Essays on Jeremy Bentham

INTRODUCTION

Human civilization has come a long way since it first began establishing communities and attempted to establish law and order. The reality is that there have always been criminals; people who for one reason or another break the laws established and require consequences for their actions. One of the most controversial discussions throughout history is what are the best means to admonish the offenders, protect law-abiding citizens and send a message of deterrence to other would-be offenders. That being said many different approaches to addressing offenders who commit crimes have existed throughout the ancient world to present day. One ...

Introduction

Legal Positivist Theory is a school of thought that states that the law of the nation is one which is created by the members of the society or their representatives and is always determined by the factors surrounding the society rather than its merits and demerits. This theory was developed by Jeremy Bentham and which was later adopted and enhanced by John Austin, which provided that the law is always a set of commands where the ruled in the society are required to adhere to it effectively and religiously. However the major question that brought varying thoughts amongst the ...

The Gender Discrimination in Criminal Justice System

Introduction Traditionally, women have not been viewed as criminals because of their less aggressive nature, making the act of crime to be mainly associated with the male gender. There are several theories brought forth to explain why the female gender would, or would not engage in crime. The theories, however, do not provide satisfactory explanations to the phenomenon leading to counterarguments. Also, the criminal justice of the United States of America has been viewed as discriminatory because it fails to address the gender needs of female offenders whose number has increased over time. This essay discusses the historical perspectives, ...

The moral reasoning that falls under the philosophy of Utilitarianism states that a course of action is morally right if greater benefits result than there is harm for the entire population. The end product of greater benefit takes precedence over the morality of how the result was accomplished, as in “the end justifies the means”. Founder Jeremy Bentham’s motto was “The greatest good for the greatest number” (Pitts 65). Deontology is a philosophy that believes that the method of achieving a result should be ethical in addition to the outcome. Unlike Utilitarianism, the morality of a beneficial result ...

The reading starts with a description of the interventions taken to control the plague that took place in the seventeenth century that condemned many to an untimely death. People went through continuous registration, inspection, closing off households, and partitioning of the space. The procedures managed the purification and quarantine against the plague of leprosy (Foucault, 195). A plague can only be controlled by order to create a pure group of individuals or a disciplined society. The writer looks at panopticism, a building that is a tower housing prisoners that is not possible to see where they are incarcerated, from ...

John Stuart Mill was born on 20 May 1806 in Pentoville, London. He was the first-born son of James Mill and Harriet Burrow who got married in 1805. His father was born in Scotland but had to move to London to advance his career in economy as well as in philosophy. John’s father and his close friend, Jeremy Bentham, played a pivotal role in equipping him with the knowledge that he would require to lead a successful life.

John began his education at a rather early age. He started learning Greek at the age of three. When he was eight years ...

Part a

The modern criminology seems to be stemmed from the amalgamation of the two different schools of thoughts namely classical school originating in the 18th century and the positivist school beginning in the 19th century. It is therefore, necessary to analyze both school of thoughts with respect to crimes and criminals to know the similarities and difference shared by both school of thoughts. It was a general trend before the 18th century to explain every phenomenon in religious context or in the context of spiritual nature. However, the 18th century gave a new world view to the people because of the ...

ABSTRACT

The term utility in economics is defined as the satisfaction or fulfillment an individual gets from consuming a certain good or a service. Utility is one of the major subjects used in understanding consumer behavior in economics. Utility of a good is usually expressed as a function of only the amount of that particular good. However, utility cannot be measured quantitatively and therefore it is a subjective concept depending on each individual. Some economists have argued that utility can be measured in utils but this unit of measurement is not quite clear and also it is not recognized universally. People assume the larger the ...

The ancestor of classical German philosophy Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) during the early period of the activity dealt with issues of natural sciences much and made the hypothesis of the origin and developments of the solar system. This philosophical system is the compromise between materialism and idealism. Materialistic tendencies in Kant's philosophy affect that he recognizes the existence of objective reality, things out of us. Kant teaches that there are the "transcendental objects" which are not depending on the learning subject. If Kant consistently carried out this look, it would come to materialism. But in contradiction with this materialistic ...

Crimes are rampant today and laws have been implicated to prevent crime and impose regulations in a nation. Many laws have been reformed from brutal tortures to a lighter punishment which is imprisoning the law breakers. Even if this is more humane than the previous punishments, prison is still criticized by many. Michel Foucault was one who criticized imprisonment in his book ‘Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison’. He discusses the disciplinary power and its difference from the sovereign power of the state. In his book, he discusses a prison, Panopticon, of Illinois State Penitentiary. His idea was adopted in ...

Jeremy Bentham’s Writings

Jeremy Bentham is most famously known for his writings on utilitarianism theory, although he was also a jurist and a social reformer. This essay will review Bentham’s article ‘The Psychology of Economic Man.’ The article by Bentham deals with the psychological aspects of man in relation to economic wants. He starts off with the foundational premise of his article by stating that one’s primary aim is happiness and for attaining this aim one would do any that that would satisfy this tendency of self-preference. He argues that others cannot look after one’s happiness and that one has ...

Punishment to individuals who have wronged the society is something that has been practised by many communities from ancient times. Different forms of punishment were practised depending on the culture, belief and the intensity of the crime that has been committed (Merino, 2009). This included revenge by the offended to the offender by inflicting the same amount of pain whether physical or emotional, or the being chased to suffer alone in the wild away from family and society as a whole. Isolation by use of cages and restricted and controlled motion and activities were also practised which is a system of ...

AND JEREMY BENTHAM

Facilitator’s Name AND JEREMY BENTHAM

Introduction

Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant were the two famous philosophers, who elucidated the criterion for evaluating human actions. Jeremy Bentham introduced the concept of assessing actions through the intensity of happiness it produces to the highest number of people; a notion that is based on utilitarianism. On the contrary, Immanuel Kant expounded the same through Categorical Imperative. Moral rightness of a decision according to Bentham’s Consequentialist Utilitarian theory is defined by the outcomes it produces, while Kant focuses on the moral rightness of the action. This paper will highlight the major similarities and ...

Abstract

The concept of human rights has evolved over time and today, human rights are used as the yardstick upon which people measure a government’s treatment of its people. Human rights have been proffered as universal rights that occur to man by his being human. It may well be stated that human rights in modern day are synonymous to religion. They seek to define the moral code within which a government treats its people. Several theoretical approaches have been put forward in an endeavor to explain the basis of human rights. some of the theoretical approaches include the natural rights theory ...

Sole Remaining Supplier

Sole Remaining Supplier

Key Utilitarian Ethical Problems

The key utilitarian ethical problems that confront the supplier transistor company in the case is one where the supplier had to choose between ensuring its own good or the greater good. On one hand, the supplier had to protect the company by ensuring that it does not become liable in any way for any problems that may arise from the development or use of defective pacemakers (Shanks, 1996), especially considering that many people were dying from their use at the time. On the other hand, though, if they stopped supplying transistors to the pacemaker company then ...

Abstract

This essay will outline the nature of the death penalty in terms of its birth and its ideals and how this translates in terms of the democratic process. Such philosophers and social reformers as T.H Green, Beccaria, Hobbes and Jeremy Bentham to discuss the benefits and negative factors of the death penalty in terms of its effectiveness as a deterrent and assess whether or not it’s value as a deterrent outweighs these negative factors. This process will inevitably lead me to the conclusion in which I hope to establish the fairness or notion of equivalency of the death penalty. ...

The prisoner's dilemma is an example of game theory used to display why two separate individuals might choose not to cooperate with each other, regardless of the fact it will be in both their best interests. The prisoner’s dilemma example is as follows; Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. The prisoners are both being held in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. The police don’t have enough evidence to convict both the criminals on the main charge. As a result of this they plan to give them both a year in ...

In the late eighteenth century a well known English philosopher called Jeremy Bentham proposed the idea of what he called the ‘Panopticon’. A prison that would allows a handful of guards to watch (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates, without them necessarily knowing whether or not they’re being watched. The basic design is a circular building with all cells located on the outside of the circle where in the centre is located the guards watch tower of which the guards can observer all the inmates of that floor. He asserted that one watchman could in theory watch an entire prison of inmates ...

In deterrence theory it is believed that people weigh the gains and consequences of violating or obeying the law. We have two classifications of deterrence theory: general and specific deterrence theory. General deterrence prevents general population crime. This is because one is punished as an example to the rest. This is because one has not yet performed the crime; the punishment is to show the horror of what would happen if they committed the crime, thus deterring them from even the thought whereas the pictorial representation of the horror of reccurpesion is very fresh and clear. For example ...

The Nineteenth Century was a period of advance in industrialization, urbanization, migration and education. This was a time of unparalleled change in the western world; culture became more refined and more akin to what we know today. Scientific discoveries changed how people dealt with illnesses and diseases, and manufacture increased with the inventions of new machines. Art and philosophical thought both depict and reflect this modernity, and using these mediums, this essay will evaluate the extent to which it shaped western civilization and the results - both positive and negative – that it produced.

Artists portrayed new industrial scenes in their paintings, ...

Subjective wellbeing is a topic that has long eluded people in general, much less psychologists and social scientists. Subjective wellbeing is, ostensibly, one of the most important (if not the most important) motivators of people's actions - everything that people do is done in order to enhance our quality of life. That being said, I believe that the social trend of materialistic apathy is negatively affecting people's ability to feel better about their lives and its subjective quality. In order to combat the absence of spirituality and affluence, which has been replaced by empty consumerism, it is necessary to find ...

The philosopher John Stuart Mill developed the Greatest Happiness Principle as a way to explain his own view of utilitarianism. According to this Principle, it is the goal of every human being to act in the best interests of everyone involved, to help create the largest possible net level of happiness in the people around you. Mill attempts to support this principle by __. In this paper, the success of his justification for the Greatest Happiness Principle will be explored, as well as whether or not it truly offers ‘the foundation of morals,’ as many utilitarians believed it did.

The ...