Research About Bentham’s Utilitarianism Theory Of Rights

As a liberal bourgeoisie jurist, Bentham made distinguished contribution to the development of Western intellectual history by establishing a scientific theoretical system called Utilitarianism or Benthamism which conformed to the current times. Under the guidance of Utilitarianism, Bentham reinterpreted rights in terms of positivism. He by no means approved those Enlightenment thinkers who elaborated rights in a metaphysical way. In Bentham’s point of view, rights should be treated in an analytical and empirical way, and should be described objectively with precise words in defining its concept. Based on this, Bentham believed that the right should be understood in a context of practical interests, i.e. the essence of rights is interests. This is the foundation of Bentham’s interpretation for rights----the Interest Theory of rights. Interests make the utilitarian calculation of rights possible, and make a perfect match of Utilitarianism principles with the concept of rights, to highlight the core of Utilitarianism Theory, namely the right is the interest under the protection of laws.In the past two hundred years, Bentham’s Utilitarianism Theory of rights had cast profound influence on human society, not only making great contribution in promoting social justice, but also sublimating the protection of individual rights to a new height.Besides the introduction and epilogue, this paper will discuss Bentham’s Utilitarianism Theory of rights from the following three parts:The first part introduces the origin of Utilitarianism Theory, and this part is divided into two small parts. The previous part describes the historical background to help getting a clear picture of the formation of the ideology which is inextricably linked to the characteristics of the times. The second part explains the domestic and international background of Bentham’s time. On this basis, it puts forward the theoretical foundation of Bentham’s Right Theory:the greatest happiness principle of the majority of people, the principle of treating everyone’s benefit equally and the principle of the consistency of individual interests and public interests.Section Two is a core part of this paper, and the author would discuss the formation of Bentham utilitarian’s rights theory. Bentham did not directly address the theory of rights in his writings; instead, he drew the outline of template of utilitarianism’s rights theory and improved it by continuously criticizing the natural rights theory. Therefore, this section emphasizes on Bentham’s criticism pattern and content of the natural rights theory, including terms and moral criticism of the concepts of rights in natural law context.The third part is the main content of Bentham’s utilitarian theory which is also the core of this paper. The author discusses it from three aspects:first, it introduces Bentham’s analysis of the concept of rights under the context of utilitarianism. He believes, in terms of positivism, that the right comes from laws, rights are in fact same with legal rights, and a non-legal right itself is a self-contradictory concept. Second, it describes Bentham’s classification of rights. Bentham’s interpretation of rights began with the classification of rights. He made a clear distinction on rights which attached innovative significance in classification methods which exerted a great influence on understanding and classifying rights of later people. Bentham classified rights in aspects of the source, object, content, interests, decomposition and transferability, and absorbed the rights language and the rights phenomena into scientific analysis. The last part discusses the relationship between the twin concepts of rights and obligations. The relationship between rights and obligations, as the basic category of law, is of great significance in Bentham’s utilitarian theory of rights. The author discusses its priority and correlation.The fourth part presents the evaluation of the Right Theory. Scholars have mixed evaluation on the Right Theory. Some scholars think that Bentham, who represents the liberal bourgeoisie, ignores the class nature of the law, and over-praises the egoism to safeguard the interests of the bourgeoisie with legitimacy of its. Some others think that Bentham’s study on rights makes rights return to law level, exploring the actual right and how to enjoy the right in people’s social life, which enhances people’s self-protection awareness on rights and promotes people’s consciousness if rights.