence at work in the British system. This allowed
Bentham to embrace contemporary radical themes and propose in 1818 a Plan of Parliamentary Reform defended by Burdett
in Parliament, while he entered into correspondence with Cartwright. By documenting Bentham’s dealings with
7
Jeremy Bentham, Rights, Representation, and Reform: Nonsense upon Stilts and other Writings on the French Revolution, ed. Philip Schofield, Catherine
Pease-Watkin and Cyprian Blamires (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), see v–vii for editorial responsibilities.
8
J. Bénétruy, L’Atelier de Mirabeau. Quatre proscrits genevois dans la tourmente révolutionnaire (Genève: Société d’histoire et d’archéologie, 1962).
9
On this point, C. Blamires’s conclusions agree with Richard Whatmore’s in ‘‘Étienne Dumont, the British Constitution and the French Revolution’’, The
Historical Journal 50 (2007), 23–47.
10
See some of the essays contained in he Complete Works, edited by Bowring such as Essay on the promulgation of laws, Principles of the Civil Code, Principles
of Penal Law, A General View of a Complete Code of Laws; and Jeremy Bentham, The Theory of Legislation [1864], trans. Richard Hildreth, ed. James E. Crimmins
(Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2004).
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Review essay / History of European Ideas 35 (2009) 391–394
contemporary radicals (as well as his relationship with Brougham or O’Connell in later chapters based on still-unpublished
correspondence), Schofield invites more work on the contextual definition of what has been called ‘‘philosophic radicalism’’.
Indeed, though it is clear that the foundations of Bentham’s radical ideas were different from those of Cartwright, Tooke or
Burdett – with whom he corresponded – he came to meet at key-moments in his life the core of the radical programme,
broadly defined: extended male suffrage, annual elections, secret ballot and reorganised constituencies. How Bentham’s own
brand of radicalism contributed to radicalism as a political movement (if nothing like a united one) still remains largely to be
studied.
Schofield stresses the interconnectedness of Bentham’s political, legal and religious radicalism. His parallel between
Bentham’s political and religious radicalism is convincing and shows how deep radical principles had become for Bentham
by the late 1810s: the vocabulary of corruption and the analysis of its mechanisms are very close in all the writings of that
period, be they legal, political or religious in focus. Schofield’s overall conclusions to the chapter on ‘‘The Church’’ (PS, pp.
171–198), that ‘‘there seems to be no direct evidence for [the view that Bentham was an atheist]’’ or that ‘‘Bentham did not
object to religious institutions as such’’ (PS, pp. 174–175n; 198) are however puzzling in the light of the earlier sections of the
same chapter, which are devoted to his dismissal of any argument in favour of either natural or revealed religion. Though
Bentham consistently avoided disclosing his own beliefs, Schofield’s statement is not easy to reconcile with Bentham’s
iconoclast and provocative analysis of the Gospels in Not Paul but Jesus, or with still unpublished manuscripts quoted in the
chapter.
Bentham’s ambiguous statements on religion are confirmed by an episode recalled by Blamires. Dumont, though no
longer practising as a Calvinist minister, had retained much of his Protestant upbringing. Blamires shows that this had a
direct impact on the way he dealt with religious issues in the Traités (see CB pp. 235–236). When he read the proofs in 1802,
Bentham remarked: ‘‘You make me preach Equality among Priests. In short (God damn you to all eternity) you make me, who
am a Church of England man, a Presbyterian because you are. There is pro and con, and I have never yet considered the matter
expressly.’’11 Though Bentham’s most scathing manuscript texts against the influence of the Church were written at a later
date, Schofield shows that the roots of his distrust of religious authority were laid as early as the 1770s (PS, pp. 174–175).
Dumont did not ignore Bentham’s religious heterodoxy, but his choice to present true religion as congruent with utility in the
Traités, and Bentham’s implicit endorsement of these views remain puzzling. Much remains therefore to be done on
Bentham’s religious thought.
Though highly different in scope and in focus – not to mention the style, these two books display a broad variety of
methodological tools and significantly contribute to shed light on the historical development of classical utilitarianism.
Schofield’s Utility and Democracy will remain a classic exploration of Bentham’s political thought and opens many
challenging arenas for further research. Blamires’s historical study is an important contribution to Dumont’s role in
the definition of utilitarianism. Dumont was, however, only one of the friends and disciples of Bentham turned editors:
there is a collective element in the formation of classical utilitarianism. To his 19th-century friends and editors, at least,
Bentham was not ‘a monster from inner space’ but provided conceptual tools which were directly relevant to contemporary
political debates.
Emmanuelle de Champs
University of Paris, 8, France
E-mail address:
[email protected]
Available online 2 June 2009
11
Jeremy Bentham, The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 7, 1801-1808, e d. J. R. Dinwiddy (Oxford, 1988), 30.