The son of Charles Frederick Bentley (1843–1908), and Angeline Alice Bentley (1845–1911), née Dreisbach, Arthur Fisher Bentley was born at in Freeport, Illinois on 16 October 1870. He married Anna Harrison (1868-1924) in 1899.
He taught at the University of Chicago for one year (1895-1896) and then decided to become a reporter. Later, he transitioned into editorial work at two Chicago papers, the Times-Herald and the Record-Herald. He left Chicago and life as a reporter in 1911, claiming poor health, and moved to a farm near Paoli, Indiana, where he lived for the rest of his life. The son of a successful banker, Bentley was able to finance his life as a scholar without having to work for an income.[5] He was the second person to win the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year Award, in 1954.[6] His later work was shaped by a close collaboration with John Dewey.
Orientation
Bentley held that interactions of groups are the basis of political life, and rejected statist abstractions. In his opinion, group activity determined legislation, administration and adjudication. These ideas of process-based behavioralism later became central to political science. His tenet that "social movements are brought about by group interaction" is a basic feature of contemporary pluralist and interest-group approaches.[7]
Works
The Process of Government, first published in 1908 and still in print today, had much influence on political science from the 1930s to the 1950s.[8][9] "The Human Skin: Philosophy's Last Line of Defense" was published in Philosophy of Science (Bentley, 1941). In 1949, he co-authored Knowing and the Known, a series of papers on epistemology, with John Dewey.[1]
Bentley's papers, including his correspondence with Dewey, are kept in archives at Indiana University.[10]
Publications
1893: The Condition of the Western Farmer as Illustrated by the Economic History of a Nebraska Township.
1908: The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures.[11][12]
^Ratner The Journal of Philosophy, Sidney (1958). "Arthur F. Bentley, 1870-1957". The Journal of Philosophy. 55 (14): 574.
^"Humanists of the Year". Humanist Network News. American Humanist Association. Archived from the original on November 28, 2015. Retrieved October 16, 2013.
^Although initially not of consequence, it influenced other groups such as the Chicago School who also tried to develop objective, value-free analyses of the political field. This influence is still felt decades on (1983 : Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Grenoble, Mémoire "Décision Groupale et Réalité Démocratique dans The Process of Government", P. Chabal).
Bentley, A.F. (1947), "The New 'Semiotic'", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol.8, No.1, (September 1947), pp.107-132. JSTOR2102919
Bentley, A.F. (1949), "Signs of Error", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol.10, No. 1, (September 1949), pp.99-106. JSTOR2103249
Bentley, A.F. (Ratner, S. ed.) (1954),Inquiry Into Inquiries: Essays in Social Theory, Boston: The Beacon Press.
Bentley, A.F. (Ratner, S. ed.) (1969), Makers, Users, and Masters, Syracuse, NY.: Syracuse University Press.
Dewey, J. & Bentley, A.F. (1945a), "A Search for Firm Names", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.42, No.1, (4 January 1945), pp.5-6. JSTOR2020061
Dewey, J. & Bentley, A.F. (1945b), "A Terminology for Knowings and Knowns", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.42, No.9, (26 April 1945), pp.225-247. JSTOR2019897
Dewey, J. & Bentley, A.F. (1945c), "Postulations", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.42, No.24, (22 November 1945), pp.645-662. JSTOR2020339
Dewey, J. & Bentley, A.F. (1946), "Specification", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.43, No.24, (21 November 1946), pp.645-663. JSTOR2020010
Dewey, J. & Bentley, A.F. (1947), "'Definition'", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.44, No.11, (22 May 1947), pp.281-306. JSTOR2019188
