Tommy
Denby
Birth of Modern Europe
Mr. Meyers
D-band
4/23/04
Breaking the Chains of Medieval Europe
For, what is the peculiar character of the modern world--the difference which chiefly distinguishes modern institutions, modern social ideas, modern life itself, from those of times long past? It is that human beings are no longer born to their place in life, and chained down by an inexorable bond to the place they are born to, but are free to employ their faculties, and such favorable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them most desirable. Human society of old was constituted on a very different principle. All were born to a fixed social position and were mostly kept in it by law. -- John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women(1869)
In 18th and 19th century Britain, there were few philosophical movements that were as useful or as influential as Utilitarianism. Themes from Utilitarianism can be traced from ancient Greece in their most crude form, to British philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the early 19th century, Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher and politician, began to apply Utilitarianism not just to philosophical and moral issues, but to political ones as well. With Utilitarinism as a powerful tool, Bentham was able to enact incredibly important prison and parliamentary reforms. John Stuart Mill, an ardent Utilitarian and successor to Bentham, continued this trend of reform and wrote essays defending liberty, the rights of women, and personal freedoms. Utilitarianism remained a dominant political and philosophical force throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and greatly influenced the modern British mindset. Utilitarianism’s greatest strength lay in the fact that it provided a modern reformer or politician with a way to justify decisions involving morality by some standard other than religion. In the statement "the greatest good for the greatest number," which is often used to sum up Utilitarianism, there is nothing about status, race, religion, or sex. This was revolutionary at the time—theoretically, Utilitarianism would benefit anyone, no matter where they came from or who they were. For this reason, Utilitarianism, as the above quote from Of the Subjection of Women demonstrates, did not get caught up in the irrational and unjust webs of religious hierarchy, systemized racism, aristocratic rule, the subjection of women and absolutism that had been suffocating Europe for the previous two and a half millennia. That is not to say that Utilitarianism, in practice, was always fair—it often sponsored the subjugation of the working class due to its of its support of free trade. Still, because Utilitarianism could act as a moral and philosophical justification for modern reform, it had an enormous impact on modernity. The middle class needed Bentham and Mill’s clear-headed logical system of morals to support their arguments for reform—without it, their only moral justification would have been the bible, a book that was adverse to nearly every change the bourgeoisie wanted to enact. Without the powerful tool of Utilitarianism, the pace of modernity and modern reform in London would have most definitely slowed. In every way that the emerging ideals and values of the modern middle class needed to supplant and replace the traditional and unjust values of medieval Europe, Utilitarianism would support them and provide the moral justification required.
-------------------
It
must be understood, however, that 19th century Utilitarianism, in its original
form, was greatly flowed, even though it had beneficial effects on society.
Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the movement, created a philosophy that worked
well for administrative reform due to its focus on logical analysis, but lacked
recognition of the subtleties of the human mind—it essentially turns the
human psyche into a collection of desires and fears based purely on pleasure
and pain. This was fixed to an extent, however, by John Stuart Mill, who, after
having a realization on the hollowness of utilitarianism when used for personal
relations, turned his focus towards individualism and emotion. He knew that
human mind was more than just the desire for pleasure and the rejection of pain.
Because of this, he reacted to the criticisms of Utilitarianism and reformed
it, creating a far better and more forgiving philosophy.
Because
of the large schism between the first and second schools of Utilitarian thought,
it is helpful to break up the history of Utilitarianism into two periods: the
earlier period of the Benthamites, and the second-generation, more forgiving
Utilitarianism championed by John Stuart Mill. Although Jeremy Bentham can be
considered the first true Utilitarian, to say that his ideas were completely
unique and original would be a fabrication; in fact, Bentham was greatly influenced
by everyone from the Greek hedonists to the French Enlightenment thinkers to
the champion of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume. An obvious example of
Hume’s influence on Bentham’s thinking would be Bentham’s tendency
to break extremely complex issues down to their most simple and primitive parts.
This is called the method of reductive analysis, something that Hume originated.
Another example of Hume’s influence can be seen in the first chapter of
Bentham’s Fragment on Government(1776). Bentham gives explicit thanks to
Hume for, in Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, destroying the fiction of
social contracts and for showing that all virtue is based on utility. Bentham
also shared the ideals of Helvetius, one of the French philosophes, who was
often impatient with tradition and believed that things would be best if reason
alone could reign. As Frederick Copleston remarks, in his A History of Philosophy,
"Bentham had the gift of seizing on certain ideas which were not his own
inventions, developing them and welding them into a weapon or instrument of
social reform…. Bentham did not invent the principle of utility: what he
did was to expound and apply it explicitly and universally as the basic principle
of both morals and legislation."
To
truly understand Bentham’s impact, one must first know the exact moral
code he advocated. Bentham’s form of Utilitarianism discusses the moral
issues surrounding one’s decisions and the consequences that follow—it
answers the question, "What should a person do?" A Utilitarian would
calculate all the good and the bad, or happiness and sadness, that a certain
decision would create, both for the person making the decision and those around
him. If the bad greatly outweighed the good, he would decide not to do something,
and vice versa. Both the psychology and the emotions of the people in question
are not thought of—it is merely a question of material requirements. Of
course, as both Bentham’s critics and admirers have pointed out, this leaves
certain unanswered questions. Who defines what the "greatest good"
is? What effects will the decisions have on the person in question’s psychology?
How will he or she feel? How can someone tally up all the happiness of a person?
The ineffable nature of emotion alone proves that something is amiss with this
philosophy.
If someone were to base his calculations of happiness on a wider, more material scale, however, Utilitarianism would become much more effective, because the basic material and political needs for a comfortable life are more readily apparent, and are much more tangible than emotional needs. In this way the "greatest good" can be calculated more easily. We can see this quite clearly in Bentham’s work—he usually focuses on reforms regarding the general well-being of communities, rather than individual rights.
------------------
Bentham’s
early plans for reform were limited to penal and legal reforms—he had not
yet thought about large-scale constitutional reform. At first he thought that
the ruling classes truly wanted to help those in need, although they had no
idea how to do it, and that large-scale reform would be unnecessary. The early
resistance to his small and obvious legal reforms from the House of Lords led
him to the realization that the aristocracy was plagued by indifference toward
the lower classes and by appalling self-interest. Eventually he would propose
the abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords, the disestablishment of
the Church of England, and the introduction of universal suffrage and annual
parliaments. None of these radical reforms passed, but some smaller prison and
legal reforms eventually did. In 1791 Bentham drew up the plan for his model
prison, the Panopticon. This was a prison design that enabled full surveillance
of all prisoners and made sure that the jail guard was equidistant from every
prisoner. This would introduce a more fair and logical approach to prisons.
The recent French philosopher, Michelle Foucault, used the Panopticon as a central
metaphor for all modern forms of control and surveillance in his work Discipline
and Punish(1975). Foucault believed that Bentham’s plan was the blueprint
for all modern prisons; this is just another indication of how modern and radical
Bentham was. Bentham brought his plan to both the French National Assembly and
British parliament. Eventually it failed, but not without considerable support
from politicians. Bentham also fought against the ridiculously harsh prison
sentences in place at the time, and passed reforms that would change the legal
system in England so that instead of having punishments that would make people
pay for their crimes, the laws would discourage people from committing them
in the first place. Bentham paid particular attention to crimes involving theft.
In Bentham’s opinion the purpose of punishment is to deter, not to reform;
reformation of offenders is merely a secondary purpose. At a time when the perpetrators
of very minor crimes might receive the death penalty, this was a revolutionary
idea. In Bertrand Russell’s, The History of Western Philosophy, he explains
Bentham’s idea: "Men are to be punished by the criminal law in order
to prevent crime, not because we hate the criminal." This might seem like
a rather inhumane approach to prison sentences at first, but if used on a grand
scale it actually becomes the opposite—if, because punishment is used as
a deterrent, fewer people commit crimes, then fewer have to suffer the consequences.
Bentham also fought for a law that would prevent judges from giving out punishments
too harsh for the crimes; this way the amount of pain caused by the punishment
could not exceed the desired effect. He based his argument for this reform on
the Utilitarian ideal that "All punishment in itself is evil." This
belief was derived from the idea that all suffering is evil, and all happiness
is good. This meant that punishment was evil, and although punishment was sometimes
necessary to benefit the happiness of others through deterrence, any unneeded
punishment should not be given.
Bentham
also focused a considerable amount of his energy on parliamentary reform. A
few of his works, such as Catechism of Parliamentary Reform(1817), Radical Reform
Bill, with Explanations(1819) and Leading Principles of a Constitutional Code(1823)
all helped greatly with his reform of law and parliament. Bentham’s impact
on parliament can also be seen through the work of his disciples. One of his
followers, James Mill, a Utilitarian philosopher and politician, wrote the important
essay Government in 1814. Mill’s essay greatly influenced public opinion
in the 1820’s in favor of universal male suffrage and parliamentary reform.
It ended up being instrumental in setting the stage for the important passage
of the first Reform Bill by Parliament in 1832. This act primarily served to
transfer voting privileges from the small boroughs controlled by the nobility
and gentry to the heavily populated industrial towns. Bentham’s influence
can once again be seen in the effort to give just representation to everyone,
regardless of location or status.
Jeremy
Bentham is one of the few philosophers in history to successfully take a philosophy
and apply it to political and social problems of the day. The aging and sometimes
barbaric laws on prison and crime needed to be changed. They were, in general,
extremely harsh on the working class in Britain and did not actually deter people
very effectively from committing crimes, but rather punished them to an inhuman
extent once the crimes had been done. Bentham changed this and helped to create,
while drawing from the work of earlier thinkers like John Locke, the modern
system of law and punishment still used in many countries today.
After
Bentham died on June 6th, 1832, his body was donated, at his direction, to a
university to be dissected for the benefit of science. It is preserved at University
College, London. This college was largely founded because of Bentham and his
followers, and it was created to educate those who either did not have enough
money to afford Oxford or Cambridge, or were rejected for other reasons, such
as race, class or religion. Applying students were not tested on the bible,
as they were at Oxford and Cambridge. One can see how Bentham’s legacy
would survive for many years to help serve everyone, regardless of race, class
or religious beliefs.
Just as important, perhaps, as the afore mentioned reforms themselves was the
moral framework and philosophical justification that Bentham and his philosophy
offered for the wave of reforms that was taking place throughout England as
it entered into modernity. While not all of these reforms would come from Utilitarians,
Utilitarianism nevertheless created a moral backing for these other challenges
to England’s ancient status quo.
-------------------
It must be noted that although the end result of Bentham’s efforts were
quite just in terms of prison reform, he was not, by any means, a humanitarian.
He usually took action against institutions or laws not because they were inhumane,
but because they just didn’t make sense. He was a man moved by logic and
very little else. In John Stuart Mill’s essay, Bentham, he admits that
Bentham’s writing often showed his narrowness of vision; often times Bentham
tends to reduce man to a system of attractions and repulsions. This allows Bentham
to make a simplistic mathematical computation out of pleasure and pain that
disregards all the complexities of the human psyche. This is one of Bentham’s
great failings, and in this way, many of the flaws that critics of Utilitarianism
point out are true. In Charles Dickens’ novel, Hard Times, he describes
all Utilitarians as cold and stubborn people who think that they can calculate
human nature mathematically and thereby try ruin the innocence of childhood.
Although Dickens’ caricatures are quite harsh, there certainly is a grain
of truth in his criticism.
The
next generation of Utilitarians would, however, move well beyond Dickens’s
caricature. This new school of thought that would emerge during the second half
of the 19th century was championed by the great John Stuart Mill. He was born
in London on May 20th, 1806, and was the son of the afore mentioned James Mill.
John was brought up under what Dickens refers to in Hard Times as "the
reign of Hard Facts." His father rigorously educated him from the time
he was able to speak—John was fluent in Greek before his fourth birthday
and was reading Adam Smith and John Locke by the time he was thirteen. John’s
absurdly exhaustive training played a major part in his later abandonment of
the strict Benthamist theories he was raised on. When John was seventeen he
undertook the editing of Bentham’s Rationale of Evidence(1825). In John’s
autobiography he claims that nearly all of his leisure time was taken up by
work on the manuscript for a year, and this prolonged overwork and overexposure
to Bentham, coupled with his "over-education," eventually led to what
would now be called a nervous breakdown. In his autobiography he explains that
his breakdown occurred when he was wondering what would make him happy:
It
occurred to me to put the question directly to myself, ‘Suppose that all
your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and
opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this
very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?’ And an irrepressible
self-consciousness distinctly answered, ‘No!’ At this my heart sank
within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.
This
revelation proves, to some extent, that the objections that Dickens and other
critics of Utilitarianism had to the philosophy did have some truth to them—because
of John’s realization that "the habit of analysis has a tendency to
wear away the feelings," he understood that no matter what he accomplished,
no matter how much reform he enacted, he would never be happy because of these
things alone. John suffered this blow at the young age of eighteen, and although
it was painful and detrimental to his health at the time, it had the opposite
effect on his later writing. Mill became disenchanted with the strict form of
Utilitarianism his father championed, but did not abandon the philosophy all
together. He did, however, come up with a very important criticism of Utilitarianism.
He realized that analytic thought needed to be coupled with some kind of emotion
and cultivation of the feelings, a part of human nature that Bentham had generally
mistrusted. This is, essentially, the same criticism that Dickens had of Utilitarianism
in Hard Times (which he showed with his critical caricatures of unfeeling Utilitarians).
Soon, Mill began to find value in art and poetry, especially that of Wordsworth,
the brilliant Romantic British poet. It must be noted, however, that although
Mills began to see the flaws of Utilitarianism, he never deserted it completely—Mill
remained a Utilitarian, and defended the philosophy his whole life. So instead
of giving up on Utilitarianism totally, Mill made small departures from his
father’s version of the movement or built upon the narrow framework that
Bentham had provided. An example of this is can be found in his essay, Utilitarianism,
were Mill both defends and attacks the philosophy. In the essay, he states that
Bentham’s theories had to be supplemented, but not supplanted, by a focus
on the emotional aspects of man’s psyche.
One of the most important departures Mill took from his predecessors was his focus on the rights and cultivation of the individual, rather than the well-being of the entire community, which is what James Mills and Bentham usually focused on. Mill used Utilitarianism as support for the theory which he stated in On Liberty(1859). Mill contended that, "The free development of individuality is one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress." This idea was used as the keystone for Mill’s fierce defense of liberty and individual freedoms—it is impossible to have individuality without liberty and freedom. There must be limits to personal liberty, of course, but Mill claims that if someone’s freedom does not interfere with that of anyone else’s, "his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." This was, at the time, a revolutionary idea. It meant that homosexuality, atheism, sexual deviance and all the other things that traditional European values looked down upon were to be tolerated so long as they didn’t endanger or interfere with anyone else’s personal freedom. Another one of Mill’s departures from traditional European values is shown when he approvingly quotes Wilhem von Humboldt in On Liberty, when he says that the end of man is "the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole." The idea of self-development being the end to which men should strive is certainly a very modern one. It appears in many works which, one could argue, define modern literature, such as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Joyce’s A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.
------------------
When
asking the question of whether or not Mill perfected Utilitarianism, it is only
fair to say that he did so to an extent. What made him so brilliant was that
he was able to build a unique defense of the individual and personal freedoms
upon the foundation of Benthamism, something which, as its critics are quick
to point out, was far too narrow in its scope of human nature. In other words,
instead of just abandoning Utilitarianism, Mill used the ideas of the flawed
philosophy itself to justify an argument which would end up, to an extent, fixing
what was wrong with the philosophy. By using the philosophy to justify and correct
itself, he proved that when represented correctly Utilitarianism had very few
defects indeed. Mill was able to solve the problem of having a philosophy that
worked well for only legislative or public circumstances, and not personal or
individual circumstances.
Mill
came as close as anyone could have to completing such a flawed but wonderfully
effective system. The philosophy itself cannot, and never will be, the sole
way in which one would lead their life. It is too devoid of emotion; but, when
used with other moral systems, Utilitarianism was a genuinely benevolent tool
for reform and moral justification for action. As for its effect on modernity,
it cannot be overlooked. Because Utilitarianism was based on an egalitarian
ideal, it provided a philosophical challenge to centuries of social stagnation
and injustice. Without it, the emerging bourgeoisie of London would have lost
a powerful justification for the reforms it was hoping to enact. Imagine battling
for universal female suffrage with support from the bible. It would be impossible;
men play the most central roles in the bible and women, although important,
are subservient to men. The reforming class needed something like Mill’s
On the Subjection of Women(1869), a brilliant text in which Mill battles valiantly
for the equal rights of women, to back up their proposals. Again, to try to
reform prisons with the bible as one’s moral backing would be futile—in
the bible people are punished so that they will suffer for their crimes, not
so that they and those around them will be deterred from committing the same
crime. The middle class needed Bentham’s clear-headed logical system of
morals to support their arguments. This is why Mill claims that the difference
between the modern and the pre-modern was that in old Europe, "All were
born to a fixed social position and were mostly kept in it by law." The
aim of Utilitarianism was to break the chains that had, for hundreds of years,
been holding so many types of people back not because of incompetence, but rather
because of who they were or were they came from.
Bibliography
1. Albee, E. A History of English Utilitarinism. London, 1902
2. Coppleston, Frederick. A History of Philosophy, Volume VIII: Empriricism,
Idealism, and Pragmatism in Britain and America, New York City, Image Books,
1966.
3. Dickens, Charles. Hard Times, London, Oxford books, 1854
4. Mill, John Stuart and Bentham, Jeremy. Utilitarianism and Other Essays, Penguin
books, London, 1987
5. Mill, John Stuart. Autobiography, London, Penguin books, 1952
6. Russell, Bertrand. The History of Western Philosophy, New York, Simon &
Schuster, 1945
7. Utilitarianism. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved May 17, 2004, from
Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.