Bentham: A Fragment on Government by Jeremy Bentham

Bentham: A Fragment on Government by Jeremy Bentham

This volume makes available to a student readership one of the central texts in the utilitarian tradition, in the authoritative 1977 edition prepared by Professors Burns and Hart as part of Bentham's Collected works. A Fragment on Government is, as Ross Harrison observes in his introduction, a young man's work, and Bentham's exuberant prose reflects his own confidence that the Fragment 'was the first publication by which men at large were invited to break loose from the trammels of authority and ancestor-wisdom on the field of law'. Certain that history was on his side, Bentham sought to rid the world of the hideous mess wrought by legal obfuscation and confusion, and to transform politics into a rational scientific activity, premised on the hideous politics into a rational scientific activity, premised on the fundamental axiom that 'it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong'. In the context of a European social and political order still based upon privilege and hereditary right, this was a profoundly subversive sentiment. This edition of the Fragment on Government contains several important students aids, including a guide to further reading and a chronology of the principal events in Bentham's life.

JEREMY BENTHAM was born on February 15, 1748, in London, to a wealthy family. His was the life of a child genius who began reading Latin at the age of three and enrolled at Oxford University at the age of twelve, receiving his undergraduate degree at the age of sixteen. After that, he went to Lincoln's Inn, Westminster, to study law. Bentham was able to pursue a life of study and writing thanks to inheritances from his parents. He devoted himself to the critical investigation and reform of moral, political, religious, legal, educational, and economic institutions in England when in his mid-forties.

Bentham's fascination with the underlying ideals of the law led him to philosophy and science in an attempt to construct standards that could base the social order, despite the fact that he believed the legal system to be hypocritical and corrupt. His reforming tendencies were a key component in the formation of utilitarianism, his now-famous ethical framework in which human conduct was judged by the amount of pleasure and misery it created. A Fragment on Government (1776), An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Laws (1781), The Logic of Judicial Evidence (edited by John Stuart Mill in 1825), and two volumes on Constitutional Code (ca. 1825) are among Bentham's published works. Bentham died on June 16, 1832, in London.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780521350549
ISBN 10	0521350549
Title	Bentham: A Fragment on Government
Author	Jeremy Bentham
Series	Cambridge Texts In The History Of Political Thought
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	1988-10-28
Number of pages	164
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable