J.S. Mill on Bentham’s incomplete mind

ABSTRACT

J.S. Mill argued that Bentham was ‘not a great philosopher’, asserting that one reason for his judgment was ‘the incompleteness of his [i. e. Bentham’s] own mind as a representative of universal human nature’. This paper argues that Mill’s judgment of Bentham on human nature and his assumptions about Bentham’s ‘own mind’ were seriously mistaken. In fact, Bentham understood many of the most natural and strongest feelings of human nature; he recognized spiritual or mental perfection, and recognized many pleasures associated with a desire for self-perfection, or at least self-improvement; he never denied the importance of the faculty of imagination; he was by no means cut off from life’s graver experiences; his conception of arts and sciences was much broader, more metaphysically-based, consistent and sophisticated than Mill appreciated; and he enthusiastically embraced and encouraged arts and sciences. Mill’s mistake was partly caused by his limited reading of Bentham’s works, but mainly because he failed to grasp the ontological basis and fundamental principles of Bentham’s philosophy.

KEYWORDS:

• J.S. Mill
• Jeremy Bentham
• mind
• sympathy
• imagination

Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge Dr Michael Quinn and Dr Chris Riley for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article. The author would also like to acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for their thorough and sympathetic reviews and valued comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 John Stuart Mill, ‘Bentham’, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (henceforth CWJSM), 33 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963–99), Vol. x. Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, ed. J. Robson, 75–116, at 78-9. This essay was first published in 1838.

2 This essay was first published in 1833, not long after Jeremy Bentham’s death in 1832.

3 Mill, ‘Remarks on Bentham's Philosophy’, in CWJSM, x. 3–18 at 5.

4 Mill, CWJSM, x., 95.

5 Mill, CWJSM, x., 98.

6 Ibid., 83.

7 Mill, ‘Bentham’, CWJSM, x., 93.

8 Ibid., 91.

9 Ibid., 88.

10 Ibid., 92–3.

11 J.S. Mill, Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. J.M. Robson and J. Stillinger (CWJSM) i. 1981, 206.

12 For example, Lord Lytton regarded Mill as ‘qualified, perhaps before all men living, to judge profoundly of the philosophy of Bentham’: Lord Lytton, England and the English (London: Bradbury, Agnew. & Co., 1874. first published 1833), viii. The authority of Mill’s dismissive judgment was reinforced by Mill’s assertion that his ‘view of Bentham and his doctrines … at least proceeds from an intimate familiarity with his writings’: see Mill, ‘Bentham’, CWJSM, x., 115.

13 Consulting John Bowring’s Victorian edition of Bentham’s Works provides a glimpse of assessments of Bentham’s philosophy by some of Bentham’s other disciples. See especially W.W. [Anonymous author], ‘General Preface’, in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-43. henceforth Bowring), i. v–xv; John Hill Burton, ‘Introduction to the Study of the Works of Jeremy Bentham’, Bowring, i., 5–83; and the biography of Bentham by Bowring contained in Bowring, vols. x and xi.

14 J.H. Burns and H.L.A Hart once noted that ‘the version of Utilitarianism developed by John Stuart Mill largely took the place of Bentham's own writings for most readers. The consequence has been an impoverished and at times a false picture of Bentham's thought’: Editors’ ‘Introduction’ in Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (London: Athlone Press, 1970. The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, henceforth CWJB), v.

15 See Mary P. Mack, Jeremy Bentham: An Odyssey of Ideas, 1748–1792 (London: Heinemann, 1962), 2-3.

16 Although Deontology or the Science of Morality, edited by John Bowring, was published in 1834, this paper avoids references to it on grounds of probable inauthenticity. Mill himself regarded this work as inauthentic because he thought it was largely a rewriting by Bowring: see Mill, CWJSM, x., 90.

17 Bentham, ‘Principles of the Civil Code’, in Bowring, i., 297–364, at 356.

18 Mill’s own narration of his love affair with Harriet Taylor was beautiful, profound and noble, but made no mention of the sufferings inflicted upon Harriet Taylor’s husband or their two children, and no mention of the disapproval of his own mother and siblings. In fact, the love affair between Mill and Harriet Taylor created a scandal at the time. See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/harriet-mill/#BioSke.

19 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Principles of the Civil Code’, in Bowring, i., 356.

20 Mill, CWJSM, x., 88.

21 In ‘Principles of Civil Code’, Bentham undertook a detailed discussion of slavery, i. e. Bk. III, Ch. 2, Bowring, i., 343–7. Besides this, Bentham discussed slavery on many other occasions: see, for instance, Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart, with a new introduction by F. Rosen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. CWJB, henceforth IPML), 211–12n, 241–2, 282–3n. Bentham understood slavery in a very broad sense, and argued that slavery was established in some degree when liberty was taken away by coercion. He consistently opposed slavery, but regarded it as a kind of sanction which might be employed as a means of legal punishment, that is legal slavery or penal servitude: see Bowring, i. 344; Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 2 vols (London: Printed for W. Pickering and E. Wilson, 1823. henceforth IPML (1823), ii. 49–51, 103, 157–9, 167, 183. For discussions of Bentham on slavery, see L.C. Boralevi, Bentham and the Oppressed (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1984), 142–64, and F. Rosen, ‘Jeremy Bentham on Slavery and the Slave-Trade’, in Utilitarianism and Empire, ed. B. Schulz and G. Varouxakis (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2005), 33–56.

22 See Jeremy Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities, and Other Writings on Sexual Morality, ed. P. Schofield, C. Pease-Watkin and M. Quinn (Oxford: Clarendon Press. CWJB), 2014; Carrie D. Shanafelt, Uncommon Sense: Jeremy Bentham, Queer Aesthetics, and the Politics of Taste. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2022.

23 See Benjamin Spector, ‘Jeremy Bentham 1748–1832: His Influence on Medical Thought and Legislation’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 37 (1963): 25–42.

24 See Bowring, viii., 359–459. Bentham’s writings on this subject are voluminous, and the authoritative and definitive edition of Bentham’s writings on this subject amounts to about 1,300 pages: see Jeremy Bentham, Writings on the Poor Laws I, ed. M. Quinn, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001. CWJB); Bentham, Writings on the Poor Laws II, ed. M. Quinn, (Oxford: Clarendon Press. CWJB), 2010.

25 See, for instance, Bowring, ii., 566; Bowring, ix., 77, 130, 133, 307, 365; Bowring, x., 28, 585. Bentham also employed the phrase ‘efficient benevolence’ (Bowring, xi.,90). He listed the pleasure of benevolence as one of the fourteen simple pleasures and the pain of benevolence as one of the eleven simple pains in human nature: see Bentham, IPML (1823), i. 56. The core of Bentham’s moral science or deontology is to bring about a coincidence between self-preference and benevolence.

26 Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates for altruistic acts that are supposed to benefit others as much as possible while at comparatively smaller costs. Prominent philosophers influential to the movement include Peter Singer, Toby Ord, and William MacAskill. See also https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ (Accessed 8 October 2022).

27 See Bowring, i., 177, 349; Bentham, Of Sexual Irregularities (CWJB), 100–1; Bentham, ‘Not Paul, but Jesus, Volume III. Doctrine’ (Bentham Project, 2013), 59–65 (UC clxi. 313–22 (January 6–8 1818), 336–7 (14 January 1818)). https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1392179/3/npbj.pdf.

28 Bentham attributed the neglect of the interests of animals to the ‘insensibility’ of some people, and denounced ‘cruelty to animals’: see IPML, (1823), ii. 235–6; Bentham, Of The Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010, CWJB), 4. He expressed the hope that ‘humanity will extend its mantle over every thing which breathes’: see Bowring, i., 562. Whereas Mill took animals’ pleasure into the utilitarian calculus, he emphasized the superiority of human beings’ pleasures to animal pleasures: Mill, CWJSM, x., 210, 213, 248, Bentham emphasized the equality between human beings and animals in the perception of pleasure and pain. Further, he expressed his affections towards all kinds of animals: see Bowring, xi., 81. It should be noted that Peter Singer’s argument for improving animal welfare is inspired by on Bentham’s: see P. Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Ecco, 2002), 5, 7–8, 14, 203–4, 207, 210, 225.

29 Bowring, xi., 77.

30 Ibid., 95.

31 Bowring, i. 197–205.

32 Bentham classified entities into real entities and fictitious entities. Real entities comprise two groups, 1. perceptions. 2. bodies. Perceptions are the most immediate real entities, whereas bodies are inferential real entities. As opposed to real entities, to which, on the occasion and for the purpose of discourse, existence is really meant to be ascribed, fictitious entities are contrived for the purpose of discourse through abstraction and denomination, and hence strictly are mere nothings whose existence only lies in language. Fictitious entities must be based on real entities, otherwise they will become falsehoods or nonsense, that is non-entities. See especially Bentham, ‘A Fragment on Ontology’ (compiled from material written in 1813, 1814, and 1821), Bowring, viii. 193–211; Bentham, ‘Essay on Logic’ (compiled from material written from 1814 to 1816, in 1826, and so lately as 1831.), Bowring, viii. 213–293; Bentham, ‘Chrestomathia’, in Bowring, viii. 1–191.

33 See IPML (1823), i. 13–40; Bentham, ‘Article on Utilitarianism: Long Version’, in Deontology, together with A Table of the Springs of Action and Article on Utilitarianism, ed. A. Goldworth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983. CWJB), 289–320, at 304–5. Ipsedixitism was another name for the principle of sympathy and antipathy or caprice, as criticized in IPML, (1823), i. 21–7. For further discussion of the principle of sympathy and antipathy see § 8 below.

34 Bentham asserted that government ought not to ‘establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion’, for conclusively ‘in no instance has a system in regard to Religion been ever established but for the purpose as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression, in the hands of the government’. See Bowring, ix, 92–4; Jeremy Bentham, First Principles Preparatory to Constitutional Code, ed. Philip Schofield, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. CWJB), 325–31.

35 See ‘Editorial Introduction’, in Of Sexual Irregularities (CWJB), xiii.

36 Ibid, 32, 94–5.

37 See Jeremy Bentham, ‘Not Paul, but Jesus, vol. iii.’ https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1392179/3/npbj.pdf.

38 In IPML, published in 1789, Bentham listed four sanctions, i. e. physical sanction, political sanction, moral sanction and religious sanction. In ‘Fragment on Ontology’, written in 1814, Bentham added a new sanction of sympathy to the four sanctions, and placed it as the second sanction among the altogether five sanctions. See Jeremy Bentham, ‘Fragment on Ontology’, Bowring, viii. 206.

39 See Malcom Quinn, ‘Jeremy Bentham on liberty of taste’, History of European Ideas 43 (2017), 614–27; ‘Enlightenment unrefined: Bentham’s realism and the analysis of beauty’, in Bentham and the Arts, ed. A. Julius, M. Quinn and P. Schofield (London: UCL Press, 2020), 201–26.

40 Bentham took prudence, probity and beneficence as the three virtues. Prudence was to purse one’s own interest, hence the self-regarding branch of virtue, while probity and beneficence were for the interests of others, hence the extra-regarding branch of virtue. Bentham stated that ‘if by these three virtues in the character of all-comprehensive ones the whole field of morals is compleatly covered, to one or more of these three those others are, all of them, in some way or other resolvable.’ See Bentham, Deontology (CWJB), 190–1.

41 Bentham drafted this work on motivation between 1813 and 1816. To date three variants have appeared. The original edition first printed in 1815 and published in 1817, consists of three parts: a large folding table, eleven pages of ‘Explanations’ and twenty pages of ‘Observations’. This text was largely reprinted in Bowring, i., 193–219. The third version appeared in 1983 in the new authoritative edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham in Deontology (CWJB), 1–115. This third version is twice as long as the others, because initially Bentham only published a small part of his writings on this subject. It appears that there are more than 300 sheets of missing manuscript: see Bentham, Deontology (CWJB), xii–xix.

42 Bowring, i., 205.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid., 205–6.

45 Ibid., 206.

46 Inert pleasures do not operate as a spring of action, and they can only motivate action indirectly: ‘In a remote way, indeed, it may happen to any such pleasure, howsoever in itself inert, to give birth to action: but then it is only by means of some different pleasure, which it happens to bring to view. … In itself, the pleasure derived, for example, from a recollected landscape, is an inert one. An effect of it may indeed be the sending a man again to the place to take another view. But, in that case, the operating pleasure – the actuating motive – is a different one: vis. the pleasurable idea of the pleasurable sensation expected from that other view.’ (Ibid., 207.)

47 Ibid., 207.

48 Bowring, i. 210.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid., 205.

53 Ibid., 210.

54 Ibid.

55 Mill, CWJSM, x. 96.

56 Bowring, i., 212.

57 Ibid., 197–205.

58 Bowring, i. 211.

59 Bowring, ix. 5–6.

60 Bowring, i. 211.

61 Mill, ‘Bentham’, CWJSM, x., 113.

62 See Francisco Vergara, “Bentham and Mill on the ‘quality’ of Pleasures”, Revue d’études benthamiennes [Online], 9 | 2011, Online since 15 September 2011, connection on 20 May 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etudes-benthamiennes/422; https://doi.org/10.4000/etudes-benthamiennes.422; Martin Bronfenbrenner, ‘Poetry, Pushpin, and Utility’, Economic Inquiry 15 (1977): 95–110.

63 Bowring, i. 303. Michael Quinn observes that, in Bentham’s utilitarianism, ‘direct utility calculations underpin the prioritization of subsistence over abundance and equality. No pain exceeds that of starvation, while all other pleasures of any duration depend upon access to the food and shelter that keep us alive.’ See Quinn, Bentham (Cambridge and Medford: Polity Press, 2022), 85. For discussion of the impact on the quantity of pleasure of diminishing marginal utility, see J.E. Crimmins, ‘Jeremy Bentham’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/bentham/>.

64 Maslow stressed that the position held by the romantic-classics that the ‘dichotomy between lower needs as animal, and higher needs as nonanimal or antianimal’ was ‘illegitimate’. See Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), 102. Bentham was far removed from Mill’s perfectionism, but was arguably the better liberal for it.

65 Mill, CWJSM, x. 210–16.

66 The critique of pig philosophy goes back to ancient authors and the criticism of Epicurus by followers of Plato. In Bentham’s day, the expression ‘swinish multitude’ had been notoriously employed by Edmund Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: J. Dodsley, 1790), 117. In ‘Plan of Parliamentary Reform’, Bentham criticized the phrase repeatedly: see Bentham, ‘Plan of Parliamentary Reform’, Bowring, iii. 433–557, at 437, 438, 464, 471, 474, 495, 505, 507, 508, 523, 533, 534, 538. To give one example, see ibid., 494–5: ‘Look once more to the United States: – see – whether, in that seat of democracy – of representative democracy – where swinish rulers are chosen by swinish multitudes – see whether, in that seat of illegitimate incorruption and good government – any such monster is to be found, as a man constituted judge – perpetual judge – in his own cause?’

67 ‘Not Paul, but Jesus. Vol. III, Doctrine’ (Bentham Project, 2013), 20; (UC clxi. 259)

68 Bowring, ii. 193, 231.

69 Bentham, Deontology, 1983 (CWJB), 180.

70 See IPML (1823), i. 49–51.

71 Bentham, ‘Rationale of Reward’ (first published 1830), in Bowring, ii. 189–266, at 253.

72 Bowring, ii. 253–4.

73 Ibid., 253.

74 Ibid., 254.

75 Ibid.

76 Thomas Moore (1779–25), was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist.

77 Mill, CWJSM, i. 114–5.

78 Bowring, ii. 254.

79 Ibid., 256.

80 Ibid., 253.

81 See Bruce L. Kinzer, J.S. Mill Revisited: Biographical and Political Explorations (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 32–3, 44.

82 See Bowring, viii. 279–81.

83 Ibid., 320, 279.

84 Ibid., 198, 203.

85 Bowring, ii. 503.

86 Ibid., 224.

87 Bowring, i. 211.

88 Jeremy Bentham, Preparatory Principles, ed. D.G. Long and P. Schofield (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2016,CWJB), 98. In the early 1770s, before the publication of A Fragment on Government (1776), Bentham wrote over 600 folios many of which dealt with metaphysics, only recently published as Preparatory Principles.

89 Mill, CWJSM, x. 92–3.

90 Ibid., 111.

91 Philip Schofield, Bentham: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum, 2009), 1–2.

92 Bowring, xi. 81.

93 Ibid., 32.

94 See Bowring, x. 479–80, 484, 487; Schofield, Bentham, A Guide for the Perplexed, 118; Mill, CWJSM, i. 56–7.

95 See Bowring, x. 248.

96 See Schofield, Bentham, A Guide for the Perplexed, 3.

97 See Mill, (CWJSM), i, 56–7.

98 See Schofield, Bentham, A Guide for the Perplexed, 3.

99 In a letter to Simon Bolivar dated 13 August 1825, Bentham said: ‘Under the name of Gymnastics, a new branch of art and science, or rather an old one, revived from Grecian and Roman practice with improvements, has sprung up. Upon anatomical principles, means have been found of giving to every muscle of the body new exercise; and by means of exercise, strength; and, by the additional strength of all parts, correspondent strength and health to the whole. … Having, in the course of a very few months had observation of the good effects of it, (it having, before Voelker’s arrival, been practiced on a small scale in my own garden,).’ The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham: Vol. XII, ed. L. O’Sullivan & C. Fuller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006, CWJB),146 & n.

100 See Mack, Jeremy Bentham, 7.

101 According to Mack, Bentham would usually write fifteen folio pages every day from 1770 to 1832: see Jeremy Bentham, 5.

102 See Bentham, ‘Legislator of the World’: Writings on Codification, Law, and Education, ed. P. Schofield and J. Harris (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998, CWJB), 322–3n, 8. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/bentham-jeremy-1748-1832.

103 See https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct1rmf (accessed 1 February 2022.); https://www.britannica.com/story/what-is-jeremy-benthams-auto-icon. See also ‘Bentham’s Last Will and Testament’, in J.E. Crimmins, Bentham’s Auto-Icon and Related Writings (Bristol: Thoemmes, 2002), 10–11.

104 Bowring, xi. 71.

105 Ibid.,77.

106 Ibid., 92–3.

107 Mack, Jeremy Bentham, 7.

108 Schofield, Bentham: A Guide for the Perplexed, 1.

109 Bowring, x. 5.

110 Ibid., 30, 32–4.

111 See Bowring, x. 1–26.

112 P. Schofield, Utility and Democracy; the political thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 7; Scofield, Bentham: A Guide for the Perplexed, 2.

113 Schofield, Utility and Democracy, 174.

114 Ibid., 148, 153.

115 Ibid., 159.

116 Bentham Project, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bentham-project/news-0.

117 There is no record of the occasion when Mill first came to see Bentham in person, but it occurred most likely before 1810 when the Mills moved into a cottage owned by Bentham: see Mill, CWJSM, i., 54-5; B.L. Kinzer, J. S. Mill Revisited, 15.

118 In 1810 in the UK, life expectancy was only 40.74 years. Statistica Accounts, ‘Life expectancy (from birth) in the United Kingdom from 1765 to 2020’, Statistica, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040159/life-expectancy-united-kingdom-all-time/ (accessed 8 January 2022).

119 Bentham was born into to a wealthy family, and inherited from his father a considerable fortune including an enormous real estate. In 1813, he received the huge amount of £23,000 in compensation for the abandonment of his panopticon scheme, bring him absolute economic security. In wealth, he belonged to the upper middle class. Intellectually, he had many followers and friends, abroad as well as domestically; socially and politically, he engaged with elites around the world, including James Madison, American President and Alexander I, Russian Emperor.

120 Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), 100.

121 Maslow identified twelve characteristics of self-actualizing people: see Motivation and Personality, 149–80. One might argue that Bentham never married, had no long-term partner and no children, and his life therefore amounted to a stunted failure. But Maslow regarded Spinoza, another lifelong bachelor, as a highly probable example of a successful self-actualizer: see Motivation and Personality, 100.

122 See Mack, Jeremy Bentham, 6–9.

123 Recently, Philip Schofield, the current General Editor of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, estimated that Bentham’s surviving manuscripts consist of around 100,000 pages containing 30 million words, and would fill up more than eighty volumes, as opposed to the thirty-eight volumes envisaged in 1970. (The Forum, B.B.C. World Service, 27th January 2022; IPML (CWJB), vii.) It is especially worth noting here that Mill edited the five volumes of Bentham’s Rationale of Judicial Evidence, specially applied to English practice, first published in 1827 (Bowring, vi. 189–585 & vii. 1–598): see Mill, CWJSM, i. (Autobiography and other literary Essays), 119.

124 Although in many ways poorly edited, large parts of the Bowring edition are fairly reliable.

125 See IPML (1823), i, 25–6.

126 Ibid., 27.

127 Ibid., 14.

128 Bentham, UC ci. 161 (31 July 1814).

129 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, Pt. IV, § II (first published 1739).