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In Praise of Vision: Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism

Sometimes a good book makes you happier more than a million dreams of heavenly pleasures one may dream about. But reading is a difficult habit which seldom interests you and once you find the music in books no other imagined pleasure would seem to be perpetual enough to replace the bliss of reading. I learnt from a textual journey of Jacques Derrida, to whom I admire immensely for his sheer brilliance, which I perceive in his magnum opus, Of Grammatology. Derrida taught me how not to read a text; reading with love and reading with suscipicion travel around through two extreme poles. It is only after a reading with the critical intimacy a text becomes a leader to guide in a dark and unguided path to explore. 

Today, I got to know about Jeremy Bentham a little bit, because narratives and headnote knowledge are more obnoxious than ignorance, though frankly admitting, I am still away from his masterpiece, Principles of Morals and Legislation. While reading Karl Polanayi, The Great Transformation, I felt a deep-rooted connection with Jeremy Bentham. What is the most unbelievable part of his journey is to know about a person who left the influence for today's world which can never be erased from our behaviours and memory. As a master of utilitarianism he appears to me more than a political philosopher, or a social reformer. Utilitarianism was a vision of seeing the world with a fresh and unique perspective. Bentham was more than an economist, philosopher, and jurist. He was a man of the century, and his ideas are practiced everywhere since his life time to our age. We are not aware about them that from where really it did come from. He had a pervasive sense of disgust with natural law and natural rights philosophies. He once remarked, "natural law is a nonsense talk". He was also not a fan of egalitarianism, which the Marxist critiques adopted and invented with the zeal and conviction,   rather he was in love with laissez faire state. As an empiricist he liked sciences and social sciences more than metaphysics, particularly he was influenced with the associational psychology. Pleasure and pain principle was associated with the idea that every human being wants to maximize pleasures at the cost of minimizing pains. And the sole driving force of the human's action is reward and punishment. In a way, Bentham was a pragmatist who did all the reforms single-handedly and established the foundation of modern lives of polity, economic behaviors, education, health, property regulations, etc.

Bentham was severely criticised by many a thinkers our age. Particularly his concept of "panopticism" was the paradigmatic shift in understanding the nature of power. Michel Fouacult raised this question in his masterpiece, Discipline and Punish". In our time power is invisible, scattered, but penetrative and disciplinary. Bentham was also a defender of free market. He also advocated for the National Charity Company and Industry-houses to look after the poverty of the factory labourers. But he was equally wary about the certain pro-poor policies, and its pervasive impact over the industry, particularly, the poor laws of England, which were enacted to pay the outdoor reliefs to the labourers and other grants-in-aid, to promote the quintessential right to life, which were affecting the smooth functions of the industry. In spite of all sharp criticisms, I won't seem to be absurd enough to say that Jeremy Bentham was the visionary reformer who avoided the inclination of becoming an expert over far-sightedness . His life-long works are entirely inspirational which cannot erased from the societal-pysche.

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