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E-book Jeremy Bentham and Australia : Convicts, utility and empire

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Penilaian

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Jeremy Bentham’s writings on Australia, new authoritative editions of which are now published in a volume entitled Panopticon versus New South Wales and other writings on Australia1 in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, have had a profound and enduring influence across a number of fields. For instance, according to the historian John Gascoigne, so authoritative during the nineteenth century was Bentham’s critique of criminal transportation to New South Wales that ‘advocates and critics of transportation ... inevitably tended to couch their arguments against a Benthamite background’.2 Those advocates included George Arthur, Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land 1824–36, who contended in 1833, in defence of the assignment of convicts to private masters, that ‘Bentham’s notion, that gaolers should possess a personal interest in the reform of the convicts under their charge, is beautifully realized in Van Diemen’s Land’.3 Critics of trans-portation who took the Benthamite line included Henry Grey Bennet MP, whose Letter to Viscount Sidmouth of 18194 was avowedly inspired by Bentham’s work down to its title, and the philosophical radical Sir William Molesworth MP,5 chair of the Select Committee on Transpor-tation of 1837–8 and author of its remarkably Benthamite report.6 The political scientist Hugh Collins, in his study of political ideology in Australia, concluded that ‘the mental universe of Australian politics is essentially Benthamite’,7 while in 2019 the political historian Judith Brett, in her examination of the distinctiveness of Australian democracy, argued that if ‘John Locke was the foundational thinker for the United States, for Australia it was the philosopher and political reformer, Jeremy Bentham’.8 In a 2021 study the historian David Llewellyn contended that Bentham’s influence in Australia extends to fields ‘such as the construction of local government, education, electoral laws, women’s empowerment, and, arguably, the character of Australian liberalism’, and noted that it ‘becomes apparent that Bentham’s ideas have been influential in the development of Australia for almost the entire period since the arrival of the first fleet’ in 1788.9 Bentham’s wide-ranging influence has thus been recognized despite scholars, at least until 2018 when the preliminary versions of the texts constituting Panopticon versus New South Wales and other writings on Australiaappeared online,10 having had to rely on incomplete and inadequate versions. To give context to the chapters in this collection11 it will be helpful here to provide a summary of the texts under discussion.12Panopticon versus New South Wales and other writings on Australia consists of the following seven works: a series of fragmentary comments headed ‘New Wales’, which date from 1791; a compilation of correspondence and marginal contents which Bentham had sent to the abolitionist and supporter of the panopticon, William Wilberforce, in August 1802; three ‘Letters to Lord Pelham’ and ‘A Plea for the Constitution’, which were written in 1802–3; and ‘Colonization Company Proposal’, written in August 1831. All but ‘Colonization Company Proposal’ are intimately connected with the genesis and failure of Bentham’s panopticon penitentiary scheme.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

170 ALL j

Penerbit

London : UCL Press., 2022

Deskripsi Fisik

425 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781787358188

Klasifikasi

170

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Ethics, Moral Philosophy

Info Detail Spesifik

-

Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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