Concept information
Preferred term
philosophic radicals
Definition
- John Stuart Mill once said of Jeremy Bentham that he “has been in this age and country the great questioner of things established.” To Bentham more than to any other source “might be traced the questioning spirit, the disposition to demand the why of everything.” It was largely owning to Bentham's influence that “the yoke of authority has been broken” among thinking people, and “innumerable opinions, formerly received on tradition, as incontestable, are put upon their defense, and required to give an account of themselves.”In a polemical flourish that overlooked Thomas Paine (among others), Mill went on to ask: “Who, before Bentham…, dared to speak disrespectfully, in express terms, of the British Constitution or the English law? He did so; and his arguments and his example together encouraged others.” Mill also notes that Bentham's works, which in many cases were densely written and difficult to understand, had “never been read by the multitude.” His influence on political events, such as the Reform Bill of 1832, which extended the franchise and corrected some of the more egregious injustices of the “rotten borough” system in Britain, was exerted not through his own writings, but “through the minds and pens which those writings fed,—through men in a more direct contact with the world, into whom his spirit passed.”Those “men in a more direct contact with the world” became known as Philosophic Radicals. Some of these men, such as James Mill, the father of John Stuart and Bentham's most influential disciple, were accomplished intellectuals in their own right, whereas others, such as John Romilly, were practical politicians who fought for Radical causes in the House of Commons. [Source: The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism; Philosophic Radicals]
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URI
https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/philosophic_radicals
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