Author : Jeremy Bentham
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781911576129
Total Pages : 646 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (761 download)
Book Synopsis The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham by : Jeremy Bentham
Download or read book The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham written by Jeremy Bentham and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first five volumes of the Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham contain over 1,300 letters written both to and from Bentham over a 50-year period, beginning in 1752 (aged three) with his earliest surviving letter to his grandmother, and ending in 1797 with correspondence concerning his attempts to set up a national scheme for the provision of poor relief. Against the background of the debates on the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789, to which he made significant contributions, Bentham worked first on producing a complete penal code, which involved him in detailed explorations of fundamental legal ideas, and then on his panopticon prison scheme. Despite developing a host of original and ground-breaking ideas, contained in a mass of manuscripts, he published little during these years, and remained, at the close of this period, a relatively obscure individual. Nevertheless, these volumes reveal how the foundations were laid for the remarkable rise of Benthamite utilitarianism in the early nineteenth century. The letters in this volume document Bentham's meeting and friendship with the Earl of Shelburne (later the Marquis of Lansdowne), which opened a whole new set of opportunities for him, as well as his extraordinary journey, by way of the Mediterranean, to visit his brother Samuel in Russia.