An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Area 12 – Scienze giuridiche

A century had passed since the Glorious Revolution when Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) published the first edition of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789). He sought to encapsulate in the juridical field the reform needs that were coming from England and the rest of Europe: a moral science which would allow the legislator to make his choices depending on rational external calculations rather than on his arbitrary whims deriving from customary law in order to ensure the greatest happiness for his subjects. In Bentham’s opinion, there was no longer true rationality in the ancient natural law construction; utility was the main principle that could be attributed to reason in order to support a rational legislative science that would be comprehensible and not oppressive. Through this detailed work, Bentham brought to fruition a sort of Copernican revolution of law that had already begun some decades earlier with Claude–Adrien Helvétius and Cesare Beccaria (to mention but two names), by seeking to extirpate prejudice and superstition from legal science.

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