Jeremy Bentham
A radical thinker who argued that the best society is the one that creates the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
1748–1832 (age 84)·English philosopher and jurist·Birthday: February 15
Biography
Jeremy Bentham was a restless intellectual force whose ideas quietly reshaped the modern world. Rejecting the abstract philosophies of his time, he proposed a starkly simple moral principle: utility. An action was right, he argued, if it promoted pleasure and wrong if it produced pain. This philosophy of utilitarianism became a wrecking ball aimed at tradition. He applied it with relentless logic to law, prisons, and government, advocating for rational reform wherever he saw suffering or inefficiency. A champion of individual liberty and freedom of expression, he was also a deeply eccentric figure, who designed a circular prison called the Panopticon and left instructions for his body to be publicly dissected and preserved as an 'auto-icon'. His preserved skeleton, dressed in his clothes, still sits in a glass case at University College London, a silent sentinel for the power of reason over sentiment.
#1 When Jeremy Was Born
The biggest hits of 1748
Jeremy's Life & Times
The world at every milestone
1748Born
1753Started school
1761Became a teenager
1764Could drive
1766Could vote
1769Turned 21
1778Turned 30
1788Turned 40
1798Turned 50
1808Turned 60
1818Turned 70
1828Turned 80
1832Died at 84
Key Achievements
- He founded the philosophical doctrine of utilitarianism, articulated in his 1789 work 'An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation'.
- He was a leading advocate for the reform of the British legal and penal systems, influencing the 1832 Reform Act.
- He conceptualized the Panopticon, a circular prison design intended to allow efficient surveillance of inmates.
- He was a founding inspiration for University College London, the first English university to admit students regardless of religion.
Did You Know?
His auto-icon—his preserved skeleton dressed in his clothes and topped with a wax head—is on public display at UCL.
He left his estate to UCL on the condition that his auto-icon be present at all board meetings; it is listed as 'present but not voting'.
He advocated for animal rights, arguing that the capacity to suffer, not the ability to reason, should grant a being moral consideration.
He coined the word 'international'.
“The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.”
