Bentham Scholarship and the Bentham “Problem”

Himmelfarb, Gertrude. "Bentham Scholarship and the Bentham "Problem"." The Journal of Modern History 41, no. 2. 1969.

Abstract:

Bentham has finally, indubitably, “made it.” Not as he had hoped to make it in his own time, as the reformer, indeed transformer, of society, law, and philosophy; nor even as he would seem to have made it now, as the subject of what is perhaps the most ambitious publishing venture of its kind ever to be undertaken in England; but rather as historical reputations are made-by becoming the focus of controversy. The controversy has al- ready attracted the attention of bibliographers and commentators, and one may be confident that before long it, and thus Bentham himself, will receive the highest accolade of the profession: not the thirty-eight volumes of collected works that will represent over a quarter of a century of collec- tive scholarship, but the slim volume in the Heath series that confers the title and status of a historical “problem.”

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