Quotation
Last reviewed:
“Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.”
Jeremy Bentham · Utilitarianism · Enlightenment · 1796
What does it mean?
Rights without a law that creates and enforces them are, on his account, fictions wearing the costume of thunder, and a right is the child of law, while law itself should be judged by utility. The usual reading takes nonsense upon stilts as a real attack on the French Declaration, not as a tweet he did not write. A rival reading hears a sneer at every claim of justice, but he is attacking rights talk that cannot assign a duty or a sanction. The English is his, in Anarchical Fallacies, and the phrase is genuinely his.
Did Jeremy Bentham really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Bentham's own English, from Anarchical Fallacies, an attack on the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, written in 1796 and published in 1816. The phrase nonsense upon stilts is genuinely his. The wording is secure.
Where it comes from
Anarchical Fallacies (written 1796, published 1816)
Approximate date: 1796.
How to use it
If a right is claimed at a workplace in Derby, be ready to say what duty it imposes and on whom, because he thinks a right with no assignable duty is a noise. The question can be answered by someone who rejects his conclusion and still finds the demand clarifying. A poster that says rights are nonsense, and stops, has kept the insult and dropped the jurisprudence; He wants the duty named, and then he wants the law judged by pain and pleasure.
A mindset reading
The conclusion can be rejected, and the question can still be used. Many people who believe in human rights answer him by grounding the duty somewhere he refused to look, in a moral fact that is not the child of a statute. That answer is a disagreement, not a misquotation; Calling the phrase a fake quotation would be the misreading; It is one of the surest sentences he wrote.
Understand the philosophy
Anarchical Fallacies is the utilitarian case against the natural-rights language of the French Declaration. The key term is a right, which for him is a legal advantage secured by a duty and a sanction, not a pre-political possession one simply has. Later rights theorists, including Mill, have to show how rights and general happiness can fit. The phrase nonsense upon stilts is his own English, from a work written in 1796 and published in 1816.
- justice
- power
- society
FAQ
What does it mean?
Rights without a law that creates and enforces them are, on his account, fictions wearing the costume of thunder, and a right is the child of law, while law itself should be judged by utility. The usual reading takes nonsense upon stilts as a real attack on the French Declaration, not as a tweet he did not write. A rival reading hears a sneer at every claim of justice, but he is attacking rights talk that cannot assign a duty or a sanction. The English is his, in Anarchical Fallacies, and the phrase is genuinely his.
Did Jeremy Bentham really say this?
Well attested. Bentham's own English, from Anarchical Fallacies, an attack on the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, written in 1796 and published in 1816. The phrase nonsense upon stilts is genuinely his. The wording is secure.
Which work is it in?
Anarchical Fallacies (written 1796, published 1816) Approximate date: 1796.