Bentham's Metaphysics and the Science of Divinity

1986 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-411
Author(s):  
James E. Crimmins
Keyword(s):  
Physical Science ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Full Description ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
New Science ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Critique Of Religion

The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) has long been recognized as an exponent of a new science of society. However, scholars of his thought have given scant attention to at least one important aspect of that science: the relationship between the metaphysical presuppositions of his social science and his view on religion. Rarely is it considered that Bentham's aspiration to create a science of society in emulation of physical science was fundamental to his critique of religion just as it was to all other areas of his thought. This critique of religion was set out principally in a series of works written between the years 1809 and 1823. Swear Not at All was published in 1817, and followed a year later, after earlier efforts were aborted in 1809 and 1813, by Church-of-Englandism and its Catechism Examined. The Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind appeared in 1822 and Not Paul, but Jesus in 1823. It was not merely a coincidence that in the very period when Bentham devoted so much of his time to religion his work on metaphysics and logic substantially reached fruition. The “Book on Logic,” on which Bentham worked at intervals between 1811 and 1821, was intended to give a full description of his “method.” The work was never completed but was eventually edited and included in several fragments in John Bowring's edition of The Works of Jeremy Bentham. The essay on “Nomography” with an appendix on “Logical Arrangements, or Instruments of Invention and Discovery Employed by Jeremy Bentham” is included in the third volume, and in the eighth volume is to be found the “Essay on Logic,” “A Fragment on Ontology,” the “Essay on Language,” and the “Fragments on Universal Grammar.” The metaphysics described in these essays by Bentham was initially developed by him during the formative years of his intellectual life in the early 1770s, and he was always aware of its particular consequences in the field of religion.

Music and Civic Space: The Political Harp

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Dennard
Keyword(s):  
Public Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Irish Society ◽  
University College ◽  
Direct Outcome ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Civic Space

In Irish culture, the Celtic Harp is a metaphor for human struggle, freedom and intellectual life and, as such, is inextricably bound to politics. Separating Irish society from its politics, the birth of its government and music is simply not possible. Having a conference on Music and Civic Space in Ireland made a kind of sense in this way. In May 2005, an interdisciplinary group of international scholars were invited to University College Cork by the Department of Government to discuss the relationship between music and governance and, in particular, music’s role in creating public culture. The symposium offered here to the readers of Public Voices is a product and a direct outcome of the conference.

All His Father’s Sins

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Parting Ways ◽  
The Church ◽  
Critique Of Religion

This chapter explores the life and thought of John Stuart Mill’s father, James Mill. It seeks to unravel his journey from pursuing the calling of an ordained Christian minister in the Church of Scotland to parting ways with the Christian faith altogether. It will also seek to understand James Mill’s mature critique of religion, as well as that of his friend the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the author of several works critical of traditional Christianity. The unhappy marriage of John Stuart Mill’s parents is presented as a vital background for understanding his future choices and convictions. The Christian identity of his mother and siblings are also presented.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Performance Culture ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Poetic Texts ◽  
The Relationship

This volume addresses issues central to the study of ancient Greek performance culture: the role played by music in performed poetry; the ancients’ understanding of the relationship between music, poetry, and performance; and music’s relation to other areas of ancient intellectual life. This chapter comprises a brief discussion of the evidential difficulties involved in attempting to appreciate the effects created by ancient Greek music in conjunction with poetic texts. Some contemporary methodological approaches are canvassed as aids to this attempt, and an overview is provided of the chapters that make up the volume.

Migrant Labour and Their “Capitalist Compatriots”: Towards a History of Ethnic Capitalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-194
Author(s):  
Andonis Piperoglou
Keyword(s):  
Small Business ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Migrant Labour ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Petite Bourgeoisie ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between migration and Australian capitalism has long been a topic of robust scholarly debate in sociology and economics. Researchers in those fields have highlighted how migration has left an indelible imprint on Australian capitalism. By contrast, Australian migration histories have given scant attention to the role ethnic groups played in Australian capitalism. This lack of attention is particularly curious in historical studies of Greek Australia given the significance of small business in facilitating migration and settlement. From Federation onwards, Greek ethnic capitalism - or, more precisely, the relations between Greek migrant labourers and their petite bourgeoisie employers - became a topic of media coverage. In fact, the relations between Greek workers and employers were so important that newspapers routinely reported on the subject. This article examines this media coverage, its racialist and criminalising connotations, and historical relevance. It concludes with some observations on how histories of capitalism can productively engage with the histories of ethnicisation.

Historical Mindedness and the World at Large: E. A. Freeman as Public Intellectual

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. S. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Important Thing ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Controversy ◽  
The Relationship

E. A. Freeman is best remembered as an historian, but he was also an extensive contributor to the ‘higher journalism’ of the mid-Victorian period. Yet his prolific journalistic output has never attracted sustained attention from historians. This essay analyses the relationship between Freeman’s historical work and his journalism in order to explore his place in Victorian intellectual life. It asks how far his journalism was reliant upon an authority derived from his distinction as an historian. While Freeman drew rather promiscuously on a number of analytically distinct ways of understanding the relationship between history and politics, he responded to accusations of ‘antiquarianism’ and ‘historical-mindedness’ by clarifying what he saw as the role of the historian in public life. Since history, he thought, would inevitably be deployed in political controversy, the important thing was that historical error should be expunged in order to clarify political issues.

‘Take Down Mezuzahs, Remove Name-Plates’: The Emigration of Objects from Germany to Palestine

Jewishness ◽  
2008 ◽  
pp. 133-150
Author(s):  
Joachim Schlör
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Private Property ◽  
German Society ◽  
Good Time ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Individual Memory ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter evaluates the meaning of objects inventoried and packed as emigrants prepared to leave Germany for Palestine after Adolf Hitler came to power. Private property has, for both the individual memory and the collective memory, a deep emotional significance. The exclusion of the Jews from German society started with the National Socialist policy of ‘Aryanization’, the expropriation of property. Many y émigrés had to abandon, to leave behind, their private dwellings. In the process, they lost more than the object itself. Around 1800, the British philosopher and legal theoretician Jeremy Bentham drew attention to the importance of the relationship between an object and its owner: ownership forms the basis of a hope. Thus, the threat of losing property is symbolic of the loss of all hope of a continued life in Germany and as a German. Ultimately, Aryanization and confiscation were a symbolic theft of identity. And in these cases, even the legal system was no longer capable of protecting property rights. Those who emigrated in good time were able to take at least some of their property with them.

Jews in Lithuania between the Two World Wars

2013 ◽  
pp. 253-273
Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky
Keyword(s):  
Land Reform ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
World War ◽  
Farming Community ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Town ◽  
First World

This chapter addresses the position of Jews in Lithuania between the two world wars. Although the history of inter-war Lithuania reveals many political failures, it is clear that, even during the authoritarian period, civil society continued to develop. Illiteracy was largely eradicated and impressive advances were made in social and intellectual life. In addition, land reform created a prosperous farming community whose products made up the bulk of the country's exports. The first years of Lithuanian independence were marked by a far-reaching experiment in Jewish autonomy. The experiment attracted wide attention across the Jewish world and was taken as a model by some Jewish politicians in Poland. Jewish autonomy also seemed to be in the interests of Lithuanians. The bulk of the Lithuanian lands remained largely agricultural until the First World War. Relations between Jews, who were the principal intermediaries between the town and manor and the countryside, and the mainly peasant Lithuanians took the form of a hostile symbiosis. This relationship was largely peaceful, and anti-Jewish violence was rare, although, as elsewhere, the relationship was marked by mutual contempt.

Utility and Justice: Epicurus and the Epicurean Tradition

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 93-107
Author(s):  
F. Rosen
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Pierre Gassendi ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores the relationship between utility and justice in the ancient Epicurean tradition, and as it developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries following the revival of Epicureanism in the writings of Pierre Gassendi. It focuses on the significance of various allusions to a line from Horace, ‘utilitas, justi prope mater et aequi’ (utility, the mother of justice and equity), which appeared in writings of Hugo Grotius, David Hume, and Jeremy Bentham, and was used to give utility a prominence in modern hought that it had not hitherto received. The article attempts to provide the context for Hume’s belief in the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals that the foundation of justice was utility and for Bentham placing utility at the foundation of his system.

The Is-Ought Problem, the Open Question Argument, and the new science of morality

Human Affairs ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Radim Bělohrad
Keyword(s):  
New Science ◽  
Open Question Argument ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Is Ought Problem ◽  
Recent Attack

AbstractThe article deals with a recent attack by Sam Harris on two famous arguments that purport to establish a gap between factual and evaluative statements—Hume’s Is-Ought Problem and Moore’s Open Question Argument. I present the arguments, analyze the relationship between them and critically assess Harris’ attempt to refute them. I conclude that Harris’ attempt fails.

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