Short Biography of Jeremy Bentham – Jeremy Bentham was popularly known as “Man of Reforms”. Born in 1748, he led a life of Child Prodigy.
He studied Latin at the age of three and enrolled in the Oxford University at the age of twelve, where he received his under-graduate degree at the age of sixteen. He studied law at Lincoln’s Inn, Westminster, and was called to bar in 1772.
Instead of practicing the law, he decided to work out a system of jurisprudence, and to codify and reform both civil and penal law. He spent his life analyzing the existing law and suggesting ways for its improvement. So he is aptly known as English utilitarian philosopher, Jurist, social and legal reformer.
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During 1776 Bentham brought out his first major work, A Fragment on Government.
But his most important theoretical work is the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), in which he propounded the principle of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”. Bentham made important contributions in the fields of ethics, law and political thought.
He designed a modern prison (panoptical) which Parliament though committed to construct, didn’t. But after his death many prisons were build on his design.
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He argued in favour of individual and economic freedom, including the separation of Church and State, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, animal rights, the end of slavery, the abolition of physical punishment (including that of children), the right to divorce, free trade, and in defence of usury and homosexuality.
He supported inheritance tax, restrictions on monopoly power, pensions, and health insurance. He died in 1832.