Jeremy Bentham Quotes on Virtue
Bentham's treatment of virtue is uncompromisingly instrumentalist: the cardinal virtues — prudence, benevolence, probity, and the rest — are valuable just to the extent that they reliably produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and have no value at all where they fail to do so. The framework, articulated across the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) and the Deontology assembled posthumously by John Bowring (1834), rejects the Aristotelian and Christian traditions' treatment of the virtues as intrinsic perfections of human character and reframes them as habituated dispositions whose moral credentials are entirely a matter of their consequences. The Deontology's reception was muted even within utilitarian circles.
Quotes
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Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:
“It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”
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Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:
“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.”
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Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:
“The question is not, can they reason? nor, can they talk? but, can they suffer?”
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Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:
“The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”
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Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:
“Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.”
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“It is the principle of antipathy which leads us to speak of offences as deserving punishment. It is the corresponding principle of sympathy which leads us to speak of certain actions as meriting reward. This word merit can only lead to passion and error. It is effects good or bad which we ought alone to consider.”
MSS 29, 32, University College Collection