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Good morning, everyone.
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And how wonderful to see such a big welcoming crowd
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for our talk. Thank you all for coming out this morning.
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I'll introduce us first. Maybe me first sing.
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I'm talking I'm Stephanie Johnston former book publisher at Wakefield
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press and now practicing urban and heritage planner.
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And one of the big projects I've been working on for the past it's
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actually seven years now is the Mount lofty ranges world
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heritage nomination.
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And I also sit on the Adelaide Parklands authority.
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So that is actually the context for my encounter
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with Dr. Tim pauser.
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Tim is senior research associate at the Bentham project
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at the UCL university college of London's faculty of laws.
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And he's brought here by arts,
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humanity research council of the UK research council.
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So I came across Tim in my research for
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the Mount lofty bed. So at the heart of a world,
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heritage nomination is the requirement to meet at least
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one criteria.
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There are seven altogether and half of those are cultural criteria and the
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other half are natural criteria,
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which is already a sort of uncomfortable division. However, those, those,
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those,
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those two sort of area UNESCO areas are actually brought together in the world
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of cultural landscapes,
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which are landscapes that have evolved over time through the interaction of
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people and the environment. And so what we're looking in at,
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in the Mount lofty ranges, and also I might add that the Adelaide Parklands are,
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are also now moving to go for a world heritage nomination.
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And it may end up that the two end up being combined and they will be
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under an historical argument.
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So what we're trying to do is demonstrate one of the, well,
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a couple of the criteria,
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one is to demonstrate a significant stage in world history and the
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other is to be directly or tangibly associated with events or
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ideas of outstanding universal significance,
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which brings us to Jeremy Bentham and the philosophical
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radicals in London back in the 1820s and thirties.
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And I'm going to ask Tim to explain to us who were the philosophical
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radicals and what kind of radical ideas did they promote?
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The philosophical radicals were sort of the first people moving towards
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democratic reform of but the British establishment essentially
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stole from,
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with the franchise abolition of slavery and see transportations and new south
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Wales and van Diemen's land.
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And many of them were influenced by bend to them.
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Many of them were Ben somites meant like so William Molesworth in particular was
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a real he was the bentonite spent the money as it were.
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But George Grote Torrens, these were people who've been some new
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regular reading and discussion forums in London.
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They would meet to discuss Bentham's works as well as others.
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So it's sort of Bentham is at the heart of this nexus of reform,
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even though as ever with Bentham.
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It's not usually him that has the direct influence upon government policy.
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It's usually the next generation of Bentham mites who do so for
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instance, with the abolition of transportation,
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Bentham wrote about new south Wales in 1802 and 18 or three,
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but it wasn't until several decades later in the 1830s.
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And particularly with the select committee of 1837 and 38
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chaired by William Molesworth, which
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partly led to the abolition of transportation to new south Wales.
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And that was worth reports on transportation is a really Bentham
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document that follows the same methodology has been from dead 35 years earlier
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music, the same language. And it's the same with, as we see,
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we'll see with the colonization of south Australia,
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I think that Bentham's ideas are in there and democratic reform
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Bentham wanted annual parliaments universal
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franchise votes for women. So he was ahead of his time in.
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That sense. Okay. And
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I guess it's what we're,
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we're we're looking at is trying to make these connections between Benz and the
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man and south Australia, but maybe you could also,
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apart from those big, broad, big picture ideas,
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which I guess were really the beginning of modern democracies as we
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know them what was, what,
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what else was Bentham in terms of you know, his philosophies and, and so on,
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and what else is he known most known for beyond his time? Yeah.
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Bentham, I guess, is best known for, for three things. Firstly,
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and most importantly,
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he's the founder or the founder of the modern doctrine of utilitarianism.
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That is the,
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the idea that every action and piece of legislation should be to promote the
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greatest happiness of the greatest number as is most famously known for saying
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so the principle of utility Bentham applied to everything that he,
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he thought about it later in his life.
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So it was he thought people were motivated by the avoidance of pain
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and the gaining of pleasure and pleasure being the analog for,
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for happiness.
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So Bentham's essential philosophy was that the
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government should act in the greater good which,
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so it leads to the second thing he's most famous for the,
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this the panoptic and penitentiary scheme, which spent them's design,
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which he came up within the seven early 1790s.
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He spent a decade trying to persuade the government to build one.
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So essentially it's a circular prison with the cells arranged around the outer
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wall.
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The center of the prison would have been dominated by an inspection tower in
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which the governor sat and the governor could look into the sales at any moment,
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see what the prisoners were up to. But the most importantly,
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the prisoners couldn't see the governor.
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So they had to assume they were being watched at all times and behave in order
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to avoid the punishment that would follow eminent.
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It's essentially sort of the God in the machine would be the governor and the
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governor would have been bent them if he'd persuaded the government to build
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one. So he spent 10 years trying to get it done a lot of energy,
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a lot of money.
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And he found it utterly dispiriting when the government Welsh on the deal
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at the legislation, the 1794 penitentiary act,
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and the appropriation act of 1799 had authorized the building of the panopticon.
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And Benson thought that ministers had just set aside this legislation on their
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own authority. And this was on just,
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and it it's the panopticon experience we think,
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which made Bentham more radical. And he developed this theory,
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what he called sinister interests.
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The idea that the government was acting in its own interests and in the interest
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of the rich and the powerful and the mobility.
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Whereas they should be acting in the interests of the people and
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applying the principle of utility oddly relevant to these ideas.
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So he became more and more radical throughout the rest of his life.
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Essentially he was a rabbinic Republican Democrat by the time.
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But like other he's actually in New York at the moment.
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Yes.
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the third thing he's most famous for is asking to be
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resected after his death and then his skeleton to be reassembled and put on
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display.
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So it bent died in 1832 just prior to the passage of the
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1832 anatomy act.
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And this was a period when there was a shortage of corpses to be dissected by
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surgeons to advance medical science,
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Bentham was not religious.
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He thought the body was just a wondrous machine.
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And when you died that that's that's it.
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So to help promote general welfare,
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he asked for his body to eat the thought about,
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he first asked to be detected and give his body to science when he was 21.
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So it wasn't just the, the last women, a strange old man.
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So he'd been thinking about it for many years and he was distracted in front of
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an audience of his friends, which may have been a bit odd for them,
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but not for him. And after the section,
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the body was reassembled by one of his disciples,
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Thomas Sanford Smith another philosophical radical who was involved in
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the passage of the 1832 anatomy act. And the,
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the auto icon is he spent them skeleton, it's padded out,
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dressed in a suit of his own cloths and with a wax head on top.
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He wanted his real head to be part of it,
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but the preservation program process didn't go very well. So there's this,
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this like this, and yes, I,
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Stephanie says he's currently in New York at the metropolitan museum of arts on
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a, a an exhibition about the human body.
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So I think he'll be back in London in August. He might get back. In fact,
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actually he might get back to the UK before I do I'll race him.
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So I guess the, the,
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the next area I'd like to explore.
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So I think many of you will be aware. Yeah, well,
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I find most people in south Australia are aware of Colonel light and the role
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that light played and the sort of on the ground
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governor Hindmarsh and the debates about where to locate Adelaide and so on.
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But I found when I was director of Wakefield press,
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that it would give Wakefield,
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wasn't actually nearly as well known maybe amongst this audience,
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but in terms of the broader public school kids. And so on,
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everyone had this vague idea of maybe the Wakefield plan for south Australia,
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but I found myself explaining the way well learning and explaining as I went
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along, being corrected by my historian business partner,
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but I thought it might be useful just to run through what is,
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what were the core tenants of the Wakefield plan.
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And then we look at how that relates to Jeremy
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Bentham and back to England.
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So we were talking about the philosophical radicals and
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Wakefield press I mean, Wakefield
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was actually in prison reading all that material, I think, and the,
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in particular, the anti colonization material.
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And that's where he kind of cooked up his idea for
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a well,
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a way to colonize that was wouldn't require slavery and wouldn't
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require convicted transportation and the
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core areas,
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the core ideas he came up with was rather than, you know,
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when he looked at other failed collar colonies. And one of them was in fact,
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the Swan river valley purse, original colony,
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which made an attempt to settle with free settlers
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however, failed to succeed because of the lack of labor supply,
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because settlers could get land. And and then,
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but because everyone could get land, there was no one there to work the land.
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And so he came up with the idea that you would have to put a price on the land,
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so that, and the, and that everything should be sold well in advance.
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And that the money from the sale of that land would then pay for settlers to
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come out.
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And it was very important that there were to be a certain kind of settler,
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so a young couples and possibly children
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and, and that these couple, and then the,
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that the price of the land when these couples came out would
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require them to have to work for a number of years before they could afford to
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buy their own land.
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But the carrot of eventually owning land in a new colony was there to
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entice people out and,
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and other ideas that came in here with the idea to concentrate the settlements.
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So to not let it be disperse, dispersed, and therefore uncivilized.
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So it was trying to set up a sort of civilized society from the start
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and in all, that was the importance of self-sufficiency as well.
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So the idea that it would be a self-supporting society,
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that wouldn't be a drain the mother country, if you like,
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and involved in that was the idea of agriculture at the heart of that
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society.
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So you can start to see where the idea of the agricultural landscapes
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and their connection to these ideas fits in and a happy society.
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So that's probably a way, so where did, how,
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how do you know how much of a connection was there actually between Bentham and
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how do we know that Bentham was involved in all this planning by Waco? Cause we,
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we tend to hear about Wakefield, but we don't hear much about Bentham.
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Yeah. in August, 1831,
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Bentham wrote this document, colonization, the company proposal,
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his own sort of outline for how this free democratic colony,
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which would promote utility,
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could be founded in south Australia and as excuse me,
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as Bentham scholars
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it can seem a bit in congruous with what Bentham wrote about colonies
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elsewhere.
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He's generally regarded as an anti-colonial thinker.
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During the 1790s, he wrote a,
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an address to the national assembly of France in 1793,
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actually the year before he'd been made an honorary citizen of France,
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and it was called Jeremy Bentham's address to the national assembly,
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something along those lines,
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but he only published it in 1830 and it was called inland your colonies.
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So it gives you an idea of where he's coming from.
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Bentham's basic arguments against colonies were that they were an economic drain
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upon the mother country that
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capital was better invested in the mother country itself.
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That colonies exacerbated that were a cause of war in the
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European powers would fight over them and their resource and their alleged
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resources.
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It meant that the European powers had to maintain huge standing armies
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to and send out expeditionary forces to put down any rebellions and yeah,
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by emancipating,
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their colonies France would save money be an example to the rest of the world
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and emancipating their colonies and
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giving freedom to French citizens abroad. So in, in that sense,
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this can seem odd,
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but Bentham was always willing to see the potential benefits of
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colonies and colonization if,
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if it could be done in an ordered fashion without any of the corruption
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that other phenol other colonies had seen such as it particularly in the penal
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colony of new south Wales and thought it had been established and timely
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illegally. So he was,
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he was always willing to countenance having a
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colony is, is safe,
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particularly if it would act as a safety valve in terms of allowing
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what they called excess population in the UK to immigrate.
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So there's the whole debate around Thomas Malthus and the fear of
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subsist population, outstripping, subsistence,
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and not been able to supply its population.
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Bentham definitely knew it would given Wakefield.
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It's not entirely clear when they met.
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But Bentham definitely knew Wakefield's father for at least 25 years before
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he wrote this.
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And there's a letter somewhere where Wakefield senior's described as being one
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in Bentham's intimate circle. So they're reasonably close.
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Wakefield did send one of his works anonymously to Bentham in 1829.
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And there's a Bentham's copy of this pamphlet is in the British library in
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London. And it's got a very bemused note, presents them written on it,
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saying something along the lines of sent by anonymous author without an
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explanatory note.
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But he in Wakefield's work England in America,
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which was published in 1833,
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Wakefield suggests that or implies at least that he converted Bentham
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to seeing the potential advantages of colonies and colonization.
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But given the Bentham from it held that view already for 30 odd years,
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I suspect Wakefield's version could be reasonably discounted and Bentham
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himself would have disagreed with the idea that Wakefield converted in Weaver or
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non-published letter in the Benson project written in June,
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1831 to another radical MP called Joseph Hume,
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where Bentham says he had essentially thrown his mantle over Wakefield
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and he would turn into good account.
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So Bentham seems to be saying that he converted Wakefield's to his way of
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thinking. So I think it's, it's probably somewhere in the, in the middle,
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I suspect it was discussions that there isn't a paper trail, sadly at the,
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we have at the moment to suggest how and why they met and how and why
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they may have influenced one another.
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It's it's a way essentially we'll have to sort of tease these ideas out of what
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the, what Benson wrote and what Wakefield or what the other members of the
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colonization society and Wakefield associates role.
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Yes. And one of the very timely things that I guess it's
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not a, not a coincidence that it's time with your visit to Australia,
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but is the actual transcription of this document.
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So this document was written in 1832,
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but it has remained in handwriting with some attempts at
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transcription.
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But this is the first time it's been properly transcribed and will be published
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in book form for the first time. But I'm kind of interested also in, you know,
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the whole work of your whole Bentham project. So what,
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and I guess this is one of the last things to be transcribed.
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But how does that fit in with the big picture of the whole Bentham project?
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Yeah. well, the,
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the Bentham project was founded in 1958 at UCL by the UCL committee.
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When they say it's essential work is to produce a new edition of Bentham's
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collected works.
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So it's a recognition of Bentham as an internationally important
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philosopher and his ideas are for universal significance.
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So we depend on project has thus far produced 33 of what we think
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will be a projected 80 volumes UCL,
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we have about 80,000 manuscript pages like this written
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or composed by Bentham. The British library has another 15,000 or so.
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So it's a colossal job just transcribing the stuff and then being able to edit
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them into text so that the new edition of Bentham's works is based upon both on
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published manuscripts and texts, the published in his lifetime.
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So we then compile those texts,
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edit them and add historical annotations to assist the reader in
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understanding what Benton was talking about.
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In many instances we have since 2010 run
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a crowdsourcing project where we've,
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we've just finished digitizing all of Bentham's papers,
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we're putting them online and volunteers from around the world have been helping
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us to transcribe them. So since October, 2010,
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the volunteers have now transcribed over 21,000 pages like that.
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Not all like that. Cause I have to say that handwriting is a Bismal.
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I mean it,
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1831 Bentham was 83
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and he was functionally blind at that point. So it's, it's pretty wretched.
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But earlier in his life, his handwriting was patchy, but readable.
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But as you can see there all the deletions
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there's several, I mean,
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a lot of the manuscripts he was editing as he went along.
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So he would write a draft, come back to it, edit it, scratch things out,
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add into any old additions. So it's,
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it's very much a detailed editorial projects.
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And there are 50 manuscripts in this particular document,
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which is Stephanie said has never been published before my head of department,
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professor Phillip Schofield.
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Who's the director of the Benton project transcribed it maybe 25 years ago.
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So we've gone back to it and sorted it out. But you have, as you,
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you might have 50 manuscript pages, but then any, by no means in order.
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So you then have to work out what texts Bentham might have discarded
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put it in order to rearrange it. So two,
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the text might finish on status,
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this folio five might finish halfway onto that, on that page.
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And then jump ahead, five pages in the numerical sequence. So it's,
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it's a complicated process.
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But we having transcribed Bentham along is fantastic because it means we have
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draft transcripts available to work with of a particular manuscript.
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So if it said, if you were editing a volume,
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I'm editing Bentham's writings on Australia and these are the contents of that
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volume. Some of these were printed in Bentham's lifetime,
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but if it's a manuscript,
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you would have to go through the entire Bentham collection or 100,000 pages
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looking for the correct. Although the relevant manuscripts transcribed them,
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edit them into coherent texts.
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So if we have draft transcripts available via transcript meant them,
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it saves a huge amount of time and we can crack on with the,
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the editorial process.
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And then the volunteers who contribute will be acknowledged in every
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introduction to the volumes, to which they've contributed.
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And there'll be acknowledged when their transcripts are uploaded to our
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free digital repository for everyone to access Bentham it.
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So it it's yeah,
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we're maximizing happiness by applying the principle of
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utility to to this.
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One of the, when Tim sent me this
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transcription and along with the,
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all the photos of the original pages one
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of the interesting things to come out of it is the discussion around the name
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for the new colony.
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And w some of us will be familiar with Don Dunstan's
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book that he named Felicia.
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And I think until this moment most,
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and that appears,
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so a few names appear in the book one is Liberia.
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And and then there are anecdotes in the,
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in the in the margin you know, with Felicia or Feliciana,
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obviously these have meanings, you know,
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associated with those ideas of freedom and happiness.
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But I gather that there might be some questions around at least
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the the name Felicia and attributing that to Ben. Yes.
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Bentham refers to his proposed,
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the proposed colony is Liberia and does so on several occasions throughout the
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text. Most of the ti the manuscript is in Bentham's hand, which is the,
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the ink there,
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but there are a number of pencil annotations in an
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unknown hand, which we're still trying to identify.
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And it's this unknown hand that suggests, as you say, Felicity in a year,
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or for this year as a, as an alternative
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I'm quite keen to figure out who this is,
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because there are certain other comments that may have influenced what Bentham
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might've thought that we,
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we don't think it's Wakefield because there's in
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following this manuscript in Benton's papers is a letter from
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Wakefield with comments it's called comments upon the colonization society's
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plan, and the handwriting is very different.
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So we're still trying to work that out. It's it's very annoying.
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Might have to crowdsource that as well.
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In all this context and discussion around ideas,
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I guess we're all also familiar with the concept of
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the south Australian colony being a paradise of descent.
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And these plans were all very much about attracting
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the labor, but also entrepreneurs,
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people who were really prepared to come out and make a go of it.
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But it seems to me,
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there was a kind of natural marriage between that and attracting the
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entrepreneurs and also attracting religious dissenters.
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Can you sort of expand on that maybe through Benson XYZ,
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but also through the way it might've been written up in the documents or.
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Came about it doesn't mention religion specifically,
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but you get the sense that it's like even the name Liberia
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suggests freedom and throughout the chapter, the manuscript, he it's,
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it's preaching tolerance and acceptance and democracy. So I think that's,
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that's certainly implied.
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And the, when the manuscript,
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hasn't very many similarities with the Wakefield plan that the was being put
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forward. So we see,
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and there are so many similarities that it's it would be very,
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it would be remarkable if it,
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if one hadn't influenced the other in so both plans
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suggest founding the colony by a joint stock of the joint stock company would
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always see the,
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the colonization south Australia that both envisage raising
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500,000 pounds and spending it in exactly the same way,
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namely purchasing the land to fund immigration,
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building the colonial infrastructure and yeah,
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and loans for small capitalists who would then come out and live in the colony.
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The immigration of young couples,
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solar Bentham took a slightly stricter line in that he wanted young couples
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without children with the very hard to police. But he,
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he thought the children would be a,
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an unnecessary drain on the colony in its early years. Whereas the,
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the Wakefield plan suggests it just says young manageable people. I think
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at least the one that's written about at the same time as this.
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So there are my suspicion is that Bentham followed
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Bentham wrote this in the light of reading the,
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the revised Wakefield plan that was submitted to government in 1831.
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Again, there's no paper trail, which as a historian is irritating,
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but but he then added his own innovation.
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So Bentham goes on to write about how the,
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the political constitution of the colony. So he comes down,
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he says, democracy is, and I call it a necessity.
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So this is his democratic radicalism coming to the forefront here.
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He does.
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He refused the idea of having a monarchy installed in
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south Australia
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because there wasn't enough money to support a Monarch in the style
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to which they were stunned,
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but also it would mean introducing a house of Lords and he didn't want
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that. And he said he would have been introducing all the corrupt political
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establishment. So the UK,
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which he'd spent decades trying to reform into this new colony,
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which would, would be pointless.
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It would just be repeating the mistakes of new south Wales and
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van Diemen's land.
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So he bent me eventually comes out to say that it should be on the
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same lines as the U S Republic, but only with the lower house. So no,
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no need for Senate. And he calls it, this,
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this simplicity is one of the attractive things about south Australia,
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that simplicity of government and that he laid out a pathway to,
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to independence for the colony so that the governor would only be in office for
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maybe four or five years when there were enough people in the colony who raised
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a petition, demanding the governor resigned, he would,
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and then the constitution,
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which would had already been drafted would just be activated.
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Independence would, would come.
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Another question that just in the last few days of
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talking to people,
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many people are interested in is if you like the Aboriginal question
463
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and whether there, you know,
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what was the context of those philosophy, philosophical radicals.
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Did Bentham have anything to say generally and or specifically about
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colonial settlements with regard to Aboriginal people?
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Well, I think the philosophical radicals were certainly involved in the,
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in the protection campaign of the period Bentham doesn't end,
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at least in colonization company proposal. Does any space plan, the Benson plan?
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He doesn't
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explicitly say anything about the indigenous people of the region,
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but in in S let's say they in setting out his
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vicinity maximizing principle, the idea of concentrated settlement.
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So everyone's in an urban center, essentially Adelaide,
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you would avoid frontier conflict with the indigenous people of the region and
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in his writings on new south Wales,
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he focuses in upon the violence inflicted upon the indigenous
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people of new south Wales by the convict colony in is one of the,
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one of the major failings of the, of the colony here.
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When he mentions the avoidance of frontier conflict in south Australia,
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he then added this marginal note to himself. So he would, this,
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this manuscript is essentially,
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it's an outline of what he would often do is write an outline of a text and then
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come back to it months, or even years later and sketch it out in full.
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So this, this may have been an aid memoir to himself.
486
00:30:55.361 --> 00:30:58.720
So he says in a van Diemen's land, it has been determined absolutely.
487
00:30:58.721 --> 00:31:00.190
To extubate the natives.
488
00:31:00.670 --> 00:31:04.300
So I find it interesting that even now we have
489
00:31:05.230 --> 00:31:09.700
debates about debates and denial denial is about what happened in van Diemen's
490
00:31:09.701 --> 00:31:12.070
land during the eighties and twenties and 1830s,
491
00:31:12.460 --> 00:31:15.010
but Bentham 10,000 miles away in 1831,
492
00:31:15.220 --> 00:31:18.460
recognized that it was a war of extermination there.
493
00:31:21.130 --> 00:31:24.130
If he'd have gone on to expand on this point,
494
00:31:24.460 --> 00:31:29.050
if he'd gone back and re written up the work more fully he would have certainly
495
00:31:29.051 --> 00:31:30.980
returned to that theme, I think, and,
496
00:31:31.570 --> 00:31:36.100
and expressed an opinion in more strident terms, I think.
497
00:31:36.760 --> 00:31:38.830
But sadly he doesn't go into any more detail here.
498
00:31:39.750 --> 00:31:42.330
One other theme, I think we've got enough time
499
00:31:44.040 --> 00:31:47.820
that I'd like to explore is this, you know,
500
00:31:47.821 --> 00:31:52.100
the concept of a utopia when you read a you,
501
00:31:52.500 --> 00:31:53.640
or is it just propaganda?
502
00:31:53.641 --> 00:31:57.180
So I guess when you read we have the one document from Bentham,
503
00:31:57.181 --> 00:32:01.110
but quite a number of documents from Wakefield and others,
504
00:32:01.111 --> 00:32:04.560
which were also basically sales documents.
505
00:32:04.561 --> 00:32:08.190
They were trying to get people to invest in their idea.
506
00:32:08.820 --> 00:32:12.270
And so there was a lot of building up of expectations,
507
00:32:12.271 --> 00:32:15.690
I would say about what w what was to be found here and,
508
00:32:15.730 --> 00:32:20.190
and how it could be the basis of an ideal society that leaves all the woes
509
00:32:20.191 --> 00:32:24.720
behind. Is there, is, was that a theme at the time,
510
00:32:24.721 --> 00:32:25.740
in terms of now,
511
00:32:25.741 --> 00:32:28.560
I'm trying to also put it in a global context where there are other people
512
00:32:28.920 --> 00:32:32.610
traveling all over the world to set up utopias, or, and how does,
513
00:32:33.150 --> 00:32:36.420
how does this sort of fit in with that moment in history?
514
00:32:37.380 --> 00:32:42.050
It does seem to be that, that moment where particularly,
515
00:32:42.170 --> 00:32:45.740
I guess, with the the abolition of transportation, so new south Wales,
516
00:32:45.770 --> 00:32:50.690
that people are thinking about ideal societies and how you model them.
517
00:32:51.790 --> 00:32:54.500
And south Australia does reading Whitefield.
518
00:32:54.501 --> 00:32:58.190
It's very idealistic and utopian that event.
519
00:32:58.580 --> 00:33:01.280
And I think Bentham is tapping into that as well in this it's,
520
00:33:01.550 --> 00:33:05.060
it's modeling the, the ideal society.
521
00:33:05.210 --> 00:33:07.370
And I think Bentham writing this,
522
00:33:07.371 --> 00:33:11.210
it's linking south Australia
523
00:33:11.690 --> 00:33:15.260
inextricably with both this, this really,
524
00:33:15.410 --> 00:33:20.300
this vitally important philosophical tradition of the mid
525
00:33:20.301 --> 00:33:23.870
19th century, but also that, that strand of utopianism and,
526
00:33:23.871 --> 00:33:28.700
and Bentham it wasn't the first utopia Bentham had thought about when he
527
00:33:28.701 --> 00:33:32.000
was writing about this panopticon in the 1790s,
528
00:33:32.900 --> 00:33:37.310
he planned an entire panopticon estate surrounding the prison.
529
00:33:37.311 --> 00:33:41.000
So he wanted people to go in the general public to go into the prison,
530
00:33:41.570 --> 00:33:45.170
to see what the governor was doing and make sure the prisoners were being
531
00:33:45.171 --> 00:33:46.004
treated well.
532
00:33:46.310 --> 00:33:49.340
And that the governor wasn't misbehaving and just generally get an idea of the
533
00:33:49.341 --> 00:33:51.140
prison, but around he,
534
00:33:51.500 --> 00:33:56.270
in a lot of unpublished manuscripts where he talks about panoptic and
535
00:33:56.271 --> 00:33:58.640
Tavern, where people could go after seeing the prison,
536
00:33:59.060 --> 00:34:02.840
ornamental gardens around place, a flying car,
537
00:34:02.900 --> 00:34:06.590
which I'm still not quite sure where that is. But it it's,
538
00:34:06.830 --> 00:34:09.590
it's creating a better world, I think,
539
00:34:09.591 --> 00:34:12.620
is the essential idea and a happier world.
540
00:34:13.040 --> 00:34:16.580
And I think that's what he's trying to do in south Australia as well.
541
00:34:17.410 --> 00:34:19.720
Yes, I was actually another cause it was, you know,
542
00:34:19.721 --> 00:34:23.680
it's pretty exciting when you got this manuscript to actually read it.
543
00:34:23.710 --> 00:34:25.900
And he had, at the beginning,
544
00:34:25.901 --> 00:34:30.420
he had a list of about 10 special ends in views.
545
00:34:30.421 --> 00:34:33.100
So what were the aims of this society?
546
00:34:33.700 --> 00:34:37.450
And I was delighted on behalf of my friend, Gabe Kelly,
547
00:34:37.451 --> 00:34:40.960
who runs the center for wellbeing here that, you know,
548
00:34:40.961 --> 00:34:45.670
about number three or four, literally spelled out that this would be a society,
549
00:34:46.000 --> 00:34:49.480
which aimed for the wellbeing of its citizens,
550
00:34:49.510 --> 00:34:54.400
both mental and physical. So, and you talked about education as well, isn't it?
551
00:34:54.810 --> 00:34:56.080
It's it's.
552
00:34:57.220 --> 00:35:01.570
It's again, cause he didn't flush it out. It's a blueprint for this,
553
00:35:01.930 --> 00:35:03.700
this new and ideal society, I think.
554
00:35:03.701 --> 00:35:07.870
And it's a really important moment
555
00:35:08.590 --> 00:35:11.170
that Bentham is getting involved in the, in the debate about this place.
556
00:35:13.210 --> 00:35:16.270
I don't know, not, not maybe not everyone here was there last night,
557
00:35:16.271 --> 00:35:19.000
but Robin Archer gave a talk and essentially at the heart,
558
00:35:19.450 --> 00:35:22.390
her talk was about I guess, cliches.
559
00:35:22.391 --> 00:35:26.050
And she was comparing the cliches of jobs and growth with,
560
00:35:26.420 --> 00:35:29.920
she started talking about cliches of freedom and democracy.
561
00:35:31.090 --> 00:35:34.240
But I think this, you know, this is very contemporary,
562
00:35:34.241 --> 00:35:38.010
this notion of how are we going to pursue jobs and growth for the rest of our
563
00:35:38.370 --> 00:35:42.330
lives? Or are we going to start looking at things like happiness once again?
564
00:35:42.380 --> 00:35:47.120
And I think in that vein one of the most recent volumes of Bentham's collected
565
00:35:47.121 --> 00:35:50.660
works, which has been published edited by the director,
566
00:35:50.950 --> 00:35:55.310
Phillips Schofield is of worked called the book, the book of fallacies,
567
00:35:55.850 --> 00:36:00.140
which is Bentham's analysis of how politicians use fallacious
568
00:36:00.141 --> 00:36:02.600
arguments to prevent reform
569
00:36:04.790 --> 00:36:09.230
and forestall things. So it's things like appealing to authority and so on.
570
00:36:09.231 --> 00:36:11.300
And it it's of real contemporary relevance.
571
00:36:11.301 --> 00:36:15.140
So he imagined the board with all these final fees could be
572
00:36:16.010 --> 00:36:19.850
stuck on the wall in the house of commons and pointed to if one of the
573
00:36:19.851 --> 00:36:23.360
politicians used one of the fantasies. So I loved that idea.
574
00:36:23.361 --> 00:36:24.194
I think it should be.
575
00:36:24.590 --> 00:36:27.890
I'd like I'd like one of the ones in the commons in the UK, because as you know,
576
00:36:27.891 --> 00:36:32.630
that UK is having a bit of a meltdown at the moment with the alarm buzzer that
577
00:36:32.631 --> 00:36:37.460
would go off when someone uses these things. But it's a real relevance.
578
00:36:37.461 --> 00:36:40.280
And again, I think that the,
579
00:36:40.281 --> 00:36:45.070
this is an attempt to form a society where you don't have to reform it's
580
00:36:45.170 --> 00:36:47.300
done from the beginning and set up properly.
581
00:36:48.350 --> 00:36:50.480
And self-correcting, I think that was,
582
00:36:50.510 --> 00:36:52.760
that was something we probably had to wind up with.
583
00:36:52.761 --> 00:36:56.330
I think it was always hoped that you would set,
584
00:36:56.360 --> 00:37:00.890
but it wouldn't be fixed in concrete that it would be something that could adapt
585
00:37:01.010 --> 00:37:05.840
and evolve and correct itself over time. Yeah. Okay. Well,
586
00:37:05.841 --> 00:37:08.090
we're on to question time.