Enlightenment and Utility

Emmanuelle de Champs is Professor of British History and Civilisation at Université Cergy-Pontoise (France) and a former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-Saint Cloud. She is a founding member of the Centre Bentham Ecole de droit de Sciences-Po, Paris, the leading French research centre in utilitarian studies and collaborates with the Bentham Project, University College London, on Bentham's French manuscripts. De Champs has published numerous articles on Bentham and classical utilitarianism, aw well as two monographs: Bentham et la France: fortunes et infortunes de L'utilitarisme (2009) and 'La déontologie politique' ou la pensée constitutionnelle de Jeremy Bentham (2008). She is a member of the Committee, Bentham Project, University College London, and a Board Member for the International Society of Utilitarian Studies.

'An impressive addition to the Cambridge University Press 'Ideas in Context' series, Emmanuelle de Champs' Enlightenment and Utility: Bentham in French, Bentham in France gives us a Bentham who is both familiar and strange. This new French Bentham guides us through a transatlantic matrix of utilitarian liberal reform ideas that began in the eighteenth century, spanned the French Revolution and dissipated only in the mid-nineteenth century. Fluent and authoritative, de Champs' narrative demonstrates the way in which historical contextualisation - which depends not only on erudition but on intelligent and imaginative judgements about how to construct a relevant context - can alter the landscape of scholarship both on well-mined figures in the history of political thought and on traditions of thought.' Cheryl B. Welch, French History

• Acknowledgements; A note on translations; Introduction; Part I. An Englishman in the Republic of Letters: 1. Languages of Enlightenment; 2. Satire and polemics; 3. Defining utilitarianism: private connections and correspondence; Part II. 'Projet d'un corps de loix complet' and the Reform of Jurisprudence in Europe: 4. The Genesis of Projet; 5. Projet in Enlightenment legal thought; 6. The politics of legal reform; Part III. Reflections for the Revolution in France: 7. Frenchmen and Francophiles: Lord Lansdowne's network; 8. British expertise for French legislators; 9. Utility, rights and revolution: missed encounters?; Part IV. Utile Dulcis? Bentham in Paris, 1802: 10. Dumont's editorship: from the Bibliothèque Britannique to Traités de législation civile et pénale; 11. A mixed reception; 12. Autumn 1802: Bentham in Paris; Part V. Liberty, Utility and Rights (1815–1832): 13. 'For one disciple in this country, I have fifty at least in France'; 14. Utilitarian arguments in French politics; 15. A Utilitarian moment? French liberals and utilitarianism; Epilogue: Bentham in the July Revolution; Conclusion; Bibliography.