Taking Interests Seriously

After a brief preliminary examination of the role in classical and medieval political thought of such concepts as “virtue,†“law,†and “nature,†this article argues that in 17th-century British and French social and political theory, the idea of “interest†achieved an unprecedented and significant centrality. The discovery that “interest will not lie†was followed by the discovery that self-interest was fundamental to social and political behavior. Benthamite utilitarianism was the quintessential, though not the only, embodiment of this perspective. Bentham's intellectual response to the natural rights theories of the French revolutionaries is examined to illustrate the possibilities for contrast and contention between rights-based and interest-based political theories. Finally, possible implications for contemporary political discourse of the distinction between rights- and interest-based modes of discourse are examined.