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基本説明
An interpretation of Bentham's thought in which his religious views, hitherto not considered of great interest, are shown to be central to the development of his views.
Full Description
Jeremy Bentham was an ardent secularist convinced that society could be sustained without the support of religious institutions or beliefs. This is writ large in the commonly neglected books on religion he wrote and published during the last twenty-five years of his life. However his earliest writings on the subject date from the 1770s, when as a young man he first embarked on his calling as a legal theorist and social reformer. From that time on, religion was never far from the centre of his thoughts.
In Secular Utilitarianism, James Crimmins illustrates the nature, extent, and depth of Jeremy Bentham's concern with religion, from his Oxford days of first doubts to the middle years of quiet unbelief, and finally, the zealous atheism and secularism of his later life. Dr Crimmins provides an interpretation of Bentham's thought in which his religious views, hitherto of little interest to Bentham scholars, are shown to be integral: on the one hand intimately associated with the metaphysical, epistemological, and psychological principles which gave shape to his system as a whole, and on the other central to the development of his entirely secular view of society.
Contents
Part 1 A Utilitarian science of society: science and religion; ethics and the science of legislation. Part 2 Church of Englandism: religious liberty; the subscription controversy; oaths, Irish Catholics, and blasphemy; the alliance of church and state; the Lancasterian controversy and religious education; anticlericalism and disestablishment. Part 3 Natural and revealed religion: natural religion; revealed religion; christian asceticism and sexual nonconformity.
