Michael Quinn 

Visiting Fellow

Academic Career

Current Research Project

I am using the fellowship generously awarded by German Collaborative Research Centre SFB/TRR 138 to complete an introductory book for students and general readers on the philosophy of the English utilitarian Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) for the Polity Press. The book centres on Bentham’s role as a theorist of government, which is to say, in his terminology, of legislation, or, in contemporary terminology, of public policy.

Key research activities

Currently, reading (not enough); writing (too slowly); re-writing (too inadequately). My core research interests lie in equality and theories of Justice; history of political thought; the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, with particular reference to the application of the principle of utility to law, government and public policy; utility and truth; universalist principles and context dependent applications; law, culture and normative orders.

Publications

Books

• Forthcoming: Bentham, Cambridge, Polity (Classic Thinkers series), [2021].
• Justice and Egalitarianism: Formal and Substantive Equality in some recent theories of Justice, Garland, New York, 1991 (Reprinted by Routledge, London, 2019).

Edited books

Bentham’s Theory of Law and Public Opinion, ed. X. Zhai and M. Quinn, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Edited Volumes in the Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham

• Writings on Political Economy Volume II: Financial Resources including Supply without Burthen and Proposals relative to divers modes of Supply, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2019.
• Writings on Political Economy Volume I: including Defence of Usury, Manual of Political Economy, and A Protest Against Law Taxes, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2016.
• Writings on the Poor Laws Volume II, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2010.
• Writings on the Poor Laws Volume I, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2001.
• (As Co-Editor) Of Sexual Irregularities, and other writings on Sexual Morality, ed. P. Schofield, C. Pease-Watkin and M. Quinn, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2014.

Pre-publication online versions of Bentham Collected Works Volumes

• Writings on Political Economy Volume V: Wealth, Money and Prices; including Thoughts on Paper Money, Defence of a Maximum, and Method and Leading Features of an Institute of Political Economy (uploaded to UCL Digital Repository November 2019). https://rdr.ucl.ac.uk/articles/Writings_on_Political_Economy_Volume_V_Preliminaries_and_preliminary_text_files_1-2_5-15_/10110860
• Writings on Political Economy Volume IV: Circulating Annuities and other writings on National Debt (uploaded to UCL Digital Repository October 2019). https://rdr.ucl.ac.uk/articles/Writings_on_Political_Economy_Volume_IV_Preliminaries_and_Text_files_1-5/9897596/2
• Writings on Political Economy Volume III: Preventive Police (forthcoming from Clarendon Press), (uploaded to UCL Discovery platform August 2018) available at http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10055084/
• (As co-editor) ‘Not Paul, but Jesus. Volume III. Doctrine’, Bentham Project, (uploaded to UCL Discovery platform August 2013) available at http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1392179/

Edited Journal Special Issue

• History of European Ideas 43-1 (2017), ‘Indirect Legislation: Jeremy Bentham’s Regulatory Revolution’, ed. M. Bozzo-Rey, A. Brunon-Ernst, and M. Quinn.

Journal Articles and Chapters in Books

• ‘“The first article to look to is power”: Jeremy Bentham, Happiness, and the Capability Approach’, in Happiness and Utility: Essays presented to Frederick Rosen, ed. G. Varouxakis & M. Philp, London, UCL Press, 2019, 118–42.
• ‘Bentham on Preventive Police: the Calendar of Delinquency in evaluation of policy, and the Police Gazette in manipulation of opinion’, International Criminal Justice Review, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1057567719827343 (published online 26 February 2019).
• ‘Jeremy Bentham, choice architect: law, indirect legislation, and the context of choice’, History of European Ideas, 43-1 (2017), 11-33. doi:10.1080/01916599.2016.1251720
• ‘Jeremy Bentham, “The Psychology of Economic Man”, and Behavioural Economics’, Œconomia 6-1 (2016), 3–32. doi:10.4000/oeconomia.2249
• ‘Fuller on Legal Fictions: A Benthamic Perspective’, in M. Del Mar, & W.L. Twining  eds., Legal Fictions in Theory and Practice. Dordrecht & London, Springer, 2015. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-09232-4 (earlier version published in International Journal of Law in Context 9 (2013), 166–84).
• ‘Popular Prejudices, Real Pains: What is the Legislator To Do When the People Err in Assigning Mischief?’, in Bentham’s Theory of Law and Public Opinion, ed. X. Zhai and M. Quinn, Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 63–89.
• ‘Bentham on Mensuration: Calculation and Moral Reasoning’, Utilitas 26 (2014), 61–104. doi:10.1017/S0953820813000241
• ‘Jeremy Bentham on physical disability: a problem for whom?’, Review of Disability Studies 8.4 (2012), 19–32.
• ‘Which comes first, Bentham’s chicken of utility or his egg of truth?’, Journal of Bentham Studies 14 (2012).
• ‘L’archetypation et la recherche d’images significantes: significant et signifié dans la logique de Bentham’, Essaim 28 (2012), 171–81.
• ‘Counting Pleasures and Pains, and Counting Heads’, Philosophy and Public Issues—Filosofia e questioni pubbliche 1 (new series) (2011), 21–9.
• ‘Post-modern moments in the application of empirical principles: power, knowledge, and discourse in the thought of Jeremy Bentham vs. Michel Foucault’, Revue d'études benthamiennes 8 (April 2011).
• ‘A Failure to reconcile the irreconcilable? Security, subsistence and equality in Bentham’s writings on the Civil Code, and on the poor laws’, History of Political Thought 29 (2008), 320–43.
• ‘Mill on poverty, population and poor relief: out of Bentham by Malthus?’, Revue d'études benthamiennes 4 (February 2008).
• ‘The Fallacy of Non-Interference: The Poor Panopticon and Equality of Opportunity’, Journal of Bentham Studies 1 (1996).
• ‘Jeremy Bentham on the Relief of Indigence: An Exercise in Applied Philosophy’, Utilitas 6 (1994), 81–96.
• ‘Liberal Egalitarianism, Utility and Social Justice’, Utilitas 5 (1993), 311–16.
• ‘Aristotle on Justice, Equality, and the Rule of Law’, Polis 9 (1991), 170–86.
• ‘Self-interest, the Common Good and the “New Orthodoxy”’, Utilitas 2 (1990), 143–9.