"The Self-Preference Principle: Bentham’s Transition to Epistemological and Democratic Radicalism" - eScholarship

The Self-Preference Principle: Bentham’s Transition to Epistemological and Democratic Radicalism Don Jackson, Algoma University, Sault Ste. Marie, Canada Jackson@algomau.ca Draft, for presentation at ISUS ’08 A longstanding challenge of Bentham scholarship has been to explain when and how when Bentham was radicalized and became a democrat. A long line of Bentham scholars from Halevy through Mack and Burns to Dinwiddy, Rosen and Schofield, have addressed the issue and contributed one way or another to what will eventually be a successful solution. I will not review the history at this time, but in light of Philip Schofield’s recent study of Bentham’s transition to radicalism, Utility and Democracy: the Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham 1 , I will offer a summary of my view of the transition that I hope will be useful. Firstly, however, let me say that Schofield’s book is in many ways an excellent one for which he is to be thanked by all interested in Bentham. It is very scholarly, informative and a pleasurable read. We are also indebted to him for his work as Bentham Project Director and Collected Works General Editor. On several previous occasions I have proposed what I thought was a reasonably coherent solution to the ‘transition’ problem and I am grateful to Philip for acknowledging in his book that my efforts were useful to him, especially on the important notion of “sinister interest”. 2 On the pivotal role of “sinister interest” in his interpretation, Schofield writes in his Preface: “It is the central thesis of this book that in or around 1804 the notion of sinister interest emerged in Bentham’s thought, and had a major impact on his understanding of the political process. It is Philip Schofield, Utility and Democracy: The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford, 2006). Donald Jackson, “From Utility to Pleasure: Bentham’s Transition from Enlightenment to Modern”, unpublished paper presented at the Bentham Seminar, University College London, March 15, 1989, 40pp.; also, “The Importance of Bentham’s Psychological Epistemology in his Theorization of Representative Democracy, unpublished paper presented at the New Zealand Political Science Association Conference, University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ, May 1990; and a revised version at Utilitarianism Revisited, ISUS Conference, New Orleans, March 1997. See also, Schofield, p.viii.

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