Jeremy Bentham: Biography and intellectual biography

Abstract

The article examines Bentham's writings and activities during the period 1788 to 1803, when much of his energy was devoted to the unsuccessful Panopticon prison project. Focusing on the varied strategies pursued by Bentham to secure public notice for his legislative programme, the discussion emphasizes how far in his writings he had moved from the central core of his legislative theory by the first years of the nineteenth century. This perspective, in turn, clarifies the critical importance to Bentham's later career of the successful reception of Etienne Dumont's redaction of the Benthamite legislative science in the 1802 Traités de législation.