JEREMY BENTHAM'S ECONOMIC WRITINGS - Three Volume Set Critical Edition based on his Printed Works and Unprinted Manuscripts by Bentham, Jeremy ; W. Stark - 1952-54

London: George Allen and Unwin for Royal Economic Society. Near Fine in Very Good dust jacket. 1952-54. First Edition. Hardcover. 412; 458; 600 pages; Clean and secure in original black cloth bindings in very good dustjackets. Jeremy Bentham (1748 -1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham defined as the "fundamental axiom" of his philosophy the principle that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedoms, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, as well as for the abolition of slavery, capital punishment and physical punishment, including that of children. Though strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights (both of which are considered "divine" or "God-given" in origin), calling them "nonsense upon stilts." .