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1Since the 1990’s citizenship education, which aims to foster the virtue and ability demanded for a member of the community, has been revitalized as part of the ‘‘Third Way,’’ a trend of new social democracy. Under this approach, citizenship has been redefined as ‘‘active citizenship’’ which demands the voluntary participation of individuals in public issues in order to realize the common good.
2Here the writings of educational philosopher Gert Biesta are of particular importance. In his work, he criticizes the de-politicisation and privatisation of the idea of citizenship. He examines the recent discussions on citizenship education in various places and fields and says as follows:
- 1 Gert J.J. Biesta, Learning Democracy in School and Society: Education, Lifelong Learning, and the P (...)
They all display a strong tendency to focus the discussion on individuals and their responsibilities and duties, to highlight the social more than the political dimensions of citizenship, and to see democracy more in terms of consensus and sameness than in terms of contestation and difference.1
3He regards the idea of active citizenship in connection to socialization, which he contrasts with subjectification.
Whereas a socialisation model focuses on the ‘insertion’ of individuals into existing socio-political orders —and thus sees the purpose of civic learning and political education predominantly in terms of the reproduction of the existing order —a subjectification model is concerned with modes of civic learning and political education that support and promote political agency.2
- 3 Ibid., p.6.
- 4 Gert J.J. Biesta, Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy, Abingdon: R (...)
4In order to overcome the individualistic conception of citizenship, he advocates ‘‘the shift from teaching citizenship to learning democracy.’’3 Biesta criticizes the aggregative model of democracy which ‘‘sees democracy as a process of aggregating the preferences of individuals’’4 because that damages the common interests and the public good. Rather than support the aggregative model, he sides with the deliberative model and emphasizes the importance of real democratic participation.
I do believe that democracy is also a form of life and that it is first and foremost through participation in the democratic form of life, inside and outside the school that we become democrats.5
- 6 John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations, Oxford: Oxford (...)
5The transition from the aggregative model to the deliberative model resonates with the deliberative turn seen in the sphere of political philosophy. Over these past two decades ‘‘Increasingly, democratic legitimacy came to be seen in terms of the ability or opportunity to participate in effective deliberation on the part of those subject to collective decisions.’’6 Confronted with a multicultural society, the theory of democratic education shares this trend. Amy Gutmann deepened her theory of democratic education into that of a deliberative democracy, aiming at equal citizenship that reflects the multicultural conditions we now face.
- 7 Amy Gutmann, ‘‘Educating for Individual Freedom and Democratic Citizenship: In Unity and Diversity (...)
Part of the responsibility of a democratic society to ensure the adequate education of all citizens consists of providing political opportunities in which citizens who identify with diverse groups can deliberate democratically about their differences.7
- 8 Amy Gutmann, ‘‘Education,’’ in R.G. Frey and Ch. H. Wellman eds., A Companion to Applied Ethics, Ma (...)
- 9 Ibid.
- 10 Gutmann acknowledges Mill’s idea regarding human development through political participation in her (...)
6The deliberative skills and virtues, said Gutmann, could be cultivated through participation that is repeatedly in deliberation ‘‘in search of mutually justifiable decisions.’’8 Gutmann differentiates democratic citizens who have ‘‘the willingness to deliberate’’ from ‘‘self-interested citizens, who argue merely to advance their interest, and deferential citizens who turn themselves into passive subjects’’.9 Gutmann’s emphasis on participation agrees with John Stuart Mill’s theory on pursuing the common good through social participation.10
- 11 Wendy Donner, ‘‘John Stuart Mill on Education and Democracy’’, in Nadia Urbinati & Alex Zakaras eds (...)
7As Wendy Donner points out, ‘‘Mill elaborates on the moral benefits of active political participation with great clarity’’. ‘‘The moral instruction gained by taking on public duties leads citizens to raise their sights above their narrow private self-interests and partialities to focus on the common good and the community’’.11 If we turn attention to J.S. Mill, it becomes clear that the educational theory of utilitarianism can be connected to today’s democratic education.
- 12 Concerning about the theory of deliberative democracy of Amy Gutmann and some critical discussion a (...)
8Although deliberative democracy is supposed to be suitable to today’s multicultural conditions, there is a limit to its realization.12 Biesta regards the limit in the qualification of the entry into the deliberation.
- 13 Biesta, op.cit., 2011, p. 92.
The important thing about the deliberative turn is that it moves away from a mere arithmetical model of democracy—one that in the literature is known as the aggregative model—towards one that acknowledges that democracy is never simply the aggregation of individual preferences but needs to engage with questions about the collective interest and the common good. … A limitation of some of the work within deliberative democracy is that it stays within a framework in which it is assumed that deliberation is only for those who meet certain entry conditions … .13
9Referring to Jacque Rancière, he emphasizes dissensus and anticipates the emergence of ‘‘ignorant citizens’’, who would be the antithesis of the ‘‘good citizens’’ proposed by deliberative democracy. Democracy for Biesta and Rancière is the disruption of the police. It does not mean the corruption of the order of society, but a countermeasure against the police order in the logic of equality.
The ignorant citizen is the one who is oblivious of the kind of ‘‘good citizen’’ he or she is supposed to be. The ignorant citizen is the one who, in a sense, refuses this knowledge and, through this, refuses to be domesticated, refuses to be pinned down in a pre-determined civic identity. 14
10Bentham’s educational thought did not aim at ‘‘good citizens’’ fostered by their participation in public issues as Gutmann and J.S. Mill proposed, nor at ‘‘ignorant citizens’’ who set dissensus against the police as raised by Biesta and Rancière. Should the reason why Bentham’s idea was incompatible with today’s discussion about democratic education be attributed to the authoritative aspect of his thought? I suppose differently. Bentham developed his unique democratic education based on intellectuals aiming at the establishment of a liberal society, which is so different from today’s citizenship education.
11In educational research, Bentham’s thought is usually regarded negatively because of its authoritarian aspect. As is well known, this assessment is supposed to be promoted by Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, which regards the Panopticon as the representation of the disciplinary power of the modern state. Therefore, some Bentham scholars have tried to rescue Bentham from such an evaluation by pointing out the incorrectness of Foucault’s understanding on Bentham. For example, Janet Semple who conducted detailed research on the Panopticon said as follows:
- 15 Janet Semple, Bentham’s Prison: A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 19 (...)
Foucault appears to have paid little attention to Bentham’s mature theory of government: and in making him an exemplar of modern subjection he has done him a grave injustice.15
12Philip Schofield also said that Foucault, whose concern is to understand the nature of the modern state, did not care about Bentham’s intention.
- 16 Philip Schofield, Bentham: A Guide for the Perplexed, London: Continuum, 2009, p. 70.
Foucault is not worried at all about the intentions of Bentham as the author of panopticon, and in fact you would hardly guess from his account that the panopticon prison was never built, that standard prison architecture went in a very different direction from that advocated by Bentham, and that Bentham himself did not regard the panopticon as a model for the state (though he did adopt certain principles in his mature constitutional theory which he had first developed for panopticon).16
- 17 Sonoe Omoda, The History of Conflict of Government: Foucault’s Lecture of 1978-1979, (in Japanese) (...)
- 18 On this point, see also Christian Laval, ‘‘Ce que Foucault a appris de Bentham,’’ Revue d’études be (...)
13These criticisms of Bentham scholars on Foucault’s misunderstanding are, oppositely, criticized by a Foucault scholar. Sonoe Omoda, who is studying the governmentality of Foucault, points out that ‘‘It is no more futile than criticizing ‘Foucault without reading Bentham’ without reading Foucault.’’17 Foucault’s lecture on governmentality, which was delivered in 1978 and 1979 at Collège de France, was published in 2004. In these lectures, Foucault referred to Bentham in relation to liberal government. The development of this research circumstance shifts the Bentham-Foucault relationship.18
- 19 Anne Brunon-Ernst, ‘‘Deconstructing Panopticism into the Plural Panopticons’’, in Anne Brunon-Ernst (...)
- 20 Jeremy Bentham, Constitutional Code, vol.1, F. Rosen and J.H. Burns eds., Collected Works of Jeremy (...)
- 21 Brunon-Ernst, op.cit., p. 24.
14From the viewpoint of this developing research situation, it becomes apparent that Foucault had read Bentham quite correctly. Brunon-Ernst divides Bentham’s Panopticon in four kinds of it, that is, the prison-Panopticon, the pauper-Panopticon, the Chrestomathic-Panopticon, and the constitutional-Panopticon. She said that ‘‘Foucault’s panopticism is defined in reference to Bentham’s first two Panopticons.’’19 The Chrestomathic-Panopticon is directly related to education, which we will discuss later. As for the constitutional-Panopticon, it was brought out from Bentham’s Constitutional Code, which discussed the Public Opinion Tribunal.20 As Schofield mentioned in the last sentence of the above citation, the architectural arrangement of monitoring the governors ‘‘through panoptic devices’’ would be installed in his Constitutional Code ‘‘to reduce misrule and ensure that the governing functionaries will maximise pleasure and minimise pain.’’21 Although the Constitutional Code is a work that came very late in Bentham’s life, the source of the Public Opinion Tribunal can be seen in the Panopticon Letters which was published in 1791.
- 22 Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon, Letter IX.
- 23 Ibid., Letter VI.
15In the Panopticon Letters, Bentham discussed repeatedly the importance of publicity of the management and contractor’s check because the Panopticon would be under contract-management. ‘‘I will then require him [the contractor] to disclose and even to print and publish his accounts – the whole process and detail of his management’’ (italics in original, hereafter the same).22 By such publicity, the governors of the prison (inspector or keeper), as well as the contractor of the institution, are always monitored by the public. Bentham regarded this point as the advantage of the Panopticon compared to other contemporary prisons because ‘‘the doors of all public establishments ought to be, thrown wide open to the body of the curious at large – the great open committee of the tribunal of the world.’’23
16Foucault also pays attention to this aspect of the Panopticon, even in his Discipline and Punish. He points out that the arrangement of the Panopticon enables ‘‘anyone to come and exercise in the central tower the functions of surveillance’’ so that ‘‘any panoptic institution, … may without difficulty be subjected to such irregular and constant inspections: and not only by the appointed inspectors, but also by the public.’’ After this comment, he refers to the above phrase of the Panopticon Letters.
- 24 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin Books, 1979, p. 20 (...)
There is no risk, therefore, that the increase of power created by the panoptic machine may degenerate into tyranny; the disciplinary mechanism will be democratically controlled, since it will be constantly accessible ‘‘to the great tribunal committee of the world.’’ 24
17Different from the general view that the image of the authoritarian Bentham had been promoted by Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, Foucault comprehended the democratic aspect of Bentham’s plan. Accordingly, he made a reference to Bentham again when he discussed liberal governmentality.
- 25 Frederick Rosen, Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy: A Study of Constitutional Code, Oxfor (...)
- 26 On this point, see also Christian Laval, ‘‘From Discipline and Punish to The Birth of Biopolitics,’ (...)
- 27 Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-1979, ed. by Mich (...)
18Since around the 1980s, the image of the authoritarian Bentham has been revised mainly in the fields of philosophy and the history of political thought as the transcription of Bentham’s papers and the new scientific edition progressed.25 In this viewpoint, Foucault has been criticized for misunderstanding Bentham. However, as was shown above, Foucault not only noticed the democratic aspect of the Panopticon plan but also repeatedly refer to Bentham in the lecture on liberal governmentality.26 In the mid-eighteenth century, governmental reason began to be regulated intrinsically to put it in place of the previous raison d’Etat regulated by the external legal reason.27 This frugal government set the limit of a government bounded to utility. Foucault said as follows:
- 28 Ibid., p. 40. Foucault referred to two ways of setting limitations to the exercise of power. One is (...)
Following this approach means that government’s sphere of competence will be defined on the basis of what it would or would not be useful for government to do or not do.28
19Here, utilitarianism is connected to liberal governmentality. ‘‘Utilitarianism’’, said Foucault, ‘‘is a technology for government.’’29 Bentham’s thought for Foucault is not authoritative but an excellent previous example, which had discussed on the utility of government, especially about how it is possible for a government dependent on the liberty of individuals.
20Foucault explained that ‘‘liberalism in the sense I have just been talking about, and disciplinary techniques are completely bound up with each other.’’30 He attributes the former to Bentham’s Constitutional Code and the latter to Panopticon.
At the beginning of his career, or around 1792-1795, Bentham presented the famous Panopticon as a procedure for institutions like schools, factories, and prisons which would enable one to supervise the conduct of individuals while increasing the profitability and productivity of their activity. At the end of his life, in his project of the general codification of English legislation, Bentham will propose that the Panopticon should be the formula for the whole of government, saying that the Panopticon is the very formula of liberal government.31
- 32 Anne Brunon-Ernst, ‘‘Foucault Revisited,’’ Journal of Bentham Studies, vol. 9, No. 1, 2007.
- 33 Foucault, op.cit., 2008, p. 32.
21As is shown in this citation, Foucault paid sufficient attention to the constitutional Panopticon as well as the prison- and the pauper-Panopticon. This has been pointed out by some scholars after the publication of Foucault’s lecture. For example, Brunon-Ernst scrutinizes the concept of ‘‘frugal government’’ referring to the relationship between Bentham and Foucault.32 In spite that in the discussion of the ‘‘frugal government,’’ Foucault regarded the market as ‘‘a site of verification-falsification for governmental practice,’’33 he did not focus on the contract-management of the Panopticon. Bentham criticized the trust-management, which was the contemporary trend for prison management.
- 34 Bentham, Panopticon, ‘‘Postscript II: Containing a Plan of Management for a Panopticon Penitentiary (...)
Economy has two grand enemies: peculation and negligence. Trust-management leaves the door open to both: Contract-management shuts it against both. Negligence it renders peculiarly improbable: peculation, impossible.34
22In contract-management the contractor is responsible for all of the profit and loss associated with the institution. To join interest with duty, that is, the ‘‘emolument of the Governor is to be proportioned in a certain way to the success of the management’’35 as well as the publicity discussed above, which defends the Panoptic institution against the misrule of the governor.
23As is well known, Bentham consistently regarded mankind as being governed by pain and pleasure, therefore the most important thing for the management of institutions was the architecture to guarantee the humane management of whoever ruled it. Such a principle to join interest and duty is applied also to the prisoner, who gets rewarded according to his performance. In the Panopticon, both the governor and the governed are under the same principle.
- 36 Bentham, Panopticon, Letter VI.
Another very important advantage, whatever purposes the plan may be applied to, particularly where it is applied to the severest and most coercive purposes, is, that the under keepers or inspectors, the servants and subordinates of every kind, will be under the same irresistible control with respect to the head keeper or inspector, as the prisoners or other persons to be governed are with respect to them.36
- 37 Guillaume Tusseau, ‘‘From the Penitentiary to the Political Panoptic Paradigm,’’ in Anne Brunon-Ern (...)
24It is important that Bentham tried to universalize this principle to the society in general. As Guillaume Tusseau points out, ‘‘Bentham worked on the possibilities of a practical application of the principle of utility in the minutest technical details, first on a limited scale, and then on the scale of entire political society.’’37 The management of each institution based on the Panopticon principle was deeply connected to the government of the whole society.
- 38 James Tarrant, ‘‘Utilitarianism, Education and the Philosophy of Moral Insignificance’’, Journal of (...)
- 39 Brunon-Ernst, op. cit., p. 36.
25The Panopticon principle is also applied to the Chrestomathic School which Bentham started to plan at early nineteenth century (the Chretsomathic-Panopticon). On the one hand, some educational scholars criticize Bentham’s educational thought because the principle of the Panopticon derived from prison management is not suitable for schools. Others point out that Bentham’s conversion to democracy ‘‘did not automatically mean the arrival of moral significance for the mass of the people and opening for the development of an educated citizenry.’’38 On the other hand, Bentham scholars point out that the Panopticon cannot be identified with disciplinary power if it can function in non-disciplinary environments like the Chrestomathic School.39
- 40 Shuntaro Obata, Jeremy Bentham and the English Constitution: State, Church, and Public Opinion, (in (...)
- 41 Jeremy Bentham, Chrestomathia, M.J. Smith and W.H. Burston eds., Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, (...)
26Why did Bentham write such a school plan as the Chrestomathia? A Japanese Bentham scholar Shuntaro Obata, clarifying the multi-layered developments of Bentham’s idea of free constitution from the perspective of history of political thought, answered the question by emphasizing ‘‘the relationship between Bentham’s plan of constitution and education’’, which has been overlooked in the previous researches. The educational purpose of the Chrestomathic School was to foster ‘‘a good citizen’’ who had the mental strength to censor the laws and institutions and who would not be deceived by mischievous delusion on the basis of useful art and science.40 In Chrestomathia, Bentham listed ‘‘Advantages derivable from Learning in this or that particular shape, and more especially from the proposed Course of INTELLECTUAL INSTRUCTION’’ (emphasis in original). One of the advantages is the ‘‘security afforded against groundless terrors, mischievous impostures, and self-delusions.’’ Bentham thought a man is exposed to such mischievous delusions by ignorance so that ‘‘against which knowledge presents the only preservative’’, especially physical department. ‘‘It is from physical science alone that a man is capable of deriving that mental strength and that well-grounded confidence which renders him proof against so many groundless terrors flowing from that prolific source.’’41
- 42 Obata, op.cit., pp. 275-276. Malik Bozzo-Rey researches Bentham’s School of Legislation in his arti (...)
27In addition to this, Obata found out the correspondence between the curriculum of the Chrestomathic School and the knowledge necessary for governing functionaries. The Chrestomathic School, therefore, was an educational plan that anticipated the cultivation of governors, especially ministers and functionaries. It would deliver intellectual curriculum and, try to establish a liberal state by fostering both good citizens who could participate in the Public Opinion Tribunal, and able or prudent rulers with the intellectual aptitude to lead or follow the public opinion.42
- 43 Philip Schofield, ‘‘Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)’’, in Mardus D. Dubber, Oxford Handbook of Legal His (...)
- 44 Kazuya Takashima, Bentham on Language: Utilitarianism and Pragmatism in the Thought of Jeremy Benth (...)
28It is said that in the first decade of the nineteenth century Bentham’s perspective converted to political radicalism ‘‘through the emergence of the notion of sinister interest as a central feature of his thought’’.43 Bentham thought that the sinister interest of rulers and other officials utilized ‘‘intellectual weakness’’ of people, sometimes that of their own, and generated delusion, which deprived people of their intelligence.44 The Chrestomathia began to be written from 1813, so that it is reasonable that the purpose of Bentham’s educational thought was fostering intelligence against delusion.
29It is important to note that Bentham regarded intellectual weakness not only of people but also of rulers and other officials. Just as the Panopticon principle applied not only to the prisoners but also to the inspectors and keepers, Bentham’s ideas on education applied to the ministers and functionaries as well as people. He tried to realize security against misrule by intellectual instruction and publicity of the management.
30In what regard is the intellectual instruction aiming at the creation of good citizens in the work of Bentham different from the civic education designed to foster deliberative democracy? While deliberative democracy proposes the transformative nation through deliberation, Bentham presupposed that self-interested human beings exist on both sides, that is, as governors and the governed. Therefore, a nation could fall into corruption without being checked by moral sanction. How can a nation composed of self-interested people be governed well? Is it not enough for it to prepare a curriculum that gives the governor the intellectual aptitude as well as the governed the mental strength needed against mischievous delusion?
31In order to consider this, we should pay attention to the sphere of knowledge which should be acquired in the Chrestomathic School. That is also different from what is supposed in today’s citizenship education. As for deliberative skills and virtues, Gutmann said as follows:
- 45 Gutmann, op. cit., 2003, p. 509.
Deliberation is not a single skill or virtue. It calls upon skills of literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking, as well as contextual knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of other people’s perspectives. The virtues that deliberation encompasses include veracity, non-violence, practical judgment, civic integrity, and magnanimity.45
- 46 Bentham, Chrestomathia, p. 30.
- 47 Bentham, Constitutional Code, vol.1, p. 35. However, in another place, when Bentham discussed the p (...)
32Compared to those highly qualified compound skills and virtues, the curriculum of the Chrestomathic School is composed of mainly subjects belonging to Natural Philosophy because they depend ‘‘in a principal measure on the senses and the memory’’. Other type of knowledge depending ‘‘in a much greater degree upon the judgement or judicial faculty,’’ which would clarify ‘‘the nature of human testimony’’ derived from History and Biography are regarded ‘‘as belonging a mature and self-instructing time of life.’’46 Although Bentham attached importance to intellectual learning both for the governor and governed, and he included the ‘‘non-adult’ as a member of Public Opinion Tribunal,47 he distinguished between the instruction in school for the non-age and enlightenment for the grown-up. Bentham’s educational thought was not limited to the cultivation of good citizens. In order to consider this point, we should return to the Panopticon Letters again.
- 48 Bentham, Panopticon, Preface.
33The last part of the Panopticon Letters discusses on schools. Why did Bentham apply the Panopticon principle to schools in the end? In the Preface of the Panopticon Letters, he writes, ‘‘The concluding Letter on Schools is a sort of jeu d’esprit’’.48 Nevertheless the letter on schools is far longer than the previous letters on other institutions. Where is the position of education in his thought?
34The school adopting the Panopticon principle is supposed to be a defense against corruption, just as other institutions like the penitentiary houses, houses of correction, prisons for safe custody, manufactories, mad-houses, and hospitals, which he discussed in other letters. Here he explains in concrete terms about the effect of the Panopticon principle, which is applied to the Westminster school from which he had graduated:
- 49 Bentham, Panopticon, Letter XXI.
That species of fraud at Westminster called cribbing, a vice thought hitherto congenial to schools, will never creep in here. That system of premature corruption, in which idleness is screened by opulence, and the honour due to talents or industry is let out for hire, will be completely done away; and a nobleman may stand as good a chance of knowing something as a common man. 49
35In addition to this, the Panopticon Letter on schools mentions some experiments. After referring the experiment of a King of Egypt Psammitichus ‘‘who thinking to re-discover the lost original of language, contrived to breed up two children in a sequestered spot, secluded, from the hour of their birth, from all converse with the rest of human kind,’’ he asserts as follows:
An inspection-house, to which a set of children had been consigned from their birth, might afford experiments enough that would be rather more interesting.50
36School is different from other institutions because it is possible to foster children from early childhood, so that it can be a place of experiment that excludes other factors. The aspect of school that enables experiment to start from the beginning is represented in the following lines referring Helvétius:
I know who would have been delighted to set up an Inspection-School, if it were only for the experiment’s sake, and that is Helvetius: at least, if he had been steady to his principles, which he was said to be: for by that contrivance, and by that alone, he might have been enabled to give an experimental proof of the truth of his position (supposing it to be true) that anybody may be taught anything, one person as well as another.51
- 52 Jeremy Bentham, Writing on the Poor Laws, Vol. II, M. Quinn ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010, p. (...)
37This point becomes more understandable if we consider Bentham’s pauper management, in which he started to be interested in since around 1795. The National Charity Company, which Bentham planned as measures for the relief of the pauper, is an institution that aims to take over all the Industry Houses in England and Wales. It is a joint-stock company which contracts each Industry House to employ and maintain the paupers, so that ‘‘Duty and Interest junction principle’’ and publicity of the circumstance of management are considered important.52 In his pauper management plan, he expected the under-age inmates to serve in the following manner:
Owing partly to the permanence of their situation, partly to their aptitude for receiving a suitable education, it is the labour of the stock of unripe hands, in their quality of apprentices, that would constitute the chief basis of the Company’s profit-seeking arrangements.53
- 54 Ibid., p. 500.
- 55 In the manuscript on pauper education, Bentham said, ‘‘Education is government in miniature: legisl (...)
38The adult pauper would be liberated when he has repaid his debt to the House for the cost of living. Therefore, the better the pauper relief system operates, the smaller is the labour pool that produces the profit. Labour shortage might be a serious problem for each Industry House. Indispensable for the management of Houses would be the non-adult apprentices who would not be liberated until they came of age. He expected a great deal, especially from the indigenous apprentices who were accommodated in the Industry Houses from their birth. The work of unripe hands is so important that the education provided to them should be advanced in the Industry Houses. Bentham expected to build 250 Industry Houses each of which would hold 2000 inmates in England and Wales at first.54 He projected that twenty-one years later, there would be approximately one million due to the accumulation of the apprentice stock. It is said that the population of England and Wales at that time was around nine million, so that quite a significant proportion of the population would have had the experience of the Industry Houses. Bentham’s plan for the National Charity Company was not just a pauper management plan, but also a design for a society based on the education of children who had been maintained from their birth in the Industry Houses.55
39Bentham expected education to be an experiment designed to establish a liberal society all over again from scratch. In order to reform the existing society governed by a ruling few who were pursuing their sinister interest, he sought to promote publicity and intellectual instruction against this misrule. From this viewpoint, Bentham’s educational thought focused on the instruction for good citizens who could censor the government beyond delusion. Is Bentham’s idea of good citizens the same as the ‘‘good citizens’’ expected by citizenship education? Or does it lead to the conception of the ‘‘ignorant citizens’’ who refuse to be domesticated by police? Both are supposed to be too demanding for Bentham’s view of human beings. It was important for Bentham to establish a liberal democratic society, even if it was comprised of self-interested persons. In this sense, Bentham’s educational thought seemed to concentrate on the intellectual instruction that enabled the avoidance of deluding or being deluded on both sides of the governors and the governed.
40However, if society could be ideally established from the beginning, then a totally new society could evolve based on the utilitarian principle, which realizes the artificial identification of interests between each individual and the whole community. The main point was educating children from the beginning. In this case, Bentham was supposed to assume a specific category of ‘‘good citizens’’, who would have been educated in advance intellectually and morally in a right circumstance so as to be able to contribute to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
41Bentham’s educational thought was a double-faced endeavor that addressed both the present and future. In either regard, his educational thought was deeply connected to reforming and forming society in terms of utilitarianism.
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Komatsu, K. (2006), Social Government and Education: The Educational Thought of Bentham, (in Japanese) Ryugasaki: Ryutsu Keizai U.P.
Laval, Ch. (2011) ‘‘Ce que Foucault a appris de Bentham,’’ Revue d’études benthamiennes, 8, 2001, pp.1-10, DOI: 10.4000/etudes-benthamiennes.259.
Laval, Ch. (2016) ‘‘From Discipline and Punish to The Birth of Biopolitics,’’ in A. Brunon-Ernst (ed.), Beyond Foucault: New Perspectives on Bentham’s Panopticon, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 43-60.
Miles, T.G. (1992), ‘‘Utilitarianism and Education: a reply to James Tarrant,’’ Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 261-264.
Obata, S. (2013), Jeremy Bentham and the English Constitution: State, Church, and Public Opinion, (in Japanese) Tokyo: Keio U.P.
Omoda, S. (2018), The History of Conflict of Government: Foucault’s Lecture of 1978-1979, (in Japanese) Tokyo: Keiso Shobo.
Rosen, F. (1983), Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy: A Study of Constitutional Code, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Semple, J. (1993), Bentham’s Prison: A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Schofield, Ph. (2006), Utility and Democracy: The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham, Oxford: Oxford U.P.
Schofield, Ph. (2009) Bentham: A Guide for the Perplexed, London: Continuum.
Schofield, Ph. (2018), ‘‘Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832),’’ in M. D. Dubber (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Legal History, Oxford: Oxford U.P., pp. 379-395.
Takashima, K. (2017), Bentham on Language: Utilitarianism and Pragmatism in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham, (in Japanese) Tokyo: Keio U.P.
Tarrant, J. (1991), ‘‘Utilitarianism, Education and the Philosophy of Moral Insignificance,’’ Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol.25, No.1, pp. 59-67.
Tusseau, G. (2016), ‘‘From the Penitentiary to the Political Panoptic Paradigm,’ in A. Brunon-Ernst ed., Beyond Foucault: New Perspectives on Bentham’s Panopticon, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 115-140.
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Notes
Gert J.J. Biesta, Learning Democracy in School and Society: Education, Lifelong Learning, and the Politics of Citizenship, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2011, p. 85.
Ibid., p. 43.
Ibid., p.6.
Gert J.J. Biesta, Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics, Democracy, Abingdon: Routledge, 2010, p. 98.
Ibid., p. 108.
John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations, Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2000, p. 1.
Amy Gutmann, ‘‘Educating for Individual Freedom and Democratic Citizenship: In Unity and Diversity there is Strength,’’ in Harvey Siegel ed., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 425-426.
Amy Gutmann, ‘‘Education,’’ in R.G. Frey and Ch. H. Wellman eds., A Companion to Applied Ethics, Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2003, p. 510.
Ibid.
Gutmann acknowledges Mill’s idea regarding human development through political participation in her first book as follows: ‘‘For Mill, political participation is both a means to the inclusive end of human self-development and in itself a valuable aspect of progressive human social activity.’’ Amy Gutmann, Liberal Equality, Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1980, p. 55.
Wendy Donner, ‘‘John Stuart Mill on Education and Democracy’’, in Nadia Urbinati & Alex Zakaras eds., J.S. Mill’s Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2007, pp. 262-263.
Concerning about the theory of deliberative democracy of Amy Gutmann and some critical discussion against it, see Yusuke Hirai, The Educational Theory of Amy Gutmann: Development of Egalitarian Arguments in the Contemporary American Philosophy of Education, (in Japanese) Yokohama: Seori Shobo, 2017.
Biesta, op.cit., 2011, p. 92.
Ibid., p. 97.
Janet Semple, Bentham’s Prison: A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, p. 321.
Philip Schofield, Bentham: A Guide for the Perplexed, London: Continuum, 2009, p. 70.
Sonoe Omoda, The History of Conflict of Government: Foucault’s Lecture of 1978-1979, (in Japanese) Tokyo: Keiso Shobo, 2018, pp. 406-408.
On this point, see also Christian Laval, ‘‘Ce que Foucault a appris de Bentham,’’ Revue d’études benthamiennes, 8, 2011, and the other articles in the special issue of that journal on ‘‘Foucault and utilitarianism.’’
Anne Brunon-Ernst, ‘‘Deconstructing Panopticism into the Plural Panopticons’’, in Anne Brunon-Ernst ed., Beyond Foucault: New Perspectives on Bentham’s Panopticon, Abingdon: Routledge, 2016, p. 28.
Jeremy Bentham, Constitutional Code, vol.1, F. Rosen and J.H. Burns eds., Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, Clarendon Press, 1983, p. 35.
Brunon-Ernst, op.cit., p. 24.
Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon, Letter IX.
Ibid., Letter VI.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin Books, 1979, p. 207. Foucault’s French original text is as follows. "Pas de risqué par consequent que l’accroissement de pouvoir, dû à la machine panoptique puisse dégénérer en tyrannie; le dispositive disciplinaire sera démocratiquement contrôlé, puisqu’il sera sans cesse accessible « au grand comité du tribunal du monde »" (Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison, Paris: Gallimar, 1975, p. 209.) Aside from the change of the word order through the process of translation from French to English, Foucault failed to quote the phrase of Bentham correctly. He missed the word ‘‘open’’.
Frederick Rosen, Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy: A Study of Constitutional Code, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, Paul J. Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and Civil Law, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
On this point, see also Christian Laval, ‘‘From Discipline and Punish to The Birth of Biopolitics,’’ in Anne Brunon-Ernst ed., Beyond Foucault: New Perspectives on Bentham’s Panopticon, Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-1979, ed. by Michel Senellart, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 10.
Ibid., p. 40. Foucault referred to two ways of setting limitations to the exercise of power. One is ‘‘starting from the rights of man in order to arrive at the limitation of governmentality by way of the constitution of the sovereign.’’ (ibid., p. 39). The other is starting from ‘‘governmental practice itself.’’ (ibid., p. 40). The latter is connected to English radicalism.
Ibid. p. 41.
Ibid., p, 67.
Ibid.
Anne Brunon-Ernst, ‘‘Foucault Revisited,’’ Journal of Bentham Studies, vol. 9, No. 1, 2007.
Foucault, op.cit., 2008, p. 32.
Bentham, Panopticon, ‘‘Postscript II: Containing a Plan of Management for a Panopticon Penitentiary House’’, p. 29 in the London edition.
Ibid., 21.
Bentham, Panopticon, Letter VI.
Guillaume Tusseau, ‘‘From the Penitentiary to the Political Panoptic Paradigm,’’ in Anne Brunon-Ernst ed., Beyond Foucault: New Perspectives on Bentham’s Panopticon, Abingdon: Routledge, 2016, p. 138.
James Tarrant, ‘‘Utilitarianism, Education and the Philosophy of Moral Insignificance’’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 25, No. 1, 1991, p. 61, T.G. Miles, who opposed to Tarrant’s interpretation of J.S. Mill’s utilitarianism, also said as follows: ‘‘Nonetheless, in the end, I would agree with Tarrant that utilitarianism is an unsatisfactory philosophy and as such cannot provide an adequate basis for education.’’ T.G. Miles, ‘‘Utilitarianism and Education: a reply to James Tarrant’’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 26, No. 2, p. 263. In any case, utilitarianism is regarded as ‘‘incompatible with democracy and an education for democracy’’. (Tarrant, ibid., p. 66).
Brunon-Ernst, op. cit., p. 36.
Shuntaro Obata, Jeremy Bentham and the English Constitution: State, Church, and Public Opinion, (in Japanese) Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2013, p. 274.
Jeremy Bentham, Chrestomathia, M.J. Smith and W.H. Burston eds., Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 27-30.
Obata, op.cit., pp. 275-276. Malik Bozzo-Rey researches Bentham’s School of Legislation in his article ‘‘Publicity and Nomography: Bentham’s School of Legislation,’’ Journal of Bentham Studies, vol. 12, No. 1, 2010. According to this paper, the publicity of laws, the communication between the sovereign and the governed, and the rigorous language are relevant for this School.
Philip Schofield, ‘‘Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)’’, in Mardus D. Dubber, Oxford Handbook of Legal History, Oxford: Oxford U.P. 2018, p. 393.
Kazuya Takashima, Bentham on Language: Utilitarianism and Pragmatism in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham, (in Japanese) Tokyo: Keio U.P., 2017, p.284, Philip Schofield, Utility and Democracy: The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham, Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2006, pp.265-266. See also Takashima’s article “Bentham’s Theory of Language: its Structure, Originality, and Significance to his Political Radicalism” in this special issue.
Gutmann, op. cit., 2003, p. 509.
Bentham, Chrestomathia, p. 30.
Bentham, Constitutional Code, vol.1, p. 35. However, in another place, when Bentham discussed the persons composing the Public Opinion Tribunal, he said that ‘‘a large proportion of the number, to wit children below a certain age, is composed of those who by physical infirmity are rendered absolutely incapable of taking such part.’’ (Jeremy Bentham, Security against Misrule and Other Constitutional Writings for Tripoli and Greece, Philip Schofield ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 57).
Bentham, Panopticon, Preface.
Bentham, Panopticon, Letter XXI.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jeremy Bentham, Writing on the Poor Laws, Vol. II, M. Quinn ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010, p. 515.
Ibid., p. 538.
Ibid., p. 500.
In the manuscript on pauper education, Bentham said, ‘‘Education is government in miniature: legislation and administration in miniature.’’ (UCL, MSS, CVIIIa88) On Bentham’s educational thought, see also Kayoko Komatsu, Social Government and Education: The Educational Thought of Bentham, (in Japanese) Ryugasaki: Ryutsu Keizai U.P., 2006.
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