NAME:ELYKA GALZOTE DATE:FEB.17.

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SUBJECT:

Principles of Morals and Legislation

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation is a book by the English philosopher
and legal theorist Jeremy Bentham "originally printed in 1780, and first published in
1789."[1] Bentham's "most important theoretical work it is where Bentham develops his theory
of utilitarianism and is the first major book on the topic

In The Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham seeks to determine what a system of laws
would look like if it was constructed on a purely utilitarian basis. To that end, Bentham offers
painstaking analyses of the various kinds of pleasures and pains, the sources of pleasures and
pains, how pleasures and pains should be measured, the morally and legally relevant components
of human actions, the negative consequences of harmful acts, types of behavior that are "unmeet"

The Introduction also contains Bentham's famous discussion of the "felicific (or hedonic)

calculus"--his proposed method for determining which future course of action would produce the
greatest net amount of pleasure over pain. According to Bentham, seven factors should be
considered in weighing the value of a pleasure or pain: its intensity, its duration, its degree of
certainty, its propinquity or remoteness, its fecundity (i.e., its tendency to produce further
pleasures or pains), its purity (i.e., whether it is purely pleasurable or painful, or is mixed with its
opposite), and its extent (i.e., the number of persons to whom it extends

The book contains several of Bentham's most best-known quotations. In Chapter 1, "Of the
Principle of Utility," Bentham describes how actions are motivated by the desire for pleasure and
are right insofar as they create utility or happiness: "Nature has placed mankind under the
governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what
we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do for punishment, and the various classes
of offences.
The twin goals of pleasure are happiness and usefulness. Because we like to be happy and feel
good, it is also useful to do so. Bentham speculates on what qualities of pleasure are important
for devising metrics, including intensity, duration and degree of predictability or certainty
Reference:
https://utilitarianism.fandom.com/wiki/Principles_of_Morals_and_Legislation
https://www.enotes.com/topics/an-introduction-principles-morals-legislationX