Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham was born in London, trained in law and devoted his life to reforming it rather than practicing it. In A Fragment on Government (1776) and An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) he argued that pleasure and pain are the only sources of value, and that laws should be judged by their effects on happiness. Revolutionary France granted him honorary citizenship in 1792 in recognition of his reform proposals. Over a long career he drafted codes and constitutions, designed the Panopticon prison and gathered a circle of reform-minded followers. His estate helped finance the newly founded University College London.

Bentham's utilitarianism shaped 19th-century British reform in law, prisons and the franchise, and his ideas influenced John Stuart Mill and legal positivism. Supporters credit him with early arguments for sexual freedom, animal welfare and democratic accountability. Critics, from contemporaries such as Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant to later philosophers, objected that utility is a thin basis for moral duty and could justify sacrificing individuals for the majority. Michel Foucault made the Panopticon a symbol of modern surveillance and discipline. The Reform Bill of 1832 and the later adoption of the secret ballot reflected Benthamite concerns, although historians debate how far his own influence extended.