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Jeremy Bentham and Karl Marx: Political Philosophers Essay

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On Bentham

Jeremy Bentham was one of those thinkers whose reasoning and ideas were heavily intertwined with politics and legislation. Many contradictions and obsolete elements of the English laws irritated him, and he developed utilitarianism as a modern methodology for their final solution (Strauss & Cropsey, 1987). According to this philosophical paradigm, it is meaningless, useless, and inefficient to consider separate actions in their sequence as ethically right or wrong (Strauss & Cropsey, 1987). Only their consequences should be evaluated based on the categories of pleasures and pains brought (Strauss & Cropsey, 1987). The desire for innovation and intolerance for the traditional are among the pillars of utilitarianism. These principles can be found in modern political philosophy in various progressive movements, both left and right.

Bentham lived at a time of hasty development of the ideas of liberalism and socialism, the bloody and violent emergence of European nations, and the Industrial Revolution. The world was offering incredible new opportunities in exchange for temporary hardships and hard choices, forming the thinker’s worldview. Many American politicians, such as Ocasio-Cortez, follow the idea of progressivism; they are the ideological bearers of Bentham’s vision.

On Marx

The central political and philosophical inference of Karl Marx is the idea that the economy is the only actual lens through which society must be studied, analyzed, interpreted, and understood. He developed several concepts for successfully applying his thoughts, including dialectical materialism and the labor theory of value (Strauss & Cropsey, 1987). His work led to the emergence of political radicalism and terrorism, abolitionism, and the concept of equal civil rights in political philosophy. Marx lived in the historical period of the peak of industrial capitalism when workers in factories had almost no rights, and their conditions were literally hellish. It shocked and inspired him to conduct a deep analysis of human civilization. The modern social democrats, whose numbers are significant in the Democratic Party, are the ideological successors of Marx.

Reference

Strauss, L., & Cropsey, J. (Eds.). (1987). History of political philosophy (3rd ed.). University of Chicago Press.

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