Word: benthamism
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Divided into four long essays, the book searches for a new understanding of justice in modern society, especially in the context of economic life. Posner begins by discrediting the legacy of classical utilitarianism has bequethed philosophers. Posner believes that Bentham's call for the greatest happiness for the greatest number, a fashionably modern concept, actually opens the way for "moral monstrousness." Citing "the utilitarian's readiness to sacrifice the innocent individual on the altar of social need," Posner presents examples to illustrate the deficiency of any conception of happiness as the ultimate measure of right. Instead, the author suggests economic...
...three, which will cope with Freud, Adler and Jung, is to be the grand synthesis of Kaufmann's philosophy for a new age. (He never says that's what he is about, perhaps for fear of shocking those of us who still cling to such dishonored idols as Hume, Bentham, Locke and Mill, howling about desecrations by infidels from 19th Century Germany...
...course, few stay-at-homes can hope for the kind of instruction that John Stuart Mill got both from his father James, one of the most brilliant men of 19th century England, and from Jeremy Bentham; or that Alexander the Great got from a tutor named Aristotle. But even those who reject Holt's radical solution find it hard to disagree with his view that administrative gobbledygook too often comes between children and their desire to learn. "People have been transmitting knowledge and skills for centuries," notes Holt. "Not everyone does it equally well, but it is an accessible skill...
Collier also put forward a utilitarian plan for spreading overcrowding evenly throughout the houses. He said his program was designed to minimize the "pain factor" and "equalize" the discomfort. Jeremy Bentham would have been proud...
Ervin said he himself had no such present plans. But in a Supreme Court decision last June requiring reporters to testify before grand juries, Justice Byron White dropped a now much-referred-to quotation from Jeremy Bentham: "Were the Prince of Wales, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord High Chancellor to be passing by in the same coach while a chimney sweeper and a barrow-woman were in dispute about a halfpennyworth of apples, and the chimney sweeper or the barrow-woman were to think proper to call upon them for their evidence, could they refuse it? No, most...