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Jeremy Bentham: The Principle of Utility Jeremy Bentham was born in 1748. Bentham was very smart his whole life. He taught himself how to read without teachers at a very young age. He kept up his high pace education when he entered Oxford University at the age of twelve. In his early years he was an advocate of enlightened despotism, but later favored democratic reform. Bentham is most known for being one of the founders of the principle of utilitarianism. The other major founder of this theory is John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism is simply the idea of doing whatever promotes the greatest good. Bentham was an opponent of natural law. He referred to natural law as nonsense on stilts. Bentham believed law was a command of a legislator. So, unless nature was a being issuing commands, one could not speak of natural laws. He believed that what is natural to humans is the inclinations of pain and pleasure. In 1780 Bentham wrote the book An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. In this book he expressed a good amount of his ideas