This blog allows people from all over the world to help in the transcription of Jeremy Bentham’s, the great British philosopher and reformer, unpublished works. “Many hands make light work. Many hands together make merry work” (Jeremy Bentham).
The University College London makes all of Bentham’s works publicly available on this site so everyone can give a helping hand in the study of Bentham. There are 26,796 manuscripts and 38% of them are transcribed.
This project allows us to better understanding of Bentham and his philosophy in progress. Through these manuscripts, the users can read his stream of thoughts and figure out how this man was able to come up with his doctrine of Utilitarianism.
Bentham’s works are divided under 21 categories: Animal Welfare, Arts, Capital Punishment, Civil Code, Constitutional Code, Convict transportation, Correspondence, Crime & Punishment, Education, Law, Legislation, Moral Philosophy, New South Wales, Panopticon, Penal Code, Political Economy, Preventive Police, Religion, Science, Sexual Morality, and Torture.
On this site, they categorized his work into 3 difficulties: Easy, Moderate, and Hard. This enables the users to choose a manuscript according to their transcription level. UCL included a page for transcription guidelines to help users.
This is a typical Bentham’s manuscript on this site. On the right side is his own writing and on the left side is the transcription people have worked on. As you can see, his handwriting is very hard to read. A transcription takes more than one person to be able to completely figure it out. There are phrases crossed out with correction next to them. This shows that people can update every transcription and improve it. This is one of the features that makes this project successful. People are able to bring their ideas and help each other to better understanding of Bentham.