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Jeremy Bentham: Businessman or “Philanthropist”?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

William C. Bader Jr.
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Extract

Professor Gertrude Himmelfarb, in her stimulating essay, “The Haunted House of Jeremy Bentham,” examines Bentham's projected prison, the Panopticon, in order to reassess prevalent views of Philosophical Radicalism and its founder. She rightly directs attention to the central importance of the Panopticon in Bentham's doctrine, but her interpretation of its significance is, I believe, wide of the mark.

The major object of Ms. Himmelfarb's essay is to note and explain the extraordinary personal involvement—the obsession—of Bentham with this his most cherished project. Bentham not only waged a battle with Parliament stretching across decades to win acceptance of his plan; but, more importantly, he intended that he himself become the first warden of his novel prison. In later years, he still could not reconcile himself to defeat. Ms. Himmelfarb sees in the warden Bentham's alto ego. Bentham's scheme places the warden, the contract manager, at the literal center of the Panopticon. Invisible and apparently omniscient, all power is vested in him without any formal regulatory authority reserved to the government. The contract manager is absolute within his realm. Ms. Himmelfarb concludes that such a striking departure from conventional penal principles indicates a plan tailored to suit the personal needs and wishes of its author. There is “a poetic Tightness' to Bentham's attempt personally to play the part he had written for himself. Even if this touch were lacking, “one would be tempted to assume” psychological identification. However, Ms. Himmelfarb is able to give only one specific meaning to this identification she so rightly intuits: the Panopticon is a design for the unmitigated economic exploitation of an unfortunate few for the pecuniary advantage of society in general and the warden, Jeremy Bentham, in particular.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Fall 1975 , pp. 245 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1975

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References

1 Himmelfarb, Gertrude, “The Haunted House of Jeremy Bentham,” Victorian Minds (New York, 1968), pp. 32–81.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 58.

3 Ibid., p. 45.

4 Ibid., p. 49.

5 Ibid., pp. 46-47.

6 See, for instance, Ms. Himmelfarb's analysis of Bentham's woodcutting scheme, ibid., pp. 64-65.

7 This makes it rather difficult to explain why Bentham busied himself with so many projects which could not possibly contribute to his purse, e.g. codification; or why he did not invest his money in less spectacular but more certain ventures.

8 Ibid., p. 76.

9 Bentham, Jeremy, Works, ed. Bowring, John, 11 vols. (Edinburgh, 1843), IV, 39/1.Google Scholar

10 Bentham, , Works, I: 195–219.Google Scholar

11 Bentham, , Works, IV: 66/1.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 64/1, 65/1. Bentham describes his Letter on Schools as “a sort of jeu d'esprit, which would hardly have presented itself in so light a form, at any other period than at the moment of conception, and under the flow of spirits which the charms of novelty are apt to inspite” (40/1).

13 The Panopticon itself is a place of custody, labor, and disease, “a place where sickness will be found,” hence “an hospital” (Works, IV: 46/2Google Scholar). Much of what Ms. Himmelfarb considered exploitation, Bentham would consider therapy. An interesting example of Benthamite penal therapy can be found in Bentham's, Principles of Penal Law, Works, I: 425–426.Google Scholar

14 Bentham, , Works, IV: 48/1.Google Scholar

15 Ms. Himmelfarb notes the poor house scheme and its magnitude on pp. 74-75, and treats it as merely Panopticon writ large. She also has written a long article on the poor houses alone (“Bentham's Utopia: the National Charity Company,” Journal of British Studies (November, 1970): 80–125)Google Scholar. This summarizes at length the details of the pauper project and, without much analytic elaboration, reiterates the same view. “In principle and in intention…although not in practice, Bentham was as personally involved in the pauper plan as in the prison plan.” The National Charity Company “would be a profitable enterprise,” and thus a continuation of Bentham's real business—profit-making through explitative social engineering (“Bentham's Utopia,” pp. 123-124). Even though noting how the poor houses move beyond the requirements of economic efficiency in shaping the paupers (p. 11 3), Ms. Himmelfarb still seems to find exploitation and profit the essence of the system.

16 Ms. Himmelfarb explains this as an attempt to extend exploitation beyond the nominal period of one's sentence (pp. 56-57). The subsidiary establishment in which such exploitation would take place “looms large over the prison itself,” because it would quickly assume much greater size. Ms. Himmelfarb also cites an unidentified M.P. who envisioned the subsidiary institution as enclosing individuals “‘Of blasted character who, though acquitted for want of legal proof, were thought to be guilty’” (p. 67). This comes very close to the mandate of the poor houses, and provides an additional reason for viewing the Panopticon in the perspective suggested for the poor houses.

l7 Bentham, , Works, IV: 66/2.Google Scholar

18 Bentham, , Works, VIII: p. 395/1Google Scholar. One might contend that Bentham is referring to the various Out-patient' services of the poor houses (e.g. ‘frugality banks,’ ‘superannuation banks,’ ‘widow annuity banks.’ See Works, VIII: 374Google Scholar). I think the explanation following in text is more what he had in mind. Certainly it is the more far-reaching interpretation.

19 Ibid., 395/2.

20 Ibid., 430-439.

21 Ibid., 435 footnote.

22 Ibid., 395/2.

23 Bentham even touches on the possibilities of sex at an early age in a controlled environment (ibid., 425/2).

24 Bentham notes that his Panopticon will have no need of the customary dungeon, used in conventional prisons to confine the obstreperous in solitude and darkness. In the Panopticon, “man is in his dungeon already” (IV: 54/1 ). This is true even with six men in a cell. Bentham's prisoners are isolated even when together (see, e.g., IV: 164). The essence of 1984 is the destruction of human solidarity. In 1984 there are no cells. But “stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage.”

25 Bentham, , Works, X: 27/2.Google Scholar

26 Bentham, , Works, XI: 78/2Google Scholar; Bowring's description.

27 Bentham, , Works, X: 26/1.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., 233/1-2.

29 Himmelbarb, p. 70.

30 Bentham, , Works, I: 212/1; XI: 95.Google Scholar

31 Deontology: or the Science of Morality, a collation of Benthamite fragments published by Bowring in 1834. It is significant, that only here docs one find an argument explicitly linking self-interest with benevolence. Elsewhere there arc assertions of such a link (e.g. Works, I: 56/2Google Scholar), but nothing more.

32 Bentham, Jeremy, Deontology: or the Science of Morality, Bowring, John, ed., 2 vols. (London, 1834), II: 36–42Google Scholar. See also II: 181. For the discerning of approbation as the efficient force of benevolence in Bentham's life and work, I am indebted to Professor Paul Lucas, Clark University. To him is attributable whatever virtue is to be found in the idea. I, of course, am solely responsible for misapplications.

33 Ibid., II: 51, 287.

34 Ibid., II: 175-177, 294-295.

35 Ibid., II 160.

36 Halévy prints a Bentham fragment identifying “power and reputation” as two ‘fictitious posessions’ engendering pleasure in their possessor. See Halévy, Elie, La Formation du Radicalisme Philosophique, 3 vols., (Paris, 1901–1904), III: 406.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., II: 275; see also II: 183, I: 406.

38 Ibid., II: 295.

39 Bentham, , Works, XI: 72/2.Google Scholar