On this day in 1832 the radical British philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham died. Though a prolific writer -- the complete works run to thirty-six volumes -- Bentham's most famous connection to literature is as satiric target in Dickens's Hard Times. Dickens shared many of Bentham's enthusiasms, such as prison reform and the guarantee of a minimum wage, but he was horrified by what he took to be the general Utilitarian attitude. Bentham wrote of arriving at "the greatest happiness for the greatest number" through a "felicific calculus" in which pleasure and pain were clearly quantified, and upon which laws could incontestably operate; Dickens wrote of Mr ... FULL STORY »
