Jeremy Bentham's ‘Nonsense upon Stilts’

Philip Schofield

Utilitas, 2003, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-26

Abstract: Jeremy Bentham's ‘Nonsense upon Stilts’, hitherto known as ‘Anarchical Fallacies’, has recently appeared in definitive form in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. The essay contains what is arguably the most influential critique of natural rights, and by extension human rights, ever written. Bentham's fundamental argument was that natural rights lacked any ontological basis, except to the extent that they reflected the personal desires of those propagating them. Moreover, by purporting to have a basis in nature, the language of natural rights gave a veneer of respectability to what, in the case of the French Revolutionaries at least, were at bottom violent and selfish passions. Yet that having been said, Bentham had no objection to the notion of a right which expressed a moral claim founded on the principle of utility. However, the phrase ‘securities against misrule’ better captured what was at stake, and avoided all the ambiguities otherwise associated with the word ‘right’.

Date: 2003
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