15,812
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
1 collections
    3
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Bentham: Punishment and the Utilitarian Use of Persons as Means

      research-article

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisher
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          One of the main barriers against a Utilitarian justification of punishment is a widespread criticism that if punishment is evil justified by the good it can achieve, then the state could use persons as a means to an end in pursuing this good. This opens the door, at a theoretical level, for the potential punishment of innocents, disproportionate punishment and failure to respect persons as rational and responsible agents. Further, critics argue that any considerations of security or utility guard against the perceived risks contingently, without intrinsic commitment to respecting persons as ends in themselves. This article addresses the criticism fundamentally by returning to Bentham’s original writings and demonstrating that a principle of equality is embedded in the greatest happiness as an end of government. The principle of equality can theoretically be developed using the tools of Bentham’s political theory, including his commitments to democracy, to the elimination of pain and to the differentiation between real and fictitious entities, to ensure that a Utilitarian theory of punishment, as part of its premise, would be constrained from using persons as mere means. Further, building on the equality of happiness, the article proposes an individualistic justification of punishment that responds to the traditional accusations of innocents’ punishment and excessive punishment, and ensures the respect of persons as rational and responsible agents.

          Most cited references44

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: not found
          • Book: not found

          The Legitimation of Power

            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Book: not found

            Utility and Democracy

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: not found
              • Article: not found

              Happiness and Utility: Jeremy Bentham's Equation

              J. Burns (2005)
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                jbs
                Journal of Bentham Studies
                UCL Press
                2045-757X
                17 June 2021
                : 19
                : 1
                : e048
                Affiliations
                [1] 1University of Cambridge, UK
                Author notes
                *Correspondence: hhhh3@ 123456cam.ac.uk
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1044-2075
                Article
                10.14324/111.2045-757X.048
                71abcfaa-b586-41ce-901e-aff8a4aeb428
                Copyright © 2021, The Author(s).

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 17 December 2020
                : 31 March 2021
                Page count
                References: 37, Pages: 24
                Categories
                Article

                Philosophers,General philosophy,Philosophy
                respect of persons as ends,justification of punishment,pursuit of happiness,equality of happiness,greatest happiness,Bentham,punishment of innocents,Utilitarianism,use of persons as means

                Comments

                Comment on this article

                scite_
                0
                0
                0
                0
                Smart Citations
                0
                0
                0
                0
                Citing PublicationsSupportingMentioningContrasting
                View Citations

                See how this article has been cited at scite.ai

                scite shows how a scientific paper has been cited by providing the context of the citation, a classification describing whether it supports, mentions, or contrasts the cited claim, and a label indicating in which section the citation was made.

                Similar content236

                Cited by1

                Most referenced authors63