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The Fifth Bentham
Kopecký, Robin ; Hill, James (advisor) ; Jirsa, Jakub (referee)
Quoting "Greatest happiness for the greatest number" is, without doubt, a popular way of summarising Bentham's utilitarianism. However, it falls short of fully capturing theories which are the ground stone of Bentham's moral and political philosophy. The aim of the concept of "the fifth Bentham" is to consistently describe this prolific thinker as he finds his way from ontology to the foundation of morality. The thesis explores the historical background of the principle of utility and its proof in regard to human motivations, which have a certain role in this proof. In spite of the fact that Bentham's psychological theory is strictly reductionist, it has strong explanatory potential. Central to the thesis is the view that Bentham's moral philosophy ultimately stems from his ontology and analysis of language. The principle of utility, which is based on naturalistic ontology and language theory of fictions, will be expounded with help of classification of entities and use of operations called paraphrase and phraseoplerosis. Finally, the thesis also introduces problematic applications of the principle of utility on the hedonistic calculus and personal ethics.
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