School of thought
Classical Utilitarianism
Movement
Classification
- Period
- c. 1780-1900 CE
- Regions
- Europe (origin)
- Domains
- Ethics, Political Philosophy
Overview
Utilitarianism holds that the morally right action is the one that produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Bentham developed a quantitative 'hedonic calculus' for measuring pleasure and pain, while Mill refined the theory by distinguishing higher (intellectual) from lower (bodily) pleasures and defending individual liberty as essential to human flourishing.
Key ideas
- Greatest Happiness Principle: Actions are right insofar as they tend to promote happiness (pleasure and absence of pain), wrong insofar as they tend to produce the reverse — calculated impartially across all affected.
- Higher and Lower Pleasures: Mill argued: 'It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.' Intellectual and moral pleasures are qualitatively superior to mere bodily satisfaction.
- Consequentialism: The moral value of an action lies entirely in its consequences — not in the agent's motives, the act's intrinsic nature, or adherence to rules.
Key figures
Jeremy Bentham · John Stuart Mill · Henry Sidgwick
Positions held
- Consequentialism
Question scope: The Basis of Right Action
- Utilitarian Distribution
Question scope: Distributive Justice
Influenced by
- British Empiricism
- Epicureanism
Mill defended the greatest-happiness principle against the charge of being 'a doctrine worthy only of swine' by invoking the Epicureans, who had answered the same charge; the school's identification of the good with pleasure descends from that hedonist ancestry.
- French Enlightenment
Later connections
- Anarchism Influenced by this tradition
- Virtue Ethics Revival Reacted to this tradition
Anscombe's 1958 'Modern Moral Philosophy' argued that a morality fixated on rules and consequences is bankrupt without a prior account of human flourishing and character.
References
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The History of Utilitarianism
- John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1861), ch. II ('the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent'; the 1864 footnote adds that the morality depends on the intention, what the agent wills to do)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Jeremy Bentham, §§1–2; The History of Utilitarianism, §2 — Formation: Bentham's English reform project and his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, printed in 1780.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The History of Utilitarianism, §2 'The Classical Approach' (Godwin, Bentham and Mill were all concerned with legal and social reform; the wish to see useless, corrupt laws and social practices changed is named as the movement's fundamental motivation)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Consequentialism
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Distributive Justice, §5 'Welfare-Based Principles'
- John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1861), ch. II (the Epicurean theory of life invoked against the 'doctrine of swine' objection)
- Utilitarianism — John Stuart Mill
- An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation — Jeremy Bentham
- The Methods of Ethics — Henry Sidgwick