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Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

The money quote, for me:

Sodomy, he argued, was not just harmless but evidently pleasurable to its participants. The mere fact that the custom was abhorrent to the majority of the community no more justified the persecution of sodomites than it did the killing of Jews, heretics, smokers, or people who ate oysters – "to destroy a man there should certainly be some better reason than mere dislike to his Taste, let that dislike be ever so strong".

It's a shame that Jeremy Bentham's name is nowadays more associated with Lost than the utilitarianism he pioneered. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation is a good intro to his general line of thinking: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/278

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Yes. It's a conventional view now, but Bentham was so far ahead of his time on this that it makes him seem more interesting. That's what's significant about this article. It's remarkable in intellectual history for views so contrarian (and prescient) to be discovered in a major thinker 200 years later.

Unfortunately, the thread quickly went hopelessly off kilter. It's being heavily flagged and we're certainly not going to override that.

It's a conventional view now, but Bentham was so far ahead of his time

Bentham was "ahead of his time" only because his intellectual descendants triumphed. If, e.g., the Nazis had won WWII, 19th-century anti-Semites would have appeared "ahead of their time". In other words, it's wrong to equate "being ahead of your time" with "being righteous".

Bentham was also wrong about sodomy being harmless, at least regarding anal sex. Among other things, anal intercourse causes loose sphincters in its recipients and is far more effective at spreading sexually transmitted diseases than vaginal intercourse. (This is a Humean is, though—a matter of fact. It doesn't necessarily justify banning the practice. That's a Humean ought—a matter of opinion.)

>It's a shame that Jeremy Bentham's name is nowadays more associated with Lost than the utilitarianism he pioneered

I'm relieved to see if I google Jeremy Bentham the first twelve links are about utilitarianism with Lost not coming till no. 13.

>I'm relieved to see if I google Jeremy Bentham the first twelve links are about utilitarianism

That's only because Google knows you read this article.

Search in a private/incognito window incognito window and all the results are about Lost.

Nah. I tried incognito and the results were the same. Still I'm in the UK. I'm guessing you are in the US? Maybe Google thinks brits are interested in philosophy and the yanks are interested in Lost? -

Update: I tried incognito and a US proxy and the highest Lost entry moved from no 13 to no 7, though utilitarianism was still in the lead

I tend to associate him with the Panopticon [1].

1: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

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