Journal of the History of Philosophy

338 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY which Kant does not explicitly work out, viz., that the notion of a numerically selfsame subject of experience which persists through time requires for its intelligibility and applicability empirical criteria of identity. STm'ar.N A. EmC~SON Pomona College The Mind o/ Jeremy Bentham. By D. J. Manning. (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968. Pp. ix+ 118. N.p.) It is possible to question the pressing need of another book about Jeremy Bentham today, especially one about the molding of his political ideas. Perhaps there is no better rebuttal than Dicey's dictum: "The history of legal reform in England in the nineteenth century is the story of the shadow cast by one man, Bentham." Hence D. J. Manning, a lecturer in political science at the University of Durham, can maintain Bentham's "unique importance" in understanding the Welfare State created largely by "his intellectual grandchildren--the Fabians." Among many of his political ideas which have come alive in our day are: "the establishing of a minimum standard of living, the inevitability of gradualness, the mixed economy, the universal franchise, and competitive examinations for civil servants." Manning says that he has written "from reflection upon a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of London in 1964" as a contribution to the Monographs in Politics series inspired by Michael J. Oakeshott. In the words of the editor of the series, J. W. Grove, "'It tells as much about Oakeshott (as well as his influence ou a whole younger generation of scholars) as it does about Jeremy Bentham." The author centers his attention upon "the relation between different views of Bentharn's thought and the various experiences which flowed through them." He sees Bentham as appearing at a time of social disorder and chronic insecurity, and contends that he devoted his life "to restoring coherence to human relationships" through his principle of utility. It was "a doctrine designed to guide a man towards his always behaving in that objective and impersonal fashion in which he is disposed to consider the interests of those who are perfect strangers to him." This was Bentham's response to a time when, because of social dislocations, many Englishmen had come to feel strangers to one another. "Bentham's world," says Manning, "is two-dimensional, it contains few mysteries. It is laid out before us as a formal pattern; the key to its design is reason." He saw his task of reform as essentially mechanical, as engineering to reduce friction, so that "the rational pursuit by each man of his own interest will entail the realization of happiness by the majority." Eventually he concluded that political democracy, in spite of its notorious frictions, offered the best formula. But Bentham had no patience with minorities, once the majority had spoken. So there is born a "new Leviathan state" entitled to ride roughshod over minority interests. The many previous interpreters of Bentham as a liberal, says Manning, have been mistaken, for "he has the materials, if not the making, of a post-Hobbesian philosophy of the state." philosophers will be puT,,led by a certain ambivalence in the author's handling of the relationship between Bentham's philosophy and his prescriptive writings about politics. He states taffy that it is quite impossible to discover the character of Bentham's philosophical ideas by searching through his political prescriptions, and it is equally impossible to find out the nature of his BOOK REVIEWS 339 prescriptions from an examination of his philosophical ideas--in so far as his prescriptions stem from intimations in the concrete circumstances of his experience and his philosophy from his analytical statements. The "in so far" leaves room for substantial interactions of philosophy and prescriptions, as several of Manning's chapters show. Manning finds Bentham's alleged influence upon practical politicians close to nil. Bentharn was one of those "academic scribblers" who helped to form the climate of opinion in which political reforms occurred. Similar experiences gave rise to coincidental conclusions about what needed to be done. Bentham's vaunted shadow, in other words, fell mainly upon other philosophers and historians of ideas. HAROLDA. LARRAnEE Austin, Texas The Lonely Labyrinth: Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous...