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Jeremy Bentham's ‘Nonsense upon Stilts’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Philip Schofield
Philip Schofield
Affiliation:
University College Londonp.schofield@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

Jeremy Bentham's ‘Nonsense upon Stilts’, hitherto known as ‘Anarchical Fallacies’, has recently appeared in definitive form in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. The essay contains what is arguably the most influential critique of natural rights, and by extension human rights, ever written. Bentham's fundamental argument was that natural rights lacked any ontological basis, except to the extent that they reflected the personal desires of those propagating them. Moreover, by purporting to have a basis in nature, the language of natural rights gave a veneer of respectability to what, in the case of the French Revolutionaries at least, were at bottom violent and selfish passions. Yet that having been said, Bentham had no objection to the notion of a right which expressed a moral claim founded on the principle of utility. However, the phrase ‘securities against misrule’ better captured what was at stake, and avoided all the ambiguities otherwise associated with the word ‘right’.

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Articles
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Utilitas , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2003 , pp. 1 - 26
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2003

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References

1 For recent commentaries see Twining, W., ‘The Contemporary Significance of Bentham's Anarchical Fallacies’, Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, lxi (1975)Google Scholar; Waldron, J., ed., Nonsense upon Stilts: Bentham, Burke and Marx on the Rights of Man, London, 1987Google Scholar; Lacey, N., ‘Bentham as Proto-Feminist? or An Ahistorical Essay on “Anarchical Fallacies”’, in Current Legal Problems, 1998, vol. 51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Legal Theory at the End of the Millennium, ed. Freeman, M. D. A., Oxford, 1998Google Scholar; and Bedau, H. A.,‘”Anarchical Fallacies”: Bentham's Attack on Human Rights’, Human Rights Quarterly, xxii (2000)Google Scholar.

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16 University College London Library, Bentham Papers, Box cxlvi, fo. 223 (15 November 1795).

17 In the version of ‘Anarchical Fallacies’ which appears in the Bowring edition of Bentham's Works, this material is mistakenly placed at the beginning of the work as a commentary on the Preamble to the Declaration of Rights (see Bowring, , Works, ii. 491)Google Scholar. It is in fact a commentary on a totally different document, namely ‘Rapport fait par M. L'Archevêque de Bordeaux, Au nom du Comité choisi par 1'Assemblée Nationale pour rédiger un Projet de Constitution, dans le Séance du Lundi 27 Juillet 1789’, Proès-verbal de l'Assemblée Nationale, vol. ii, no. 33 (27 07 1789)Google Scholar.

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33 UC cxlvi. 233 (1789).

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37 Ibid., pp. 326–8. Elsewhere Bentham referred to ‘the ambiguous and envenomed can’: see ibid., p. 337.

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39 Ibid., p. 330.

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41 Bentham, , Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), p. 334Google Scholar.

42 Ibid., pp. 338–40.

43 Ibid., pp. 334 f. Bentham attributed the doctrine that ‘Nature has given to each man a right to every thing’ to ‘some of the interpreters of the pretended law of nature’ (see ibid., p. 332). The view was famously expressed by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, pt. 1, ch. 14, [64], but similar views were formulated by Hugo Grotius, Benedict de Spinoza, and Samuel Pufendorf.

44 Bentham, , Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), pp. 335 fGoogle Scholar.

45 Ibid., pp. 336 f.

46 Ibid., pp. 337 f.

47 Ibid., p. 341.

48 Ibid., pp. 349–51. Bentham identified the same dilemma in Article 11: see ibid., pp. 361 f.

49 Ibid., pp. 398–400.

50 UC cviii. 108 (1795).

51 The first‘French disease’ was, of course, syphilis.

52 Bentham, , Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), p. 400Google Scholar.

53 See ibid., pp. 193–203.

54 UC clxx. 48 (1789).

55 Bentham, , Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), pp. 351 fGoogle Scholar.

56 Bentham, , Securities against Misrule and other Constitutional Writings for Tripoli and Greece ed. Schofield, P., Oxford, 1990 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), pp. 74–8Google Scholar.

57 Ibid., pp. 76 f.n.

58 Ibid., pp. 23 f.n.

59 Ibid., p. 24n.

60 Bentham, , Rights, Representation, and Reform (CW), p. 324Google Scholar.

61 See Twining, , ‘Contemporary Significance of Bentham's Anarchical Fallacies’, 329Google Scholar: ‘if the validity of a law is judged by conformity to some purported statement of Natural Law or Natural Rights, then the distinction between law as it is and law as it ought to be is rejected. When this happens the door is opened to two lines of fallacious argument, one justifying anarchy, the other extreme conservatism. For the anarchist argues: “This is bad, therefore it is not a (valid) law, therefore I have no duty to obey it”. The reactionary argues: “This is a (valid) law, therefore it is good, therefore it is immune from criticism”.’

62 The principle of sympathy and antipathy was a subjective standard, opposed to the principle of utility which was based on the existence of certain matters of fact, namely feelings of pain and pleasure experienced by sentient beings: see Bentham, , An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1970 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), pp. 17–33Google Scholar.

63 UC lxix. 102 (c. 1776).

64 UC lxix. 6–7 (c. 1776).

65 UC lix. 84–5 (19 May 1805).

66 UC lxix. 106 (c. 1776).