Meta: Two days previously I had been writing about my study of Bentham. Before continuing I wish to bring attention to two points related to this effort. The first is tangential, and concerns this project perceived from a more generic stance. What I have code-named “Philosopher Briefs” is a didactic monad I’ve wished to establish against a temporal framework extending approximately to week. To aim for diligence in this matter, I make the self-recommendation that within this weekly unit (viz. until the coming Sunday) I will allow myself to dwell within matters Benthamite. This includes initiatives like this writing project (i.e. as best manifested below), as well as whatever reading efforts suit my fancy. As it is inevitable that I should be unable to read Bentham’s entire oeuvre (let alone any other writer who gives justice to that title), it is a sensible precept that readings should continue and abridge with that realization given practical recourse, e.g. most obviously passing by all that is not desired, and preferring an attenuated breadth at the reward of admitting exposure to additional and advised texts.
The other point I had wished to make bears regard to my current endeavour (i.e. in its principle form to be exacted below) is a mere reminder of what has already been said, and in what direction my plans for continuance lie. I had written about my reading efforts, to which I can add that I am continuing my reading of that other text, i.e. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. And now with specific detail of my pursuit of writing: I have but a few more words to say about reading about Bentham’s planned panopticon, but I hope to shortly continue onto matters fresher in mind.
A Few Words Further On “Reading about prisons; or, A Day in the Life of One Who Does”.
The letters form a continuing story, beginning with technical instructions (shapes, measurements, rooms and their functions, and the instructions for various staff), and then proceeding with explanations of benefits, before concluding with a surprising collection of alternative purposes (i.e. other than that most obvious), wish I must immediately admit gives off some scent of desperation as if Bentham was coming to the realization that the fate of his most wonderful design was never to achieve manifestation even as a prototype in a foreign land.
With that last accusation in place, it is easier to move backwards from that conclusion, and (if one had not already) see signs of Bentham’s business-person expressing itself louder and with less tact that is expected from a philosopher (perhaps unfairly still being cast in Aristophanes role as a celestial meteorologist, or a dirty theoretician).
Enough has been said about my experiences of the text as philosophical (I say that despite an admission of the paucity of what has been said, and an additional admission that much further could be said, but to both of which I excuse myself with the plea of all mortals). Nevertheless, I should like to produce just a few more sentences with the panopticon in sight, and these regarding the text experienced by a tourist of history. For starters, the text inevitably contains references to details of culture which to contemporaries would have with justice been termed conceptually more succinctly, being called just “facts”. And yet these “facts” I could not help but see as artifacts of Bentham’s time. This includes details of the justice system, and the behaviour of its surrounding society to its institutions. Examples include the entertaining value in visiting penitentiaries (or enculturing – a term Bentham would seem to prefer; I interpret him as saying that the visits to which I refer hold civic value, as if they were investigations of the judicial establishment). Among other examples I choose to refer to an event which forms one of those which act as a historical anchor to the text (explicitly so); Bentham titles it the Hard Labour Bill, although it is formerly named The Penitentiary Act of 1779. This was the British bill which first produced state prisons, and was intended as an alternative to death or transport, and was made necessary by the growing population of prisoners in England and Wales once the Americas had ceased providing a viable destination (owing to their declaration of independence). It also followed a report by John Howard^1 (name: sic!) that detailed the appalling conditions of existing prisons. With these details in mind, it seems more reasonable why Bentham could hope to make an impact upon the penitentiary system (i.e. given its young and hence ostensibly malleable conceptions).
^1 The report by Howard was published as The state of the prisons in England and Wales: with preliminary observations, and an account of some foreign prisons (1777).
Next stop; A Rationalist, Utilitarian Analysis of Moral Principles as They Apply to Legislative Obligation.
That title is intended to convey the tradition by which Bentham’s style of writing and philosophical communication is most easily recognized as kin. His approach is very much analytical, proceeding as he (virtually exhaustively) does from definition to definition, connecting each series by a context to produce flow. Thus, for instance, he dissects the many modes of motivation, describing their species and the variation of each (e.g. good, bad, or indifferent – although these two have their alternative phrases according to context).
(Within reason, I may compare this text by Bentham with Aristotle’s two main books on ethics – most familiarly the Nicomachean Ethics. But where Aristotle analyses ethical traits according to discretely comprised continuums, i.e. he devises single dimension matrices along which are labeled antagonistic and wrong extremes, with a golden mean between them, Bentham analyses traits amenable to ethics (nb. phrasing), producing in the process a complicated phylogeny of features not completely congruous, e.g. features qualitatively distinct and thus beyond direct comparison except insofar as infused in opposing actions which may then be compared).
In a nutshell, Bentham’s morality is utilitarian, and thus interprets any action prone to moral judgment as being comprised of mechanisms which are themselves neutral. Given this feature, it is no surprise that a conclusion is needed as is capable of reinvigorating the “moral” aspect of the matter, this being achieved by explaining that since morality is utilitarian it can only be moralized by strict adherence to those principles, in other words, depending on the effect realized upon the involved parties. Despite the simple form given here, the matter is unsurprisingly complicated due to precisely to the various concepts that contribute to a complete description of any act (e.g. motivation, consciousness, disposition), for although these may have no direct bearing on the strictly utilitarian nature of the subject, may have sway on our interpretation of it as relevant to its judicial status (e.g. an act with negative consequences yet undertaken with benevolent intention).
Aside from the idiosyncratic style (at least as read by a reader made alien by the passage of history and its baggage), which may serve as its own aesthetic – although as one who is a current reader, I may be quick to make known the ease by which this same style may become tiresome, not least due to its exhaustiveness which can all too easily come to mirror pedantic-ness – there is another source of reading pleasure to be found more directly in line with the original intention of the author during his treatment of choice subjects. Among these I include (no doubt biased by its freshness in my mind) Bentham’s exposure of religion as a cogwheel in the workings of morality (i.e. as defined by contemporaries), treating it as he does with a tracing unflinching in its rationality (e.g. for taste I would remind the reader of the parallels and identity he draws between what’s called “religion” and what’s described as “superstition”).
