Panopticon (Jeremy Bentham)

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Revision as of 11:17, 22 October 2010

Assignment 3

Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher int.al. is the founder of the Panopticon or Panopticum. A characteristic feature of Bentham's utilaristic theory is the idea that the rightness of an action depends on the value of its consequences. Following the principle of the prison’s guard(s) so-called onehunderd percent focus on the prisoners. Or at least have the idea of following all prisoners at one time. On their turn, prisoners have the feeling constantly being watched. An ultimate result will lead to a better controlled mindset of behaviour in any sense.

Michel Foucault ( Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison 1975 ) has described some main underlying principles about Bentham’s Panopticon. Foucault challenges the accepted idea that the prison became the consistent form of punishment due to humanitarian concerns of reformists, although he does not deny those. He does so by tracing out the shifts in culture that led to the prison's dominance, focusing on the body and questions of power. Prison is a form used by the "disciplines", which can also be found, according to Foucault, in schools, hospitals, military barracks, etc. The main ideas of Discipline and Punish can be grouped according to its four parts: torture, punishment, discipline and prison.

Sources:

- Foucault, M. (1983) Afterword: the subject and power. In: Dreyfus, H.L. & Rabinow, P. Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. Univer-sity of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 208-226.

http://www.livingphilosophy.org.uk/philosophy/Jeremy_Bentham/ [1]

By Jorg Schröder (s4083245) & Ivar Le Loux (s4092031)