What philosopher’s dead body is on display in a glass case at the University of College London?
Subject: Utilitarianism - Bentham’s Auto-Icon and Hedonic Calculus
Event: Death of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, 1832
It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong. -Jeremy Bentham
On this day in 1832, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham died at the age of 84-years-old. What makes Bentham’s death somewhat more memorable than his birth is the unconventional directions he left in his will regarding what he wanted done with his body. Rather than a traditional burial, Bentham requested that his body be dissected for the benefit of medical science. Furthermore, he asked that his skeleton and mummified head be dressed and placed on display.
Image by 35069 from Pixabay
Bentham’s directions were followed; unfortunately, the process of mummifying his head did not go well, leaving his face discolored and distorted. Because of this, his head was replaced with one fashioned out of wax. The term Betham used for display of his posthumous remains was “auto-icon”: instead of the traditional statue, he wanted his actual body to be its own icon. Today, visitors to the University of College London can find Bentham on display in a glass case. He is sitting in a chair, wearing a hat and holding his favorite walking cane. His mummified head, however, is not on display; it is stored out of public view in a wooden box (1).
More important than Bentham’s body are the ideas he promoted about how people should live their lives and behave ethically. More than any other philosopher, Bentham is known for his utilitarianism, the idea that we should determine what is right based on whatever will produce the most happiness for the most people. As a legal and political reformer, Bentham's goal was to apply utilitarianism to improve not just his own life, but the lives of all of society.
To this end Bentham systematized utilitarianism into a kind of science of happiness, a method he called the Hedonic -- or Felicific -- Calculus. Seven factors were included in his formula for calculating happiness: intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity (or how soon pleasure would happen), fecundity (or how likely the pleasure produce is likely to produce additional pleasures), purity (or how much pain is mixed with the pleasure), and extend (or the number of people impacted by the pleasure). By assigning a number to each factor, say on a scale of 1 to 10, we can attempt to quantify how much pleasure will be produced by a particular action. The total then is the happiness value of that action; Bentham’s term for this was “utility,” meaning usefulness. The central tenet of utilitarianism is that the more pleasure an action produces the more useful that action is to society (2).
Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: What are the seven factors that make up Bentham’s formula for happiness?
Challenge - Quantifying Your Quality Time : Compare two of your favorite pastimes by calculating the pleasure produced by each. Judge each pastime by assigning a number between 1 to 10 to each of the seven factors. After you have made your calculations, compare the two numbers (each out of 70 possible) and write a brief explanation of how the two numbers compare to your feelings about each pastime.
ALSO ON THIS DAY:
June 6, 1944: Today is the anniversary of the largest invasion in history as the Allied armies assaulted the beaches of Normandy, France with 133,000 soldiers from England, Canada, and the United States. The war in Europe would not end until nearly one year after D-Day, but without a successful invasion on June sixth, the progress of the war and the final outcome certainly would have been different.
Sources:
1-Duignan, Brian. “What Is Jeremy Bentham’s “Auto-Icon”?”
https://www.britannica.com/story/what-is-jeremy-benthams-auto-icon
2-Warburton, Nigel. A Little History of Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011: 119-125.
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