Sverdlik, S.;
(2024)
Bentham's Project of Applied Ethics, c.1780: A Penal Code. Part 1: Offences.
Journal of Bentham Studies
, 22
(1)
pp. 1-40.
10.14324/111.2045-757X.056.
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Abstract
Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (IPML) was originally intended to introduce a utilitarian penal code. Such a code would apply the principle of utility to the task of designing a system of criminal law. Part I, Section I of this two-part article gives an overview of IPML, in which the basic moral assumptions of utilitarianism are presented and the central concept of mischief is emphasised. The principle of utility favours the making of actions that are mischievous and profitable to punish into criminal offences. Section II discusses Chapter XVI of IPML. This chapter is a taxonomy of possible offences; the penal code would explain which acts in the taxonomy are mischievous and profitable to punish. This chapter also suggests how Bentham was beginning to see the need for other utilitarian legal codes. Section III discusses Bentham’s concept of a ‘catechism of reasons’ to be included in the code, which would explain to the citizenry why each action in the code is mischievous. Section IV discusses two important sets of manuscripts that illustrate the reasoning that was to accompany the code. The first briefly treats the offence of cruelty to animals, expanding on the thinking in the famous footnote to Chapter XVII that argues that non-human animals can be treated wrongly; the second examines the remarkable treatment of ‘paederasty’, that is, consensual sex between adult males. IPML does not mention paederasty, although several passages are relevant to it. These passages suggest that paederasty is not mischievous. The manuscripts expand on these suggestions, arguing explicitly that paederasty ought not to be an offence. Several new issues are discussed, such as the effect of paederasty on population size. In the subsequent Part II of this article, Bentham’s treatment of punishment in IPML, The Rationale of Punishment and the penal code will be discussed.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Bentham's Project of Applied Ethics, c.1780: A Penal Code. Part 1: Offences |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/111.2045-757X.056 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/111.2045-757X.056 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024, The Author. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, penal code, utilitarianism, criminal law, offences, paederasty, homosexuality, cruelty to animals, mischief |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10202790 |
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