History of Philosophy Commons^™

Jeremy Bentham: Syncretistic Utilitarian, William Day

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

During the period of reaction in England after the Napoleonic wars, a new generation of reformers developed, who abjured the belief in natural rights already discredited by the Jacobin excesses.¹ These individuals sought a personality around whom they could center their program. Jeremy Bentham, a seemingly apolitical man, gradually became the personification of the new methodology. Crane Brinton has written, "scarcely has an English thinker left a more definite trice upon English legislation than Jeremy Bentham."² So involved are the implications of the system and the man who introduced the new science" that interest is produced by the …