GRGR (15): Good & Evil: Utilitarianism

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

Terrance schrieb:

> Bentham claimed that pleasure and pain are our sovereign
> masters and he introduced what he called the principle of
> utility. This is what I meant Paul, when I said Pleasure and
> Pain are philosophical notions and happiness, that mother of
> all philosophical notions surely needs to be account for as
> well. Bentham's principle of utility can be summarized as:
>
>  "every action should be judged right or wrong according to
> how far it tends to promote or damage the happiness of the
> community." 
> And 
> "the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the
> measure of right and wrong"
>
> Bentham thought that human were, at least, in part,
> motivated by the desire to obtain certain pleasures and to
> avoid certain pains. He believed in his idea so strongly,
> that he even went so far as to
> suggest that legislators should regulate the ways in which
> individuals sought their own happiness.
>
> Sounds great right?
>
> And how did Bentham think this could be accomplished? Well,
> howabout a little S&M? Not exactly, but howabout a little
> dominance and submission? Well, what he thought was that
> punishment and reward were to be the means by which the
> legislator could control the people's pursuit of happiness.
> Of course, like all Control the people and make the happy
> sort of guys, he preferred the sticks to the carrots. So by
> exacting the threat of and the very real pain of social
> punishment the masses would be motivated to be happy and
> abstain from certain behaviors deemed to be harmful to
> themselves and the state. Sounds rather frightening to my
> paranoid sentiments bent over awaiting the whip of life,
> liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, but at
> least, I think, I should have been permitted to read Dickens
> in the Panopticon penitentiary.
> In the penitentiary: 
>
>
> "The jailer in his central lodge would be able to see into
> each of the prisoner's cells,  but screens and lighting
> would be so arranged that he himself could not be seen by 
> them...so they would all have the impression of an invisible
> omnipresence."


  A still instructive analysis of Bentham's Panopticon and its socio-historical 
  significance can be found in chapter III. 3. of Michel Foucault's "Surveiller 
  et punir. La naissance de la prison" [1975].
                                                     KFL