>>>>The American Revolution was one of the great political acts of the Enlightenment
period, and the Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4 of 1776 was the definitive
statement of the revolution's ideology: a synthesis of Lockean natural rights, of republicanism,
of English constitutionalism. The Declaration of Independence as an ideological statement
of the values of the rebels, evoked a strong response in the mother country. And one of
the strongest and most elaborate rebuttals to the Declaration of Independence was published
by a man named John Lind, and it contained a lengthy rebuttal some hundred pages detailing,
point by point, why the colonists' list of grievances against the British crown were
absurd and baseless. At the end of this rebuttal to the Declaration of Independence, there
was a short article that was in fact written by a man named Jeremy Bentham. Then very young
man, and it was a sort of appendix, a further note rebutting the Declaration, just a few
pages. And these few pages are devoted to the preamble, and in fact they come at the
end of this pamphlet rebutting the Declaration giving a British point of view of the colonists
and their rebellion. And in this, Jeremy Bentham addresses himself to the preamble and in fact,
he says that the preamble he's only dealing with now and shortly because the preamble
is hardly worth noticing. Now there's something ironic to that, because today it's virtually
the only part of the Declaration that anyone has memorized or that is easily recognized.
Nobody remembers the grievances against the Crown and all remember the ringing words of
the preamble, that declare rights endowed by their Creator, pursuit of happiness, these
are the famous phrases of the Declaration. But this rebuttal says this is hardly worth
noticing at all and it says the political thoughts of these modern Americans are no
more worth noticing than the thoughts of their ancestors on witchcraft, talking about the
Salem witch trials. He said they're both absurd and equally worthy of our taking seriously,
but he says, they're both as nefarious and harmful. Jeremy Bentham, claiming that the
ideas embodied in the preamble of the Declaration are absurd and hardly worth noticing, because
he would come to be the primary exponent of a new philosophical system what he would give
the name of utilitarian. Utilitarianism: one of the most important offspring of the Enlightenment.
A way of thinking about the nature of law and justice that is systematized by Jeremy
Bentham and it's no accident that he looks at the Declaration of Independence and places
very little value in it's ideas of natural rights. Bentham would claim that rights are
nonsense on stilts, and all throughout his career he would maintain this, that rights
are lofty language for nonsense. He would place no value in the idea of republicanism,
in the idea of a constitutional order that was rooted in legal tradition. Jeremy Bentham
would articulate a political philosophy that was to be based on the cool rational calculation
of utility. What is the greatest good, what act or rule will create the greatest happiness
for the greatest number? And so there's something symbolic about the opposition of Bentham to
the ideas of the Declaration, because the Declaration embodies a certain set of Enlightenment
trends. But Bentham's philosophy would give voice to a different synthesis, a different
formulation of Enlightenment ideas. A further irony is that Bentham in his rebuttal, arrogantly
claimed: "It is one thing to declare independence and another to make it happen" and he predicts
that shortly the American rebels will be subdued and brought back under the rule of the British
crown. In that he was wrong, but his philosophy of utilitarianism would prove hugely influential
as a species of Enlightenment thought that straddles the 18th-century Enlightenment,
that embodies many of its most fundamental problems, and that at the same time begins
to point towards a new age. The age of capitalism, the age of markets, and so over these next
few lessons we explore the historical roots of utilitarianism and its destiny as a system
of thinking about law and justice.