The Classical School of Thought

Jeremy Bentham

Cesare Beccaria

           In this passage, the author introduced the Classical school of thought concerning sociological theory.  He explained that its origins were the ideas that became prominent in the Classical movement, which saw the rise of the middle class over the aristocracy and championed critical thinking.  Two of the school's main figures were Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham.  The author conveyed that the Classical school of thought had certain assumptions that it based its theories and methods on.  One of these was hedonism, which stated that people are inclined, in their most base decisions, to choose that which results in the most pleasure and the least pain.  Further, it was reasoned that the man had the ability to reason and decide the actions to take to achieve these goals, and to take all considerations into account.  The school also saw that government existed to protect the rights of the people, and was a servant of the people instead of the other way around, as it had been for so long.  There was, then, a “social contract” between the governing and the governed, through which the governed gave up only those individual rights necessary to ensure the safety and preservation of the common rights of all. 

The author explained some of the tenets of the Classical school of thought, which include the concepts of hedonism, human dignity, deterrence, and due process.  The school saw law as the method by which the government ensured the protection of the rights of all, and saw the idea of deterrence as the vessel through which this was accomplished.  Thus, it was believed that those things which appealed to the individual but were a detriment to the common good and rights needed to be discouraged by way of punishment.  In other words, the pleasure that was brought about by doing these acts needed to be compensated for by pain inflicted through punishment by the law.  Only the amount of pain equivalent to the amount of pleasure was necessary and justified.  Further, due process of law was required so that the dignity and rights of the individual were not squandered.  A speedy sentence and punishment should be brought about, so that the pain would be associated with the crime in both the criminal’s mind and the minds of others.

Finally, the author endeavored to classify the school within the structure of sociological theory.  He explained that the Classical school of thought, subscribing to a hedonist viewpoint to rationalize human behavior, was conflict-oriented – claiming that without intervention from a governing body, people would deprive each other of rights for their own personal good.  Further, the school could be thought of as structural.  Its theories and application dealt largely with how crime in general was addressed, and not as much with individual criminals’ behaviors.  Thus, the author explained that the school’s ideas were macro-theoretical and were largely concerned with the politics of criminology, and not the psychology of it.

I find the mixing of the ideas of hedonism and human dignity interesting.  It seems difficult to resolve them and to find a concrete boundary between them.  If we, as people, naturally want to seek our own good rather than the good of others, it then follows that we place our own good above the good of the whole.  Yet, human dignity states that we have a sensible mind which sees the importance of the good of the group rather than the individual, which goes against the assertion of hedonism.  It is hard to rationalize this.  How can we both value individual good over public good and public good over individual good?  Further, how do we know what public good is if we see individual pleasure as ‘good?’  Could it be for our own good that we give up certain rights to the whole?  We see evidence for the coexistence of these things, yet it is difficult to explain and justify the fact.

Further, at what point does the rationale take over and the hedonist recede?  By their very nature, they must have certain irreconcilable traits, to the effect that they vie for power over each other.  So at what point does a person choose to listen to his reason instead of his base desires?  Are there some people who might be more inclined, with the same stimulus and consequences, to choose reason over desire, or vice versa?  If this is an arbitrary trait or tendency, it might be possible to predict who might be more likely to choose to continue in criminal behavior.  Application of this idea might be one of the problems facing Classical theorists.

In this chapter, the author gives an overview of the tenets and theories of the Classical school of thought and how they apply to criminology.  For me, the assumptions of the school raised interesting questions as to human nature and motivation.