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A review by fil
Das Panoptikum by Henry Sidgwick, Jeremy Bentham, Christian Welzbacher
2.0
Shockingly different from what I thought this would be. The first time I heard about the Panopticon, it was portrayed as a glass prison but Bentham’s letters shows it to be much, much more. A circular building with a god-like inspector placed in the middle, present in the minds, if not in actuality, of every single prisoner incarcerated there. Incredibly, he also saw it as a viable mad-house (to use his term), hospital or school!
At times extremely tedious to read: discussing design, building materials, placement of passages, windows, stairwells and other minutia. The boredom was relieved with a few mind-boggling statements, like the preference to not intermix prisoners who might have been declared innocent with those who are, without a doubt, guilty. There were few of these but they did keep me alert enough to finish reading the whole thing.
Sometimes the desire to read a certain book far outweighs the pleasure of actually reading it.
At times extremely tedious to read: discussing design, building materials, placement of passages, windows, stairwells and other minutia. The boredom was relieved with a few mind-boggling statements, like the preference to not intermix prisoners who might have been declared innocent with those who are, without a doubt, guilty. There were few of these but they did keep me alert enough to finish reading the whole thing.
Sometimes the desire to read a certain book far outweighs the pleasure of actually reading it.