Sadly his works are not all indexed and on line - apparently work is in
progress to collate, index and publish them, but it will be a 70 volume
monster!
It seems to me that, where Epicurus identified the maximising of happiness as a useful goal in life, Bentham took the matter a stage further with his utilitarian calculus. His work on jurisprudence and punishment is
interesting. He saw that punishment was necessary to encourage better behaviour in people, but that the total punishment meted out could never be allowed to exceed the total misery that the crimes had caused. Furthermore corporal, and of course capital, punishment were too extreme in their negative effect on the total happiness of humanity to be countenanced.
I haven't been able to find any direct references to torture in Bentham's writing, though I am sure that there must be - has anybody else come across any?
Epicurus appears not to be pro-torture, he hardly could see it as a means to happiness for anybody, but he does suggest that the wise man would suffer torture calmly. In this he has the imaginative edge over those currently
urging torture as he doesn't see it only as something to be applied to 'the other' [since Epicurus is a humanist and not a xenophobe], but as something that even a happy, wise and honourable person might suffer in the course of
life.
Though Epicurus suggested avoiding politics was wise for a happy life, a sound view, Bentham, of course, considers the wider implications, for happiness for all, which does require a political accommodation. Actually Epicurus' urging that to be happy you must understand and make peace with your neighbour does really cover the same point if 'neighbour' is taken in
the widest sense - your enemy is, after all, only a neighbour with whom you have failed to make accommodation.
It seems to me that, if they had the chance, both Bentham and Epicurus would be consider Rawl's test of a just society as being a sound one from a utilitarian and Epicurean point of view. Since nobody but a masochist would
invite torture on themselves, I can't see that anybody applying Rawl's test could justify torture.
I wonder too that, since torture has been known to be ineffective in producing reliable information for several centuries those that argue for it must either be ignorant of this fact, or wilfully ignoring it - or must
rather have a different reason for urging torture than the 'ticking bomb' excuse. I think that they are really motivated by feelings of revenge, hatred and the smug assumption that they, themselves, will never face it,
being ubermenschen in their opinion.
Yesterday's chip wrapper is enjoys eternal youth - something denied the nectar of the gods; tomorrow's free beer.
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