Iusnaturalistic resonances in Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism

Abstract

Treatises on Civil and Penal Legislation by Jeremy Bentham had an important influence on legal education within the framework of the utilitarian school that followed the period of Independence in Colombia. The positive local reception of the work had to do with the association between utilitarianism and the modern state, as Bentham’s proposal was thought to embody rational and methodical values that were completely different from the natural law characteristic of the colonial period. However, some of the main postulates of this work, when studied in detail, do not seem to distance radically from the positions of natural law. In this sense, this paper intends to propose that there are more similarities than differences between natural law and the utilitarianism proposed by Bentham through a detailed study of his opposition to the notion of natural rights in two of his most paradigmatic texts.