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Jeremy Bentham

utilitarian reformer

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Black-and-white head-and-shoulders photograph of John Stuart Mill facing forward, with a high forehead and long side whiskers.

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Immanuel Kant

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Jeremy Bentham, relief by David d'Angers, photographed by Eck et Durand.Image: Jeremy Bentham MET 268348 · David d'Angers / Eck et Durand. CC0. Modified: Locally auto-oriented, metadata-stripped, resized without enlargement to at most 720px wide, and encoded as WebP quality 82. Wikimedia Commons record, reviewed revision 1163195363.

Featured thinker

Jeremy Bentham

utilitarian reformer

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Why this person matters here

utilitarian reformer

Bentham gives students a way to map consequences and test welfare claims in institutional AI decisions.

Passage records: ch10-p0007, ch10-p0028, ch10-p0029

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Author: Jeremy Bentham
Locator: Chapter I, section 1
Edition or translation: 1907 reprint of Bentham's corrected 1823 edition

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.

Primary text for utility and the felicific calculus.

Text rights: Public-domain text; the linked Econlib edition identifies the text as public domain.

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Jeremy Bentham

John Stuart Mill

Immanuel Kant