Bentham, Rights and Humanity: A Fight in Three Rounds

Abstract

Utilitarianism, especially in the classical form advocated by Jeremy Bentham, is frequently and fiercely attacked for its inability to acknowledge and guarantee rights. Whether the example proffered is the punishment of the innocent, torture, murder or any other repugnant act, the accusation remains the same: Jeremy Bentham does not respect rights. Bentham himself would have assented to this statement – and with enthusiasm. Nonsense Upon Stilts, his response to the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen(the Declaration), is a devastating philosophical and political critique of the concept of natural rights. Indeed, Bentham’s destruction of the natural foundations of rights was so thorough that no one has managed to restore them.