Jeremy Bentham - An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Foundations of Utilitarianism and Moral Philosophy

• The Governance of Human Nature:

  • Humanity is placed by nature under the governance of two sovereign masters: pain and pleasure.
  • These two masters determine both what human beings shall do (the chain of causes and effects) and point out what human beings ought to do (the standard of right and wrong).
  • Every effort made to throw off subjection to pain and pleasure serves only to demonstrate and confirm it. In words, a person may pretend to abjure their empire, but in reality, remains subject to it continuously.

• The Principle of Utility Defined:

  • The principle of utility recognizes this subjection and uses it as the foundation of a moral and legal system aimed at rearing the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law.
  • An action is said to be conformable to the principle of utility (or utility at large) when its tendency to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any tendency it has to diminish it.
  • The principle approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever according to its apparent tendency to promote or oppose the happiness of the party whose interest is in question—whether an individual person or a whole government measure.
  • Utility is defined as that property in any object whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, or to prevent mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness.

• The Individual and Community Interest:

  • The community is a fictitious body composed of individual persons who constitute its members.
  • The interest of the community is defined as the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.
  • An action promotes the interest of an individual when it adds to the sum total of their pleasures or diminishes the sum total of their pains.
  • Moral terms such as "ought," "right," and "wrong" have meaning only when interpreted in conformity with the principle of utility; outside of utility, they possess no rational meaning.

• Proof and Consistency:

  • The principle of utility is not susceptible to direct proof, as that which is used to prove everything else cannot itself be proved; a chain of logical proofs must have a primary commencement.
  • While human beings naturally defer to utility in judging actions, consistency is extremely rare due to unexamined prejudices, misapplications, or inability to apply the principle consistently.
  • Arguments raised against utility invariably draw upon the principle itself without the arguer's awareness, demonstrating misapplication of the principle rather than its invalidity.

• Refinement and Mathematical Limits of Utilitarianism:

  • The Commons Dilemma and Bentham's Maxims:
    • Traditional utilitarian doctrine seeks "the greatest good for the greatest number." However, maximizing population simultaneously with goods is mathematically and biologically impossible.
    • Mathematical Proof: It is impossible to maximize for two or more independent variables at the same time ($\max f(x, y)$), a principle grounded in partial differential equations (traced to Jean le Rond d'Alembert) and formally established by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern.
    • Biological Proof: Living organisms require energy for maintenance and work. For human beings, basic life maintenance requires approximately $1600\,\text{kcal/day}$ ("maintenance calories"). Any activity beyond basic biological survival requires "work calories." Maximizing total human population forces work calories per person toward zero, eliminating all sports, arts, literature, leisure, and enjoyment.
    • The optimum population size is strictly less than the theoretical maximum population size.

The Hedonic Calculus and Evaluation of Actions

• Dimensions of Pleasure and Pain Value:

  • To an individual considered by itself, the value of a pleasure or pain considered by itself depends upon four primary circumstances:
    1. Intensity: The degree of strength of the sensation.
    2. Duration: The length of time the sensation lasts.
    3. Certainty or Uncertainty: The probability that the sensation will occur.
    4. Propinquity or Remoteness: The immediate nearness or distance in time of the sensation.
  • When evaluating the tendency of an act that produces pleasure or pain, two additional circumstances must be evaluated (which are properties of the act or event rather than the sensation itself):
    5. Fecundity: The probability of the sensation being followed by sensations of the same kind (pleasures following pleasure, or pains following pain).
    6. Purity: The probability of the sensation not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind (pains following pleasure, or pleasures following pain).
  • When evaluating value across a group or community, a seventh circumstance is added:
    7. Extent: The number of individual persons to whom the pleasure or pain extends, or who are directly affected by it.

• Six-Step Algorithm for Measuring Act Tendencies (Felicific Calculus):

  1. Measure the value of each distinguishable pleasure produced by the act in the first instance.
  2. Measure the value of each distinguishable pain produced by the act in the first instance.
  3. Measure the value of each pleasure produced after the first instance (representing the fecundity of the first pleasure and the impurity of the first pain).
  4. Measure the value of each pain produced after the first instance (representing the fecundity of the first pain and the impurity of the first pleasure).
  5. Sum up all values of pleasures on one side and pains on the other. A positive balance toward pleasure indicates an overall good tendency for the individual; a positive balance toward pain indicates an overall bad tendency.
  6. Repeat this process for every individual whose interest is concerned. Sum the degrees of overall good tendency for all individuals for whom the act is beneficial, and repeat for all individuals for whom the act is evil. Balance the totals: a net pleasure balance yields a general good tendency for the community, while a net pain balance yields a general evil tendency.

• Structural Classification of Human Actions:

  • Positive vs. Negative Actions:
    • Positive Acts (Commission): Consist of physical exertion or motion (e.g., striking someone).
    • Negative Acts (Omission/Forbearance): Consist of keeping at rest or refraining from motion (e.g., forbearing to strike). Negative acts can be absolute (negation of all agency) or relative (negation of a specific agency). Linguistic forms can disguise nature (e.g., "to starve" is a positive word for a negative act of omitting food).
  • External vs. Internal Actions:
    • External Acts: Corporal acts of the physical body.
    • Internal Acts: Mental acts of the mind (e.g., intending to strike).
    • Acts of Discourse: A hybrid consisting of external acts (speaking, writing, signing) whose sole material relevance is expressing internal mental states.
  • Transitive vs. Intransitive Actions:
    • Transitive Acts: Physical motion communicated from the agent to an external body (e.g., running against a person, throwing water). Stages include commencement (motion confined to agent), intermediate progress (in gradu mediativo, e.g., stone or bullet in flight), and termination (impulse reaching external body).
    • Intransitive Acts: Physical motion confined within the agent's own body (e.g., running, washing, drinking poison before touching lips vs. reaching lips).
  • Duration and Repetition:
    • Transient vs. Continued: A transient act lasts a brief instant (striking, buying); a continued act persists without interruption (leaning, keeping possession).
    • Repetition vs. Habit: A repetition of acts features short intervals filled by other acts. A habit or practice requires repeated acts separated by long-continued intervals over a considerable span of time (e.g., multiple drinks in one sitting is a repetition, whereas repeated drinking sessions across days or weeks constitutes the habit of drunkenness).
  • Divisibility and Complexity:
    • Indivisible Acts: Purely theoretical abstractions (e.g., motion or rest of a single atom of matter, or movement across a single atom of space).
    • Simple vs. Complex Acts: Simple acts consist of a single exertion (striking, leaning); complex acts assemble heterogeneous simple acts under a unified design or end (e.g., giving a dinner, maintaining a child, holding court, bearing arms).

• Causality and Circumstances of Offenses:

  • Materiality: A consequence is material if it consists of or influences pleasure or pain. A circumstance is material if it bears a visible causal relationship to consequences.
  • Fourfold Causality of Circumstances:
    1. Causation/Production: Direct contribution to producing the event.
    2. Derivation: Subsequent event produced by the main event.
    3. Collateral Connection: Related to a common producing cause without directly causing each other.
    4. Conjunct Influence: Jointly concurring with another circumstance to produce a common consequence.
  • Historical Case Analysis (Assassination of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, 1628):
    • Causation/Production: Felton drawing his knife, travelling from London to Portsmouth, feeling indignation over administration, Charles I appointing Buckingham.
    • Derivation: The bloodiness of the knife after the stabbing.
    • Collateral Connection: The assassin's hat falling off, written paper statements found in the hat crown.
    • Conjunct Influence: Conversations of surrounding bystanders distracting Buckingham and preventing him from guarding against the intruder.
  • Legal Categorization of Circumstances:
    • Criminative: Circumstances entering into the essence of an offense.
    • Exculpative / Extenuative: Circumstances yielding additional beneficial consequences that reduce severity or guilt.
    • Aggravative: Circumstances producing additional mischievous consequences that increase severity.
    • Evidentiary: Circumstances bearing a material relation in providing proof or evidence of the act.

The Tragedy of the Commons and Resource Dynamics

• The Concept of "No Technical Solution" Problems:

  • Defined as problems requiring fundamental changes in human values, moral standards, or political arrangements, rather than mere adjustments in natural science techniques.
  • Illustrated by professional analyses of the nuclear arms race (J. B. Wiesner and H. F. York, 1964) and game theory mechanics (e.g., tick-tack-toe cannot be won against a rational player without abandoning game rules).
  • Population growth in a finite world represents a classic "no technical solution" problem; technological innovations (e.g., ocean farming, high-yield wheat strains, nuclear energy dissipation) merely alter constraints without preventing collapse.

• The Logic of the Commons:

  • First formulated by mathematical amateur William Forster Lloyd (1833) and formalized as "The Tragedy of the Commons."
  • Follows Alfred North Whitehead's definition of dramatic tragedy: the remorseless working of things, inevitable destiny, and the futility of escape.
  • Calculus of Rational Utility for an Individual Herdsman:
    • When considering adding one animal to a shared, open-access pasture, the herdsman calculates individual utility:
    • Positive Component: $\approx +1$ (the herdsman receives all income from selling the additional animal).
    • Negative Component: A fraction of $-1$ (the damage from overgrazing is shared equally among all herdsmen using the commons).
    • Decision: Net utility is strongly positive. Every rational actor is locked into a system compelling unlimited herd expansion in a limited world, driving all users to common ruin.
  • Real-World Manifestations:
    • Leominster, Massachusetts Parking Incident: Free parking provided by plastic-bagged meters during Christmas shopping led to acute space shortages by restoring a commons system.
    • Environmental Exploitation: Overgrazing on public western range lands, near-extinction of whales and fish species via "freedom of the seas," and overcrowding in National Parks (e.g., Yosemite Valley).
    • Allocation Options for Finite Resources: Privatization (selling land), wealth auctions, merit allocation, lotteries, or first-come first-served queuing. All alternatives contain flaws, but any allocation scheme is superior to total destruction of the resource.

• Pollution and System-Sensitive Morality:

  • Pollution operates as a reverse commons: rather than taking utility out, individuals put negative externalities in (sewage, chemical, radioactive, or heat waste, toxic fumes, visual advertising).
  • Utility Calculation: The cost of discharging untreated waste into the public environment is substantially less than the private cost of waste treatment.
  • System-Sensitive Morality: The moral character of an act depends entirely on the state of the overall system at the time of execution.
    • Example: A 19th-century American plainsman killing a bison solely for its tongue caused no material systemic harm; the same act committed today destroys an endangered population.
    • Traditional "Thou shalt not" ethical directives fail because they are non-contextual. Complex, dense societies require administrative regulation over statutory prohibitions, introducing the administrative challenge: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ("Who shall watch the watchers themselves?").

• Social Control, Conscience, and Coercion:

  • Self-Elimination of Conscience: Appealing to voluntary restraint or individual conscience in a commons creates a selective evolutionary filter. Individuals with conscientious restraint produce fewer progeny or surrender resources, while unconscientious actors exploit the system.
    • Over generations, biological or cultural selection eliminates conscientious behavior (Homo contracipiens is replaced by Homo progenitivus, as formulated by Charles Galton Darwin).
  • Pathogenic Effects: Appealing to conscience subjects individuals to a psychological "double bind" (Gregory Bateson), communicating simultaneously: (1) "Act responsibly or be condemned," and (2) "If you act responsibly, you are a simpleton allowing others to exploit the commons." This engenders anxiety and mental harm (Alex Comfort, Paul Goodman).
  • Mutual Coercion Mutually Agreed Upon: Social responsibility is defined (per Charles Frankel) as a product of definite social arrangements.
    • True control relies on mutual coercion mutually agreed upon by the majority affected (e.g., compulsory taxation, parking meters, bank robbery laws).
    • Freedom is defined in the Hegelian sense: "Freedom is the recognition of necessity." Relinquishing absolute individual liberties (such as the unrestricted freedom to breed in a welfare state) preserves higher freedoms.

Political Realism and International Relations Theory

• The Philosophical Contest:

  • Modern political thought is divided between two competing schools:
    1. Idealism/Utopianism: Assumes human nature is essentially good and malleable. Believes a rational, moral order can be established immediately through abstract principles, education, reform, and legal institutions.
    2. Political Realism: Assumes the world is imperfect due to inherent forces in human nature. Requires working with existing forces, balancing opposing interests, utilizing checks and balances, and seeking the lesser evil rather than absolute good.

• Six Fundamental Principles of Political Realism:

  1. Objective Laws Rooted in Human Nature: Politics is governed by objective laws that have remained unchanged across history. Theoretical soundness is judged by reason and empirical verification, distinguishing objective truth from subjective opinion.
  2. Interest Defined as Power: The primary analytical signpost is the concept of interest defined in terms of power. This sets politics apart as an autonomous domain, separate from economics (wealth) or ethics. Realism focuses on rational actions and foreseeable consequences rather than subjective motives or ideological sympathies.
     • Historical Proof of Motive Fallacy: Neville Chamberlain's good motives led to appeasement and world war; Winston Churchill's power-oriented motives yielded superior moral and political outcomes. Maximilien Robespierre's virtuous motives led to the Reign of Terror.
  3. Dynamic and Contextual Nature of Power: While interest defined as power is a universal standard, the content of power and interest changes across historical and cultural contexts. Power encompasses all social control mechanisms, from physical force to subtle psychological ties.
  4. Moral Prudence in Statecraft: Realism recognizes the tension between universal moral principles and successful political action. Universal moral precepts cannot be applied abstractly to state action; they must be filtered through concrete circumstances. Prudence—the weighing of political consequences—is the supreme virtue in political morality.
  5. Rejection of National Self-Idolatry: Realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a specific nation with the moral laws governing the universe. Equating national policy with divine providence generates crusading frenzy and destructive pride (hubris).
  6. Autonomy of the Political Sphere: The realist asks: "How does this policy affect the power of the nation?" Political criteria subordinate non-political standards (legalistic, moralistic, or economic) when analyzing statecraft.

• Critique of Legalistic-Moralistic Approaches:

  • Example 1 (Legalism): The 1939 expulsion of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations following its attack on Finland. Adhering strictly to legal rules almost caused Great Britain and France to enter a simultaneous war against both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
  • Example 2 (Moralism): Refusing diplomatic engagement with the Communist government of China based solely on moral disapproval of its internal regime, ignoring power distribution and national strategic interests.
  • Example 3 (Realist vs. Legalistic-Moralistic War Rationale): Great Britain's entry into World War I in 1914 over Belgian neutrality. Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey and Under Secretary Hardinge acted on the realist principle that British security required preventing any hostile power from controlling the Low Countries. Conversely, Theodore Roosevelt viewed intervention strictly as a moralistic-legalistic obligation to enforce treaty obligations regardless of power interests.

• Pluralistic Conception of Human Nature:

  • Human nature comprises distinct facets: economic man, political man, moral man, and religious man.
  • A person who is purely political man would be a beast (lacking moral restraint); purely moral man would be a fool (lacking prudence); purely religious man would be a saint (lacking worldly desire). Understanding politics requires temporary abstraction of the political sphere on its own terms.

Classical Statecraft, Warfare, and Demographic Dynamics

• Mechanics and Utility of Roman Warfare:

  • The primary intention of statecraft in offensive war is to acquire territory, maintain acquisitions, and enrich the fatherland without depleting public funds.
  • The Early Roman Model: Prior to the siege of Veii, Roman wars were kept short and massive (lasting 6, 10, or 20 days).
    • Armies entered the field, fought an immediate decisive battle, and imposed terms preventing total destruction of the enemy's countryside.
    • Colonial Deployment: Defeated states surrendered land, which Rome converted to private property or fortified colonies. Colonies served as frontier guards at zero expense to the Roman public treasury.
  • Post-Veii Modifications: Paying army wages was introduced during the ten-year siege of Veii, allowing extended campaigns at a distance. However, commanders maintained rapid war termination due to 1-year consular terms (with 6 months spent in winter quarters) and ambition for a military triumph.
  • Booty Distribution: Booty was channeled into the public treasury to fund operations, eliminating the need to impose heavy domestic taxes.

• Colonial Land Allocation and Resource Requirements:

  • Land grants per colonist were strictly sparing (e.g., $3\frac{7}{12}$ jugera per colonist allocated after the capture of Veii, where $1\,\text{jugerum} \approx 28{,}000\,\text{sq ft}$ or $\frac{2}{3}$ acre).
  • Rationale: Sparing land grants maximized the total number of colonial guards while discouraging luxury. Roman doctrine held that well-cultivated small holdings were sufficient, provided the colony possessed public pastures for cattle grazing and forests for fuel.

• Categorization of Wars and Demographic Displacements:

  • First Category (Imperial Expansion): Fought by ambitious princes or republics to expand political dominion (e.g., wars of Alexander the Great or standard Roman expansions). Inhabitants are not expelled; they retain their private property, local laws, and homes in exchange for political obedience.
  • Second Category (Populations in Migration): Occurs when an entire population, driven by famine or devastating war, abandons its homeland to seize new territory, expelling or exterminating native inhabitants (e.g., Gauls, Cimbri/Germans, Goths, Vandals, Moses in Judea, and the ancient Maurusians).
    • Historical Inscription: Procopius recorded an ancient column inscription in Africa left by Maurusians fleeing Syria: "We are Maurusians, who fled before the face of Joshua the robber son of Nun."
  • Natural Purge Theory: Mixed human populations naturally expand until all provinces are filled. When human astuteness and malignity reach maximum capacity, the world undergoes natural purges via inundations, plagues, or famines, reducing population density so survivors can live advantageously.
  • Scythian Migrations: Northern, cold regions continually produced population surpluses. Mass migrations ceased in modern eras due to agricultural and land improvements in Germany and Hungary, combined with Polish and Hungarian military barriers holding back northern and Tartar forces.

• Origins and Pretexts of Conflicts between Powers:

  • Wars between major powers arise either by accident or through deliberate pretexts created by an aggressor.
  • Accidental Escalation (First Samnite War): The Campanians, crushed by Samnites, voluntarily surrendered themselves (deditio) as subjects or clients to Rome. Rome was forced by duty to defend its new subjects, pulling it into an unsought war with its Samnite allies.
  • Strategic Pretexts (Second Punic War): Hannibal attacked Saguntum (a Roman ally) specifically to provoke Roman intervention and create a pretext for invading Italy.

• Refutation of "Money is the Sinew of War":

  • The popular maxim "money is the sinew of war" (traced to Quintus Curtius regarding King Agis III of Sparta and Antipater of Macedon) is false.
  • Money, territory, and fortifications are useless without faithful, strong armed forces. Wealth without adequate military force merely transforms a state into immediate prey for aggressive neighbors.