Liberty as a Caricature
Bentham's Antidote to Republicanism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5305705 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yiftah Elazar (0000-0002-3441-0038, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 76 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 417-439 |
| Publication date | 2015-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the History of Ideas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-5037 • E-ISSN: 1086-3222 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jhi.2015.0024 |
| OpenAlex | W996220677 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 13 |
This article reconsiders Bentham's theory of liberty in relation to republican and democratic ideas in the Age of Revolution. It reinterprets his jurisprudential definitions of liberty as ideological weapons intended to "cut the throat" of pro-American and proto-democratic discourse. In particular, his negative definition of individual liberty and his democratic and international definitions of political liberty were designed and used to caricature and draw to absurdity the republican ideal of self-government. The early Bentham, according to this interpretation, was a subversive critic of republicanism, who occupied its language of liberty and security while trying to neutralize its democratic potential
Absurdity · Character (mathematics) · Democracy · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics) · Ideology · Interpretation (philosophy) · Law and economics · Negative liberty · Political science · Politics · Relation (database) · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham
Bentham, Byron, and Greece
The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham: Rights, Representation, and Reform: Nonsense upon Stilts and Other Writings on the French Revolution
Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas
Four essays on liberty
How To Do Things With Words
Utility and Democracy
Bentham and the Oppressed
Classical utilitarianism and the concept of freedom
A right, utility and the definition of liberty as a negative idea
Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy
Neorepublicanism
The American Controversy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |