A Study Of Bentham 's Moral Theory Of Utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham, who devoted his life to law reform, is a famous British jurist, utilitarian philosopher, economist and social reformer during the late 18th and early 19th century. With a wide range of ideological origin and theoretical foundation, his juristic ethics thought and individual welfare theory were closely combined. At that time, the industrial propertied class economy had been rapidly developed and occupied a dominant position, however, still politically powerless. Vague, complex and ambiguous law became a serious impediment to the industrial propertied class. During the same period, science and technology developed continuously, which give a direction of applying the method of science research to the field of epistemology. Bentham’s juristic ethics thought emerged just during the transformation of feudalistic society to capitalist society.Bentham’s juristic ethics thought was based on the criticism of the theory of Montesquieu and Beccaria, and inherited a large number of great thinkers’ ideas such as Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Helvetius, Hutcheson, Hume and Smith etc., set up his own theoretical system. Firstly, Bentham, based on utilitarianism, made a moral value judgment for previous theories, and set up his own theoretical starting point; then he turned the utilitarian principle thoroughly throughout the entire process of his theoretical system.He used moral calculus formula to calculate the value of pleasure and pain accurately as his theory of the method, which made his legislative theory has its own characteristic. Bentham was one of the founders of the system utilitarianism, but also a pioneer of positivist jurisprudence, he had a dominant position in the history of western law and ethics thought.Bentham devoted his life to law reform. He believed that the legislative system should focus on the achievement of the maximum happiness of most people, establishment of the court of public opinion and management of morality and law. On one hand, his juristic ethics thought characterized itself in protecting the maximum interest of the majority of the people, on the other hand, it also had a unique view in protecting the interest of the minority than the majority.Bentham’s juristic ethics thought was part of the radicalism trend. It has been a great inspiration of reasonable distribution of the benefits in legislative process and proper handling of the relationship between legislation and ethics. Apparently, since the defects of his philosophical basis and limitation of his juristic ethics thought, there are still many contradiction in his theoretical content.