Book contents
- Bentham on Democracy, Courts, and Codification
- Bentham on Democracy, Courts, and Codification
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Democracy
- Part II Law and the Courts
- Part III Codification
- 12 Ending at the Beginning
- 13 Bentham’s Constitutional Code and His Pannomion
- 14 Bentham’s Cosmopolitan Constitutionalism
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - Ending at the Beginning
Law and Political Theory in ‘Pannomial Fragments’
from Part III - Codification
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 August 2022
- Bentham on Democracy, Courts, and Codification
- Bentham on Democracy, Courts, and Codification
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Democracy
- Part II Law and the Courts
- Part III Codification
- 12 Ending at the Beginning
- 13 Bentham’s Constitutional Code and His Pannomion
- 14 Bentham’s Cosmopolitan Constitutionalism
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
How does one begin an all-comprehensive code of laws? If you’re Jeremy Bentham, a pretty good start is the famous beginning of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (IPML): ‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne.’1 I suggest that Bentham never managed to improve upon this opening echo of Claude Helvétius’s De l’Esprit2 – nor could he. And this even though he was a very busy man indeed between 1780 – when IPML was printed – and his death in 1832, never losing sight of his grand ambition, and in his last years still ‘codifying like any dragon’.3
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- Information
- Bentham on Democracy, Courts, and Codification , pp. 287 - 314Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022