Happiness, happiness...

What an admirable fellow is Jeremy Bentham!

The basic principle underpinning his utilitarian ethics was that any action is right insofar as it increases happiness, and wrong insofar as it increases pain. He spoke up for the abolition of slavery, corporal and capital punishment; for women's rights (including the right to divorce), for wider and better education; for the extension of the suffrage; for animal rights; for the decriminalization of homosexuality – and much more.

And likeable too.

While serious in his advocacies, this clever and brave man, whose humanitarian reform ideas were heavily criticised, enjoyed a sense of humour, demonstrated for example by the engagingly curious smile on his (admittedly wax work) face. and his name for his cat – The Reverend Sir John Langbourne.

But it was the instructions he left for his public dissection, preservation and exhibition in his familiar clothes and chair, along with the request that his auto-icon be occasionally wheeled out to join in a celebratory party that suggest this was a philosopher who loved life, had fun – even if necessary at his own expense – and wanted to raise a smile, if not increase happiness all round.

I've tried to represent some of this in my poem.

It has four verses of four lines each with four beats, reflecting his chair (interestingly, he was never made a professor) and solid four-square combativeness, steadfastness and rectangularity, so to speak.

I hope my admiration of this radical thinker and man of action comes through.

As for the 'poetry'...

Well, I'm not quite sure why I set myself the challenge of rhyming every line with the same sound. Perhaps, having thought about Bentham, I felt I needed to be challenged, though in a self induced and benign way.

If the end result turned out to be light verse, whatever one means by that – so much the better. After all, it's celebrating a man with a sense of humour. 

May it raise a slight smile to resonate with this affable philosopher who sought the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

Jeremy Bentham

 

Go down the stair – you'll see him there –

Jeremy Bentham, sat in his chair

in which he's been seated for many a year

surveying the scene with his quizzical air.

 

If it happens at all, it's exceedingly rare

to face eternity installed in a chair –

but looking at Bentham, I want to declare

maybe that's how I'd like to wear

 

away those long years.  Yes, I will swear

old Jeremy's afterlife out in the air

raises a smile – he needs no prayer

this student of happiness, who wanted to share

 

wisdom and wit, kindness and fair

play to all life, which he confronted four square.

Happy philosopher, freed from all care

you’ll outlive us all, upright in your chair.