The Utility of Pleasures and Pains and Its Meaning of Moral Education in Jeremy Bentham

Abstract

This paper aims to study Bentham’s utility and its meaning of moral education. To compute pleasures and pains in Bentham is not a simple calculation. As seen in this paper, his concern of pleasures and pains is toward the community based on the pursuit of happiness by a private individual. For the greatest happiness, he does not have to have the excessive interest in the community, because of the simple feature that the community consists of private individuals and each action in their lives is under the nature of the production of pleasure and of the avoidance of pain. The key to complete Bentham’s plan in IPML is to get the conception of the art of ethics. In Bentham, ethics is the art of directing men’s actions to produce the greatest happiness. Important in his definition is that he distinguishes it into two sections: private and legislation. He recognizes private sections that do not have to be intervened by legislation. A private individual has to control a motive and actions of self-regarding in the course of expressing his duty to himself for his neighbors. The action of the individual is not necessary to be the same of legislation, while the art of legislation is always to control happiness in the results of their performances. That is the art of ethics. More important, subsequently, is the art of moral education. In Bentham, the moral part of education is to cultivate a lot of affections. In fact, he emphasizes the importance of considering a motive as the springs of actions in calculating pleasures and pains. In his view, different actions have the same motive, so that the greatest happiness can be controlled from the beginning of the actions. Therefore, the art of moral education is to deal with a motive in terms of its expected pleasures and pains, in the process of performing an individual’s duty to himself, that is, of expressing his duty toward his neighbors. This paper would utilize his scheme of the art of moral education by drawing a questionnaire in the areas of moral sensitivity, judgement, motivation and practice.