" Be Quiet ", mais modérément: Le rôle de l'État dans la pensée économique de Jeremy Bentham

Abstract

Be quiet », but keep cool : the role of the state in jeremy bentham's economic thought. This paper aims at showing that the tradition which uses to connect Bentham's utilitarianism with economie liberalism neglects the peculiarity of an approach for which economics is by no way autonomous to legislation. In this respect, we must underline the importance of information problems. Although they justify the non-intervention of the State, as long as we only consider the economie ends-« subsistence » and « abondance »-, they also lead to interventionist conclusions, each time a lack of information brings an uncertainty, threatening the end of « safety » and, more generally, the specifie ends of the « legislation ». Résumé « Be Quiet », mais modérément : Le rôle de l'État dans la pensée économique de Jeremy Bentham Cet article a pour objet de montrer que la tradition associant l'utilitarisme de Bentham au libéralisme économique conduit à négliger la singularité d'une approche dans laquelle la sphère économique ne peut être pensée comme autonome par rapport à la législation. L'accent est placé sur les problèmes d'information qui, s'ils justifient la non-ingérence de la puissance publique au regard des objectifs propres à l'économie-la « subsistance » et l'« abondance »-, conduisent également à des conclusions interventionnistes, chaque fois qu'une insuffisance d'information introduit une incertitude, mettant en danger le « bien de sûreté » et, plus généralement, les objectifs spécifiques de la « législation ».

Halévy's Bentham Is Bentham

“…Recent research into Bentham's economics has shown that this was an oversimplified picture. 16 But the plain fact remains that the sphere of agenda, each of which involves the legislator's manipulating some individual interests, is wide in Bentham's view, whatever the stage of his intellectual career.…”

Collective interest versus individual interest in Bentham'sfelicific calculus. Questioning welfarism and fairness

“…17 See Sigot (1993) among others. 18 On this, see Sigot (1993Sigot ( , 2001. 19 'It should not be forgotten than political economy was for Bentham a branch of the science of legislation' (Guidi 2004: 176).…”

“…See also the position of Friedman (1953), who points out Bentham's 'refusal to see the reality of conflict between the individual interest and that of the community '. 1904); the distinction between the economic and the politic domain (Halévy 1901a, Sigot 2001; the role of State (Sigot 1993); the individual and the collective aspect of the utility principle (Sigot 1993(Sigot , 2001; the distinction between a moral utility function and a personal utility function (Harsanyi 1955(Harsanyi , 1992; the issue of laundering preferences (Goodin 1986); or, more generally, the choice of a model of utility suited to the ethical project (Haslett 1990, Broome 1994. Nevertheless, if all of these positions establish -or negate -the existence of a contradiction, none of them confronts the persistence of such an opposition.…”

Individual utility in a context of asymmetric sensitivity to pleasure and pain: an interpretation of Bentham's felicific calculus

“…Whereas individual agents act according to what they believe to be their optimal trajectories, the Benthamite legislator aims at taking into account what optimal trajectories would be in case of perfect knowledge of the tastes, and compares them to the actual behaviour of the individuals. This helps explain the reasons why Benthamite economics is, from the beginning, public economics: public intervention is, of course, required in order to provide adequate information, to make up for external effects and coordination failures (see Sigot 1993); but it is also required to ensure the internal consistency of each individual -that is, the consistency between his tastes and his resulting choices.…”