Jeremy Bentham

Name: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation — Chapter VIII: Of Intentionality
Author: Jeremy Bentham

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation… (1780)

Summary

“An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation — Chapter VIII: Of Intentionality”, published in 1780, is a work by Jeremy Bentham. It explores elements such as intention, consequences and incident.

Quotes from An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation… (Jeremy Bentham)

Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation… (1780)

“ A man intends the act: and by his intention produces the act: but as to the circumstances, he does not intend them: he does not, inasmuch as they are circumstances of it, produce them. If by accident there be a few which he has been instrumental in producing, it has been by former intentions, directed to former acts, productive of those circumstances as the consequences: at the time in question he takes them as he finds them. Acts, with their consequences, are objects of the will as well as of the understanding: circumstances, as such, are objects of the understanding only. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation… (1780)

“ If the act be not intentional in the first stage, it is no act of yours: there is accordingly no intention on your part to produce the consequences: that is to say, the individual consequences. All there can have been on your part is a distant intention to produce other consequences, of the same nature, by some act of yours, at a future time: or else, without any intention, a bare wish to see such event take place. The second man, suppose, runs of his own accord against the first, and pushes him down. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation… (1780)

“ A man's intention then on any occasion may be styled good or bad, with reference either to the consequences of the act, or with reference to his motives. If it be deemed good or bad in any sense, it must be either because it is deemed to be productive of good or of bad consequences, or because it is deemed to originate from a good or from a bad motive. But the goodness or badness of the consequences depend upon the circumstances. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation… (1780)

“ But whether it be intentional or no in any preceding stage, is immaterial, with respect to the consequences, so it be unintentional in the last. The only point, with respect to which it is material, is the proof. The more stages the act is unintentional in, the more apparent it will commonly be, that it was unintentional with respect to the last. If a man, intending to strike you on the cheek, strikes you in the eye, and puts it out, it will probably be difficult for him to prove that it was not his intention to strike you in the eye. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation… (1780)

“ When an incident is inexclusively intentional, it may be either conjunctively so, disjunctively, or indiscriminately. It may be said to be conjunctively intentional with regard to such other incident, when the intention is to produce both: disjunctively, when the intention is to produce either the one or the other indifferently, but not both: indiscriminately, when the intention is indifferently to produce either the one or the other, or both, as it may happen.
X. Sixth. When two incidents are disjunctively intentional, they may be so with or without preference. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation… (1780)

“ IV. The consequences of an act may also be intentional, without the act's being intentional throughout; that is, without its being intentional in every stage of it: but this is not so frequent a case as the former. You intend to hurt a man, suppose, by running against him, and pushing him down: and you run towards him accordingly: but a second man coming in on a sudden between you and the first man, before you can stop yourself, you run against the second man, and by him push down the first. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation… (1780)

“ XI. One example will make all this clear. William II. king of England, being out a stag-hunting, received from Sir Walter Tyrrel a wound, of which he died . Let us take this case, and diversify it with a variety of suppositions, correspondent to the distinctions just laid down. ”

Jeremy Bentham

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Quotes from An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation… (Jeremy Bentham)

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