Jeremy Bentham · Philosophy
Bentham’s ferocious rejection of ‘natural’ and ‘imprescriptible’ rights as a fiction, and his demand that law be judged not by its pedigree or its reverence for tradition but strictly by its effects on human happiness.
You learned that Bentham denied there are any rights prior to law: rights are ‘the child of law,’ created by the sovereign and justified by utility, and appeals to natural or imprescriptible rights are, in his phrase, ‘nonsense upon stilts.’ Explain his positivist view of rights, his quarrel wi…
Leads to William Blackstone.
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