Jeremy Bentham

(British philosopher and utilitarian legal reformer, 1748–1832). Bentham advocated a hedonistic utilitarian calculus in which an action is correct if it augments the pleasure of those affected. Pleasure, he said, is the only good and pain the only evil. He is the author of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, and the inventor of the panopticon (never built), a circular prison in the middle of which stands a circular surveillance tower that affords a view into each of the prison cells; the guards in the tower remain invisible to the prisoners, who never know whether they are being observed or not.