Bentham’s Place in the History of Political Thought

"Bentham was the first among modern philosophers to place women upon a political equality with men. In Plato's Republic this equality was to be fully recognized. But after Plato it was completely forgotten for over two thousand years." (H. Thomas) Jeremy Bentham was the intellectual leader and the real founder of English utilitarianism; whose deep interest in public affairs covered the period from the American Revolution to the Reform Bill of 1832. He was born in a rich lawyer's family in 1748 in London. From the very childhood, Bentham was scholarly and pedantic. He learnt Latin when he was only three years old. He also learnt Greek and French and later on he devoted to the study of Jurisprudence and legal philosophy. He received the degree of graduation at the age of fifteen from Queen's College Oxford. He had an instinctive interest in science and a distinctive talent for introspective psychology. From his youth he showed a passionate devotion to social welfare, identifying himself in imagination and determining to apply to the social sciences the methods that were being worked out in the natural science.