Key Quotes from Bentham essay

Question 1

Chapter 1

Answer 1

Mill endorses Bentham and Coleridge as “the two great seminal minds of England in their age”.
“Bentham was a Progressive philosopher, Coleridge a Conservative one.”

Question 2

Chapter 2

Answer 2

“the questioner of things established”
“a negative philosopher”
“It was not his opinions (…) but his method, that constituted the novelty and the value of what he did”
“he was not a great philosopher, but a great reformer in philosophy.”

Question 3

Chapter 3

Answer 3

“the exhaustive method, is as old as philosophy itself”
“Bentham failed in deriving light from other minds”
“security for accuracy, but not for comprehensiveness.”
Bentham has a “boyish fancy” and “deficiency of imagination”
“He had never been made alive to the unseen influences which were acting on himself.”

Question 4

Chapter 4

Answer 4

Man is conceived as “a being susceptible of pleasures and pains.”
“Man is never recognised by him as a being capable of pursuing spiritual perfection as an end”
“Man, that most complex being, is a very simple one in his eyes.”
“A philosophy of law and institutions, not founded on a philosophy of national character, is an absurdity.”

Question 5

Chapter 5

Answer 5

“He found the philosophy of law a chaos and left it a science.”

“Law is a matter of business, means and ends are things to be considered in it, not abstractions.”