Thinking with Trees: Philosophical and Legal Genealogies in “Auto-Icon” and Other Texts by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

This article focuses on a late, unfinished and unpublished treatise by Jeremy Bentham entitled “Auto-Icon; or, Farther Uses of the Dead to the Living”, in which the tree of knowledge, the tree of law (arbor jurisdictionis) and the genealogical tree are interwoven. The Auto-Icons – or effigies – of philosophers and legal theorists were to be brought in conversation, comparing their positions on topics such as learning, law and legacies. On epistemological matters, Bentham sought to correct the failings of earlier models of tree diagrams, but remained convinced that the tree was the best model to offer an overview of the structure of arts and sciences. The tree proved as much a resource as a challenge, raising questions about its composition, orientation, ornamentation, as well as the desirable number of subdivisions. Answering such questions led Bentham to position himself in a genealogy of philosophers. But the tree is also very much present in the discussion of the “commemorational” uses to which Auto-Icons could be put, not least because woods and trees played a key role in the construction of the Common Law tradition as an unbroken patrilinear genealogy. Through the use of irony and satire, Bentham seems to mock both the pretensions of the nobility and, in a reflective gesture, his own bid for posthumous fame. With its excesses and oddities, “Auto-Icon” reminds readers that the tree is not a “natural” metaphor and that its various uses have a history, which needs to be traced so as to contextualize the ideology such uses convey.