What is Utilitarianism? on Utilitarianism.net

Chapter 1: Introductory

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings—the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward—I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful re-examination, which they are now never destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one-half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom.

Chapter 1: General Remarks

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Want to learn more about utilitarianism?

Read about the theory behind utilitarianism:

An Introduction to Utilitarianism

Learn how to use utilitarianism to improve the world:

Acting on Utilitarianism

Chapter 1: General Remarks

There are few circumstances among those which make up the present condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than the little progress which has been made in the decision of the controversy respecting the criterion of right and wrong. From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the summum bonum, or, what is the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem in speculative thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, and divided them into sects and schools, carrying on a vigorous warfare against one another. And after more than two thousand years the same discussions continue, philosophers are still ranged under the same contending banners, and neither thinkers nor mankind at large seem nearer to being unanimous on the subject, than when the youth Socrates listened to the old Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato’s dialogue be grounded on a real conversation) the theory of utilitarianism against the popular morality of the so-called sophist.

Chapter 1

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Want to learn more about utilitarianism?

Read about the theory behind utilitarianism:

An Introduction to Utilitarianism

Learn how to use utilitarianism to improve the world:

Acting on Utilitarianism

Chapter 1

The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able, the grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social or political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress of reflection and the experience of life: That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes–the legal subordination of one sex to the other–is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.

Chapter 1: 1806-1819 — Childhood And Early Education

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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Enfranchisement of Women

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Most of our readers will probably learn from these pages for the first time, that there has arisen in the United States, and in the most civilised and enlightened portion of them, an organised agitation on a new question - new, not to thinkers, nor to any one by whom the principles of free and popular government are felt as well as acknowledged, but new, and even unheard of, as a subject for public meetings and practical political action. This question is, the enfranchisement of women; their admission, in law and in fact, to equality in all rights, political, civil, and social, with the male citizens of the community.

About Us

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Our Purpose

This peer-reviewed, open-access textbook introduces modern utilitarianism in a concise and engaging way, making it both accessible for undergraduates and informative for advanced readers. To be understandable to a broad audience, it avoids philosophical jargon where possible and provides definitions where necessary.

Released in October 2024, the print edition of this textbook is available from Hackett Publishing, featuring all the core textbook chapters from this website.

Who We Are

This textbook was written in collaboration by Richard Yetter Chappell, Darius Meissner, and William MacAskill.

Glossary

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This page provides an overview with brief descriptions of key utilitarian terms and relevant links.

Act utilitarianism

Act utilitarianism is the view that one morally ought to promote just the sum total of well-being.¹ Act utilitarianism is the best known version of direct consequentialism and is often contrasted with rule utilitarianism, an indirect consequentialist view. Contemporary utilitarian philosophers often endorse global utilitarianism, which emphasizes that utilitarian standards of moral evaluation apply to anything of interest (not just acts).²

Mozi

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Mò Dí (墨翟), better known as Mòzǐ or “Master Mò,” flourished c. 430 BCE in what is now Tengzhou, Shandong Province, China.¹ Likely an artisan by craft, Mò Dí attracted many dedicated followers and founded the philosophical school of Mohism during China’s Warring States Period (475 - 221 BCE).

Like other philosophers of his day, including the better-known Confucius, Mò Dí traveled from state to state to persuade rulers to adopt policies intended to end war, alleviate poverty, install meritocracy, and promote the welfare of all. The Mohists advocated China’s first universalist, impartial ethic, and had a significant influence on the epistemology, language, logic, and political theory of early China. Perhaps of greatest historical significance, they shaped profoundly the philosophical methodology and the ethics of early Confucianism, including that of philosophers Mèngzǐ and Xúnzǐ, whose thought would come to dominate Imperial China during its first two millennia.²

Study Guide: Peter Singer's 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality'

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Introduction

Peter Singer’s ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’¹ is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential texts in applied ethics. This study guide explains Singer’s central argument, explores possible objections, and clarifies common misunderstandings.

Utilitarian Quotes

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Table of Contents

This page seeks to highlight and clarify important utilitarian concepts by providing illuminating quotes that are either about utilitarianism or are written from a utilitarian perspective.

Mozi Quotes

→ Article on Mozi’s life and ideas

Utilitarian Thinkers

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Utilitarian ideas go back in part to the works of philosophers in ancient China, including Mozi, and ancient Greece, including Epicurus.¹ Utilitarianism was further developed, refined and promoted in the late 18th and early 19th century by the classical utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick.

These articles summarize the lives and ideas of the major utilitarian philosophers. For a much more detailed historical account than we can provide on this website, we recommend the book The Happiness Philosophers: The Lives and Works of the Great Utilitarians and the article The History of Utilitarianism on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Wikipedia also maintains a list of utilitarians.

Study Guide: Peter Singer's Animal Liberation

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Introduction

Peter Singer’s influential 1975 book Animal Liberation—updated and republished in 2023 as Animal Liberation Now—is the philosophical cornerstone of the modern animal rights movement. The book’s foundational opening chapter, “All Animals Are Equal”, is widely assigned in philosophy courses as a classic expression of the view that “speciesism” is morally wrong for reasons parallel to racism, sexism, and other forms of unjust discrimination. It presents a powerful critique of our routine dismissal of the moral status of non-human animals that are (ab)used and exploited for our convenience and culinary pleasure. This study guide explains Singer’s argument in “All Animals Are Equal”, explores potential objections, and clarifies common misunderstandings. (For further discussion of this topic, see also our guest essay on Utilitarianism and Nonhuman Animals by Jeff Sebo.)

Susanna Newcome

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Susanna Newcome (1685-1763) was an eighteenth-century philosopher and theologian who lived and worked in England. Her most significant work, An Enquiry into the Evidence of the Christian Religion, contains an early formulation of utilitarian thought. In this short book, Newcome synthesizes contemporary developments in natural theology and moral psychology to offer a utilitarian account of the nature of ethics and our moral duties.

Life and Works

Newcome (née Squire) was born in 1685 in the small Wiltshire village of Durnford, where her father was a vicar.¹ Following her marriage to John Newcome, a professor and university administrator, she moved to Cambridge, where she spent most of her adult life. Newcome had a keen interest in philosophy and theology and followed contemporary developments and disputes in these areas. She is known to have published two works during her lifetime. The Enquiry, mentioned above, consists of a rational assessment of the truth of Christianity. Newcome offers an argument for God’s existence and an account of the divine nature before arguing that we might expect God to provide us with revelation and defending the veracity of the revelations contained in the Bible. In making these arguments, she explores many issues relating to ethics. Her other work, The Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper Contrary to Scripture, was a polemical contribution to a contemporary theological debate. Newcome was widely respected for her character and intellect, and her works received positive reviews. She died in Cambridge in 1763 and was buried in St. Bene’t’s Church, where she had been a longtime parishioner.

Chapter 2

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 2

It will be well to commence the detailed discussion of the subject by the particular branch of it to which the course of our observations has led us: the conditions which the laws of this and all other countries annex to the marriage contract. Marriage being the destination appointed by society for women, the prospect they are brought up to, and the object which it is intended should be sought by all of them, except those who are too little attractive to be chosen by any man as his companion; one might have supposed that everything would have been done to make this condition as eligible to them as possible, that they might have no cause to regret being denied the option of any other. Society, however, both in this, and, at first, in all other cases, has preferred to attain its object by foul rather than fair means: but this is the only case in which it has substantially persisted in them even to the present day. Originally women were taken by force, or regularly sold by their father to the husband. Until a late period in European history, the father had the power to dispose of his daughter in marriage at his own will and pleasure, without any regard to hers. The Church, indeed, was so far faithful to a better morality as to require a formal “yes” from the woman at the marriage ceremony; but there was nothing to shew that the consent was other than compulsory; and it was practically impossible for the girl to refuse compliance if the father persevered, except perhaps when she might obtain the protection of religion by a determined resolution to take monastic vows. After marriage, the man had anciently (but this was anterior to Christianity) the power of life and death over his wife. She could invoke no law against him; he was her sole tribunal and law. For a long time he could repudiate her, but she had no corresponding power in regard to him. By the old laws of England, the husband was called the lord of the wife; he was literally regarded as her sovereign, inasmuch that the murder of a man by his wife was called treason (petty as distinguished from high treason), and was more cruelly avenged than was usually the case with high treason, for the penalty was burning to death. Because these various enormities have fallen into disuse (for most of them were never formally abolished, or not until they had long ceased to be practised) men suppose that all is now as it should be in regard to the marriage contract; and we are continually told that civilization and Christianity have restored to the woman her just rights. Meanwhile the wife is the actual bond-servant of her husband: no less so, as far as legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called. She vows a lifelong obedience to him at the altar, and is held to it all through her life by law. Casuists may say that the obligation of obedience stops short of participation in crime, but it certainly extends to everything else. She can do no act whatever but by his permission, at least tacit. She can acquire no property but for him; the instant it becomes hers, even if by inheritance, it becomes ipso facto his. In this respect the wife’s position under the common law of England is worse than that of slaves in the laws of many countries: by the Roman law, for example, a slave might have his peculium, which to a certain extent the law guaranteed to him for his exclusive use. The higher classes in this country have given an analogous advantage to their women, through special contracts setting aside the law, by conditions of pin-money, &c.: since parental feeling being stronger with fathers than the class feeling of their own sex, a father generally prefers his own daughter to a son-in-law who is a stranger to him. By means of settlements, the rich usually contrive to withdraw the whole or part of the inherited property of the wife from the absolute control of the husband: but they do not succeed in keeping it under her own control; the utmost they can do only prevents the husband from squandering it, at the same time debarring the rightful owner from its use. The property itself is out of the reach of both; and as to the income derived from it, the form of settlement most favourable to the wife (that called “to her separate use”) only precludes the husband from receiving it instead of her: it must pass through her hands, but if he takes it from her by personal violence as soon as she receives it, he can neither be punished, nor compelled to restitution. This is the amount of the protection which, under the laws of this country, the most powerful nobleman can give to his own daughter as respects her husband. In the immense majority of cases there is no settlement: and the absorption of all rights, all property, as well as all freedom of action, is complete. The two are called “one person in law,” for the purpose of inferring that whatever is hers is his, but the parallel inference is never drawn that whatever is his is hers; the maxim is not applied against the man, except to make him responsible to third parties for her acts, as a master is for the acts of his slaves or of his cattle. I am far from pretending that wives are in general no better treated than slaves; but no slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is. Hardly any slave, except one immediately attached to the master’s person, is a slave at all hours and all minutes; in general he has, like a soldier, his fixed task, and when it is done, or when he is off duty, he disposes, within certain limits, of his own time, and has a family life into which the master rarely intrudes. “Uncle Tom” under his first master had his own life in his “cabin,” almost as much as any man whose work takes him away from home, is able to have in his own family. But it cannot be so with the wife. Above all, a female slave has (in Christian countries) an admitted right, and is considered under a moral obligation, to refuse to her master the last familiarity. Not so the wife: however brutal a tyrant she may unfortunately be chained to–though she may know that he hates her, though it may be his daily pleasure to torture her, and though she may feel it impossible not to loathe him–he can claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclinations. While she is held in this worst description of slavery as to her own person, what is her position in regard to the children in whom she and her master have a joint interest? They are by law his children. He alone has any legal rights over them. Not one act can she do towards or in relation to them, except by delegation from him. Even after he is dead she is not their legal guardian, unless he by will has made her so. He could even send them away from her, and deprive her of the means of seeing or corresponding with them, until this power was in some degree restricted by Serjeant Talfourd’s Act. This is her legal state. And from this state she has no means of withdrawing herself. If she leaves her husband, she can take nothing with her, neither her children nor anything which is rightfully her own. If he chooses, he can compel her to return, by law, or by physical force; or he may content himself with seizing for his own use anything which she may earn, or which may be given to her by her relations. It is only legal separation by a decree of a court of justice, which entitles her to live apart, without being forced back into the custody of an exasperated jailer–or which empowers her to apply any earnings to her own use, without fear that a man whom perhaps she has not seen for twenty years will pounce upon her some day and carry all off. This legal separation, until lately, the courts of justice would only give at an expense which made it inaccessible to any one out of the higher ranks. Even now it is only given in cases of desertion, or of the extreme of cruelty; and yet complaints are made every day that it is granted too easily. Surely, if a woman is denied any lot in life but that of being the personal body-servant of a despot, and is dependent for everything upon the chance of finding one who may be disposed to make a favourite of her instead of merely a drudge, it is a very cruel aggravation of her fate that she should be allowed to try this chance only once. The natural sequel and corollary from this state of things would be, that since her all in life depends upon obtaining a good master, she should be allowed to change again and again until she finds one. I am not saying that she ought to be allowed this privilege. That is a totally different consideration. The question of divorce, in the sense involving liberty of remarriage, is one into which it is foreign to my purpose to enter. All I now say is, that to those to whom nothing but servitude is allowed, the free choice of servitude is the only, though a most insufficient, alleviation. Its refusal completes the assimilation of the wife to the slave–and the slave under not the mildest form of slavery: for in some slave codes the slave could, under certain circumstances of ill usage, legally compel the master to sell him. But no amount of ill usage, without adultery superadded, will in England free a wife from her tormentor.

Chapter 2: 1813-1821 — Moral Influences In Early Youth — My Father's Character And Opinions

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 2: 1813-1821 — Moral Influences In Early Youth — My Father's Character And Opinions

In my education, as in that of everyone, the moral influences, which are so much more important than all others, are also the most complicated, and the most difficult to specify with any approach to completeness. Without attempting the hopeless task of detailing the circumstances by which, in this respect, my early character may have been shaped, I shall confine myself to a few leading points, which form an indispensable part of any true account of my education.

Chapter 2: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 2: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion

The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the “liberty of the press” as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the question, besides, has been so often and so triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, that it need not be specially insisted on in this place. Though the law of England, on the subject of the press, is as servile to this day as it was in the time of the Tudors, there is little danger of its being actually put in force against political discussion, except during some temporary panic, when fear of insurrection drives ministers and judges from their propriety;[6] and, speaking generally, it is not, in constitutional countries, to be apprehended that the government, whether completely responsible to the people or not, will often attempt to control the expression of opinion, except when in doing so it makes itself the organ of the general intolerance of the public. Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in or opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

Chapter 2: What Utilitarianism Is

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 2: What Utilitarianism Is

A passing remark is all that needs be given to the ignorant blunder of supposing that those who stand up for utility as the test of right and wrong, use the term in that restricted and merely colloquial sense in which utility is opposed to pleasure. An apology is due to the philosophical opponents of utilitarianism, for even the momentary appearance of confounding them with any one capable of so absurd a misconception; which is the more extraordinary, inasmuch as the contrary accusation, of referring everything to pleasure, and that too in its grossest form, is another of the common charges against utilitarianism: and, as has been pointedly remarked by an able writer, the same sort of persons, and often the very same persons, denounce the theory “as impracticably dry when the word utility precedes the word pleasure, and as too practicably voluptuous when the word pleasure precedes the word utility.” Those who know anything about the matter are aware that every writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of utility, meant by it, not something to be contradistinguished from pleasure, but pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental, have always declared that the useful means these, among other things. Yet the common herd, including the herd of writers, not only in newspapers and periodicals, but in books of weight and pretension, are perpetually falling into this shallow mistake. Having caught up the word utilitarian, while knowing nothing whatever about it but its sound, they habitually express by it the rejection, or the neglect, of pleasure in some of its forms; of beauty, of ornament, or of amusement. Nor is the term thus ignorantly misapplied solely in disparagement, but occasionally in compliment; as though it implied superiority to frivolity and the mere pleasures of the moment. And this perverted use is the only one in which the word is popularly known, and the one from which the new generation are acquiring their sole notion of its meaning. Those who introduced the word, but who had for many years discontinued it as a distinctive appellation, may well feel themselves called upon to resume it, if by doing so they can hope to contribute anything towards rescuing it from this utter degradation.¹

Jeremy Bentham

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Jeremy Bentham was born in 1748 to a wealthy family. A child prodigy, his father sent him to study at Queen’s College, Oxford University, aged 12. Although he never practiced, Bentham trained as a lawyer and wrote extensively on law and legal reform. He died in 1832 at the age of 84 and requested his body and head to be preserved for scientific research. They are currently on display at University College London.

Utilitarianism: Simply Explained

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Introduction

Utilitarianism is a moral theory that combines two key claims:

(1) Everyone matters equally
and
(2) It’s better to do more good than less.

Seems obvious, right? But these simple ideas turn out to have radical implications for how we should live our lives. The purpose of this website is to (i) introduce and defend these key ideas, and (ii) explore their practical implications.

Chapter 3

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 3

On the other point which is involved in the just equality of women, their admissibility to all the functions and occupations hitherto retained as the monopoly of the stronger sex, I should anticipate no difficulty in convincing any one who has gone with me on the subject of the equality of women in the family. I believe that their disabilities elsewhere are only clung to in order to maintain their subordination in domestic life; because the generality of the male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal. Were it not for that, I think that almost every one, in the existing state of opinion in politics and political economy, would admit the injustice of excluding half the human race from the greater number of lucrative occupations, and from almost all high social functions; ordaining from their birth either that they are not, and cannot by any possibility become, fit for employments which are legally open to the stupidest and basest of the other sex, or else that however fit they may be, those employments shall be interdicted to them, in order to be preserved for the exclusive benefit of males. In the last two centuries, when (which was seldom the case) any reason beyond the mere existence of the fact was thought to be required to justify the disabilities of women, people seldom assigned as a reason their inferior mental capacity; which, in times when there was a real trial of personal faculties (from which all women were not excluded) in the struggles of public life, no one really believed in. The reason given in those days was not women’s unfitness, but the interest of society, by which was meant the interest of men: just as the raison d’état, meaning the convenience of the government, and the support of existing authority, was deemed a sufficient explanation and excuse for the most flagitious crimes. In the present day, power holds a smoother language, and whomsoever it oppresses, always pretends to do so for their own good: accordingly, when anything is forbidden to women, it is thought necessary to say, and desirable to believe, that they are incapable of doing it, and that they depart from their real path of success and happiness when they aspire to it. But to make this reason plausible (I do not say valid), those by whom it is urged must be prepared to carry it to a much greater length than any one ventures to do in the face of present experience. It is not sufficient to maintain that women on the average are less gifted than men on the average, with certain of the higher mental faculties, or that a smaller number of women than of men are fit for occupations and functions of the highest intellectual character. It is necessary to maintain that no women at all are fit for them, and that the most eminent women are inferior in mental faculties to the most mediocre of the men on whom those functions at present devolve. For if the performance of the function is decided either by competition, or by any mode of choice which secures regard to the public interest, there needs be no apprehension that any important employments will fall into the hands of women inferior to average men, or to the average of their male competitors. The only result would be that there would be fewer women than men in such employments; a result certain to happen in any ease, if only from the preference always likely to be felt by the majority of women for the one vocation in which there is nobody to compete with them. Now, the most determined depreciator of women will not venture to deny, that when we add the experience of recent times to that of ages past, women, and not a few merely, but many women, have proved themselves capable of everything, perhaps without a single exception, which is done by men, and of doing it successfully and creditably. The utmost that can be said is, that there are many things which none of them have succeeded in doing as well as they have been done by some men–many in which they have not reached the very highest rank. But there are extremely few, dependent only on mental faculties, in which they have not attained the rank next to the highest. Is not this enough, and much more than enough, to make it a tyranny to them, and a detriment to society, that they should not be allowed to compete with men for the exercise of these functions? Is it not a mere truism to say, that such functions are often filled by men far less fit for them than numbers of women, and who would be beaten by women in any fair field of competition? What difference does it make that there may be men somewhere, fully employed about other things, who may be still better qualified for the things in question than these women? Does not this take place in all competitions? Is there so great a superfluity of men fit for high duties, that society can afford to reject the service of any competent person? Are we so certain of always finding a man made to our hands for any duty or function of social importance which falls vacant, that we lose nothing by putting a ban upon one-half of mankind, and refusing beforehand to make their faculties available, however distinguished they may be? And even if we could do without them, would it be consistent with justice to refuse to them their fair share of honour and distinction, or to deny to them the equal moral right of all human beings to choose their occupation (short of injury to others) according to their own preferences, at their own risk? Nor is the injustice confined to them: it is shared by those who are in a position to benefit by their services. To ordain that any kind of persons shall not be physicians, or shall not be advocates, or shall not be members of parliament, is to injure not them only, but all who employ physicians or advocates, or elect members of parliament, and who are deprived of the stimulating effect of greater competition on the exertions of the competitors, as well as restricted to a narrower range of individual choice.

Chapter 3: 1821-1823 — Last Stage Of Education, And First Of Self-Education

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Chapter 3: 1821-1823 — Last Stage Of Education, And First Of Self-Education

For the first year or two after my visit to France, I continued my old studies, with the addition of some new ones. When I returned, my father was just finishing for the press his Elements of Political Economy, and he made me perform an exercise on the manuscript, which Mr. Bentham practised on all his own writings, making what he called “marginal contents”; a short abstract of every paragraph, to enable the writer more easily to judge of, and improve, the order of the ideas, and the general character of the exposition. Soon after, my father put into my hands Condillac’s Traiti des Sensations, and the logical and metaphysical volumes of his Cours d’Etudes; the first (notwithstanding the superficial resemblance between Condillac’s psychological system and my father’s) quite as much for a warning as for an example. I am not sure whether it was in this winter or the next that I first read a history of the French Revolution. I learnt with astonishment that the principles of democracy, then apparently in so insignificant and hopeless a minority everywhere in Europe, had borne all before them in France thirty years earlier, and had been the creed of the nation. As may be supposed from this, I had previously a very vague idea of that great commotion. I knew only that the French had thrown off the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV. and XV., had put the King and Queen to death, guillotined many persons, one of whom was Lavoisier, and had ultimately fallen under the despotism of Bonaparte. From this time, as was natural, the subject took an immense hold of my feelings. It allied itself with all my juvenile aspirations to the character of a democratic champion. What had happened so lately, seemed as if it might easily happen again: and the most transcendent glory I was capable of conceiving, was that of figuring, successful or unsuccessful, as a Girondist in an English Convention.

Chapter 3: Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 3: Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being

Such being the reasons which make it imperative that human beings should be free to form opinions, and to express their opinions without reserve; and such the baneful consequences to the intellectual, and through that to the moral nature of man, unless this liberty is either conceded, or asserted in spite of prohibition; let us next examine whether the same reasons do not require that men should be free to act upon their opinions–to carry these out in their lives, without hindrance, either physical or moral, from their fellow-men, so long as it is at their own risk and peril. This last proviso is of course indispensable. No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard. Acts, of whatever kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavourable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind. The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. But if he refrains from molesting others in what concerns them, and merely acts according to his own inclination and judgment in things which concern himself, the same reasons which show that opinion should be free, prove also that he should be allowed, without molestation, to carry his opinions into practice at his own cost. That mankind are not infallible; that their truths, for the most part, are only half-truths; that unity of opinion, unless resulting from the fullest and freest comparison of opposite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity not an evil, but a good, until mankind are much more capable than at present of recognising all sides of the truth, are principles applicable to men’s modes of action, not less than to their opinions. As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them. It is desirable, in short, that in things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself. Where, not the person’s own character, but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress.

Chapter 3: Of The Ultimate Sanction Of The Principle Of Utility

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 3: Of The Ultimate Sanction Of The Principle Of Utility

The question is often asked, and properly so, in regard to any supposed moral standard—What is its sanction? what are the motives to obey it? or more specifically, what is the source of its obligation? whence does it derive its binding force? It is a necessary part of moral philosophy to provide the answer to this question; which, though frequently assuming the shape of an objection to the utilitarian morality, as if it had some special applicability to that above others, really arises in regard to all standards. It arises, in fact, whenever a person is called on to adopt a standard or refer morality to any basis on which he has not been accustomed to rest it. For the customary morality, that which education and opinion have consecrated, is the only one which presents itself to the mind with the feeling of being in itself obligatory; and when a person is asked to believe that this morality derives its obligation from some general principle round which custom has not thrown the same halo, the assertion is to him a paradox; the supposed corollaries seem to have a more binding force than the original theorem; the superstructure seems to stand better without, than with, what is represented as its foundation. He says to himself, I feel that I am bound not to rob or murder, betray or deceive; but why am I bound to promote the general happiness? If my own happiness lies in something else, why may I not give that the preference?

William Thompson

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

William Thompson (1775–1833) was a philosopher, political economist, and social reformer working during the early nineteenth century. He and his sometimes co-author Anna Doyle Wheeler made significant, though under-appreciated, contributions to the utilitarian, socialist, and feminist philosophical traditions.

1 Life

William Thompson was a landowner from Cork, Ireland with a reputation for eccentricity. He was often disparaged as “the Red Republican”—a reference to both the red flags of the Jacobins of the French Revolution and contemporaneous attempts at revolution against the British by the Irish Republicans.¹ Besides his ideas and his sympathies for radical politics, Thompson’s atheism, vegetarianism, teetotaling, support of catholic emancipation in Ireland, and reductions of his tenants’ rent made him an outlier among the Anglo-Irish Protestants of Cork high-society.

Chapter 4

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 4

There remains a question, not of less importance than those already discussed, and which will be asked the most importunately by those opponents whose conviction is somewhat shaken on the main point. What good are we to expect from the changes proposed in our customs and institutions? Would mankind be at all better off if women were free? If not, why disturb their minds, and attempt to make a social revolution in the name of an abstract right?

Chapter 4: 1823-1828 — Youthful Propagandism. The "Westminster Review"

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 4: 1823-1828 — Youthful Propagandism. The "Westminster Review"

The occupation of so much of my time by office work did not relax my attention to my own pursuits, which were never carried on more vigorously. It was about this time that I began to write in newspapers. The first writings of mine which got into print were two letters published towards the end of 1822, in the Traveller evening newspaper. The Traveller (which afterwards grew into the Globe and Traveller, by the purchase and incorporation of the Globe) was then the property of the well-known political economist, Colonel Torrens, and under the editorship of an able man, Mr. Walter Coulson (who, after being an amanuensis of Mr. Bentham, became a reporter, then an editor, next a barrister and conveyancer, and died Counsel to the Home Office), it had become one of the most important newspaper organs of Liberal politics. Colonel Torrens himself wrote much of the political economy of his paper; and had at this time made an attack upon some opinion of Ricardo and my father, to which, at my father’s instigation, I attempted an answer, and Coulson, out of consideration for my father and goodwill to me, inserted it. There was a reply by Torrens, to which I again rejoined. I soon after attempted something considerably more ambitious. The prosecutions of Richard Carlile and his wife and sister for publications hostile to Christianity were then exciting much attention, and nowhere more than among the people I frequented. Freedom of discussion even in politics, much more in religion, was at that time far from being, even in theory, the conceded point which it at least seems to be now; and the holders of obnoxious opinions had to be always ready to argue and re-argue for the liberty of expressing them. I wrote a series of five letters, under the signature of Wickliffe, going over the whole length and breadth of the question of free publication of all opinions on religion, and offered them to the Morning Chronicle. Three of them were published in January and February, 1823; the other two, containing things too outspoken for that journal, never appeared at all. But a paper which I wrote soon after on the same subject, ` propos of a debate in the House of Commons, was inserted as a leading article; and during the whole of this year, 1823, a considerable number of my contributions were printed in the Chronicle and Traveller: sometimes notices of books, but oftener letters, commenting on some nonsense talked in Parliament, or some defect of the law, or misdoings of the magistracy or the courts of justice. In this last department the Chronicle was now rendering signal service. After the death of Mr. Perry, the editorship and management of the paper had devolved on Mr. John Black, long a reporter on its establishment; a man of most extensive reading and information, great honesty and simplicity of mind; a particular friend of my father, imbued with many of his and Bentham’s ideas, which he reproduced in his articles, among other valuable thoughts, with great facility and skill. From this time the Chronicle ceased to be the merely Whig organ it was before, and during the next ten years became to a considerable extent a vehicle of the opinions of the Utilitarian Radicals. This was mainly by what Black himself wrote, with some assistance from Fonblanque, who first showed his eminent qualities as a writer by articles and jeux d’esprit in the Chronicle. The defects of the law, and of the administration of justice, were the subject on which that paper rendered most service to improvement. Up to that time hardly a word had been said, except by Bentham and my father, against that most peccant part of English institutions and of their administration. It was the almost universal creed of Englishmen, that the law of England, the judicature of England, the unpaid magistracy of England, were models of excellence. I do not go beyond the mark in saying, that after Bentham, who supplied the principal materials, the greatest share of the merit of breaking down this wretched superstition belongs to Black, as editor of the Morning Chronicle. He kept up an incessant fire against it, exposing the absurdities and vices of the law and the courts of justice, paid and unpaid, until he forced some sense of them into people’s minds. On many other questions he became the organ of opinions much in advance of any which had ever before found regular advocacy in the newspaper press. Black was a frequent visitor of my father, and Mr. Grote used to say that he always knew by the Monday morning’s article whether Black had been with my father on the Sunday. Black was one of the most influential of the many channels through which my father’s conversation and personal influence made his opinions tell on the world; cooperating with the effect of his writings in making him a power in the country such as it has rarely been the lot of an individual in a private station to be, through the mere force of intellect and character: and a power which was often acting the most efficiently where it was least seen and suspected. I have already noticed how much of what was done by Ricardo, Hume, and Grote was the result, in part, of his prompting and persuasion. He was the good genius by the side of Brougham in most of what he did for the public, either on education, law reform, or any other subject. And his influence flowed in minor streams too numerous to be specified. This influence was now about to receive a great extension by the foundation of the Westminster Review.

Chapter 4: Of the Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 4: Of the Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual

What, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?

Chapter 4: Of What Sort Of Proof The Principle Of Utility Is Susceptible

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 4: Of What Sort Of Proof The Principle Of Utility Is Susceptible

It has already been remarked, that questions of ultimate ends do not admit of proof, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. To be incapable of proof by reasoning is common to all first principles; to the first premises of our knowledge, as well as to those of our conduct. But the former, being matters of fact, may be the subject of a direct appeal to the faculties which judge of fact—namely, our senses, and our internal consciousness. Can an appeal be made to the same faculties on questions of practical ends? Or by what other faculty is cognizance taken of them?

Acting on Utilitarianism

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you, will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains.”

– Jeremy Bentham¹

Table of Contents

Introduction

So far we’ve looked at utilitarianism from a theoretical viewpoint. But what does utilitarianism actually mean in practice? What concrete actions does it say we should take? This article explains what it means to live an ethical life from the perspective of utilitarianism.

John Stuart Mill

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

John Stuart Mill was born in 1806, in London. He was the son of James Mill, a friend of Jeremy Bentham’s who shared many of his principles. James intended that his son carry on the radical utilitarian empiricist tradition, and this was reflected in his upbringing: John learned Greek and arithmetic at 3, and helped to edit his father’s book (the History of India) at 11.¹

Chapter 5: 1826-1832 — Crisis In My Mental History. One Stage Onward

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 5: 1826-1832 — Crisis In My Mental History. One Stage Onward

For some years after this time I wrote very little, and nothing regularly, for publication: and great were the advantages which I derived from the intermission. It was of no common importance to me, at this period, to be able to digest and mature my thoughts for my own mind only, without any immediate call for giving them out in print. Had I gone on writing, it would have much disturbed the important transformation in my opinions and character, which took place during those years. The origin of this transformation, or at least the process by which I was prepared for it, can only be explained by turning some distance back.

Chapter 5: Applications

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 5: Applications

The principles asserted in these pages must be more generally admitted as the basis for discussion of details, before a consistent application of them to all the various departments of government and morals can be attempted with any prospect of advantage. The few observations I propose to make on questions of detail, are designed to illustrate the principles, rather than to follow them out to their consequences. I offer, not so much applications, as specimens of application; which may serve to bring into greater clearness the meaning and limits of the two maxims which together form the entire doctrine of this Essay, and to assist the judgment in holding the balance between them, in the cases where it appears doubtful which of them is applicable to the case.

Chapter 5: On The Connexion Between Justice And Utility

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 5: On The Connexion Between Justice And Utility

In all ages of speculation, one of the strongest obstacles to the reception of the doctrine that Utility or Happiness is the criterion of right and wrong, has been drawn from the idea of Justice, The powerful sentiment, and apparently clear perception, which that word recalls with a rapidity and certainty resembling an instinct, have seemed to the majority of thinkers to point to an inherent quality in things; to show that the Just must have an existence in Nature as something absolute-generically distinct from every variety of the Expedient, and, in idea, opposed to it, though (as is commonly acknowledged) never, in the long run, disjoined from it in fact.

Harriet Taylor Mill

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Harriet Taylor Mill (née Hardy) was born in 1807 in Walworth, South London, as the daughter of a midwife. She was educated at home and became interested in poetry and writing at a young age. She married John Taylor, a pharmacist, aged 18. Even before she met John Stuart Mill, she was writing extensively on topics such as women’s rights (particularly in marriage, domestic violence and education), politics, ethics and religious toleration. At the same time, she was a mother to three children.

Chapter 6: 1830-1840 — Commencement Of The Most Valuable Friendship Of My Life—My Father's Death—Writings And Other Proceedings Up To 1840

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 6: 1830-1840 — Commencement Of The Most Valuable Friendship Of My Life—My Father's Death—Writings And Other Proceedings Up To 1840

It was the period of my mental progress which I have now reached that I formed the friendship which has been the honour and chief blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a great part of all that I have attempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human improvement. My first introduction to the lady who, after a friendship of twenty years, consented to become my wife, was in 1830, when I was in my twenty-fifth and she in her twenty-third year. With her husband’s family it was the renewal of an old acquaintanceship. His grandfather lived in the next house to my father’s in Newington Green, and I had sometimes when a boy been invited to play in the old gentleman’s garden. He was a fine specimen of the old Scotch puritan; stern, severe, and powerful, but very kind to children, on whom such men make a lasting impression. Although it was years after my introduction to Mrs. Taylor before my acquaintance with her became at all intimate or confidential, I very soon felt her to be the most admirable person I had ever known. It is not to be supposed that she was, or that any one, at the age at which I first saw her, could be, all that she afterwards became. Least of all could this be true of her, with whom self-improvement, progress in the highest and in all senses, was a law of her nature; a necessity equally from the ardour with which she sought it, and from the spontaneous tendency of faculties which could not receive an impression or an experience without making it the source or the occasion of an accession of wisdom. Up to the time when I first saw her, her rich and powerful nature had chiefly unfolded itself according to the received type of feminine genius. To her outer circle she was a beauty and a wit, with an air of natural distinction, felt by all who approached her: to the inner, a woman of deep and strong feeling, of penetrating and intuitive intelligence, and of an eminently meditative and poetic nature. Married at an early age to a most upright, brave, and honourable man, of liberal opinions and good education, but without the intellectual or artistic tastes which would have made him a companion for her, though a steady and affectionate friend, for whom she had true esteem and the strongest affection through life, and whom she most deeply lamented when dead; shut out by the social disabilities of women from any adequate exercise of her highest faculties in action on the world without; her life was one of inward meditation, varied by familiar intercourse with a small circle of friends, of whom one only (long since deceased) was a person of genius, or of capacities of feeling or intellect kindred with her own, but all had more or less of alliance with her in sentiments and opinions. Into this circle I had the good fortune to be admitted, and I soon perceived that she possessed in combination, the qualities which in all other persons whom I had known I had been only too happy to find singly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of superstition (including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature. In general spiritual characteristics, as well as in temperament and organisation, I have often compared her, as she was at this time, to Shelley: but in thought and intellect, Shelley, so far as his powers were developed in his short life, was but a child compared with what she ultimately became. Alike in the highest regions of speculation and in the smaller practical concerns of daily life, her mind was the same perfect instrument, piercing to the very heart and marrow of the matter; always seizing the essential idea or principle. The same exactness and rapidity of operation, pervading as it did her sensitive as well as her mental faculties, would, with her gifts of feeling and imagination, have fitted her to be a consummate artist, as her fiery and tender soul and her vigorous eloquence would certainly have made her a great orator, and her profound knowledge of human nature and discernment and sagacity in practical life, would, in the times when such a carrihre was open to women, have made her eminent among the rulers of mankind. Her intellectual gifts did but minister to a moral character at once the noblest and the best balanced which I have ever met with in life. Her unselfishness was not that of a taught system of duties, but of a heart which thoroughly identified itself with the feelings of others, and often went to excess in consideration for them by imaginatively investing their feelings with the intensity of its own. The passion of justice might have been thought to be her strongest feeling, but for her boundless generosity, and a lovingness ever ready to pour itself forth upon any or all human beings who were capable of giving the smallest feeling in return. The rest of her moral characteristics were such as naturally accompany these qualities of mind and heart: the most genuine modesty combined with the loftiest pride; a simplicity and sincerity which were absolute, towards all who were fit to receive them; the utmost scorn of whatever was mean and cowardly, and a burning indignation at everything brutal or tyrannical, faithless or dishonourable in conduct and character, while making the broadest distinction between mala in se and mere mala prohibita—between acts giving evidence of intrinsic badness in feeling and character, and those which are only violations of conventions either good or bad, violations which, whether in themselves right or wrong, are capable of being committed by persons in every other respect lovable or admirable.

Henry Sidgwick

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Sidgwick was born in 1838 to a wealthy family in Yorkshire, England. He studied at Cambridge as an undergraduate, where he stayed for the rest of his life. While he is best known as a moral philosopher, he was also a political economist, epistemologist, classicist, theologist, educator, political theorist and parapsychologist (studying psychic phenomena, including telepathy and survival after death).¹ At Cambridge, Sidgwick became a part of “the Apostles”: a secret society whose members discussed topics including ethics, truth and God. He married Eleanor Mildred Balfour, a scientist with whom he advocated to expand higher education for women and conducted parapsychological research.

Chapter 7: 1840-1870 — General View Of The Remainder Of My Life

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 7: 1840-1870 — General View Of The Remainder Of My Life

From this time, what is worth relating of my life will come into a very small compass; for I have no further mental changes to tell of, but only, as I hope, a continued mental progress; which does not admit of a consecutive history, and the results of which, if real, will be best found in my writings. I shall, therefore, greatly abridge the chronicle of my subsequent years.

Richard M. Hare

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Richard M. Hare (1919 - 2002) is usually acknowledged to be one of the major moral thinkers of the 20th century. After being a Japanese prisoner of war for most of World War II, he completed his education at Oxford, later joining the faculty and becoming a professor. In 1983 he moved to the University of Florida but still kept his ties with Oxford. He had many students, including Peter Singer. At a memorial service for Hare in 2002, Singer ascribed to him three major achievements in moral philosophy, namely “restoring reason to moral argument, distinguishing intuitive and critical levels of moral thinking, and pioneering the development of practical or applied ethics”.¹

Peter Singer

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Singer was born in 1946, Melbourne, Australia, to an Austrian Jewish family that emigrated from Austria to escape persecution by the Nazis. He studied law, history and philosophy at the University of Melbourne, and majored in philosophy. He later did a B.Phil at Oxford University, where he associated with a vegetarian student group and became a vegetarian himself. Around this time he wrote Animal Liberation (1975), which has been called the “bible” of the animal liberation movement.¹

Utilitarianism and Climate Change

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

How does utilitarianism direct us to respond to climate change? This essay explores the harms caused by carbon emissions, how the cost-effectiveness of reducing emissions compares to other global priorities, and what both individuals and governments ought to do in light of these facts.

Utilitarianism and Nonhuman Animals

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This essay advances three claims about utilitarianism and nonhuman animals. Utilitarianism plausibly implies, first, that all vertebrates and many invertebrates morally matter, but that some of these animals might matter more than others; second, that we should attempt to both promote animal welfare and respect animal rights in practice; and third, that we should prioritize farmed and wild animals and work to support them.

Moral Psychology and Utilitarianism

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

As an abstract ideal, utilitarianism may sound like simple common sense. But utilitarianism has some implications that are counterintuitive. This essay explores how psychological biases can explain anti-utilitarian intuitions.

Virtues for Real-World Utilitarians

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article discusses how utilitarians should go about applying their philosophy in the real world. It argues that utilitarians should cultivate a set of utilitarian virtues, including moderate altruism, moral expansiveness, effectiveness-focus, truth-seeking, collaborativeness, and determination.

The Time-Relative Account of Interests

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The utilitarian goal of promoting everyone’s interests is complicated by the Parfitian view that one’s self-interest across time is a matter of degree (based on psychological connectedness) rather than all-or-nothing identity. This essay introduces and explores the Time-Relative Account of Interests, which uniquely captures key intuitions about the relative misfortune of death at different stages of life.

Utilitarianism and Research Ethics

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This essay questions common assumptions about the philosophical foundations of research ethics. It argues that (I) utilitarianism can account for many core research ethics norms, (II) Kantian ethics may conflict with many core research ethics norms, and (III) a more utilitarian outlook would improve contemporary research ethics in concrete ways.

Utilitarian Political Philosophy

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This essay explores how utilitarianism can make sense of core political concepts (like rights, authority, and justice) while maintaining its fundamental commitment to promoting well-being. The result is a distinctive and attractive approach to political philosophy that combines pragmatic attention to consequences with robust protections for individual liberty.

Uncertainty and Utilitarianism

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When we’re less than fully certain of which moral view is correct, it may be wise to ‘hedge our bets’ by finding a compromise between the different views we find plausible. This essay especially explores the implications of moral uncertainty for utilitarian-friendly agents—those who have non-negligible confidence in utilitarianism or in some of its central claims.

Buddhism and Utilitarianism

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This article analyses the extent to which elements of utilitarianism can be found within (i) the Early Buddhist tradition, and (ii) classical Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. It then explores a Buddhist perspective on well-being, and concludes by comparing Engaged Buddhism to effective altruism.

Utilitarianism and Voting

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This essay discusses the value of voting from a utilitarian perspective. It explores how to estimate the chance of casting a decisive vote, how to think about the stakes of an election, and whether we can reliably identify which candidate is better.

Expected Utility Maximization

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Expected Utility Maximization directs us to weigh the value associated with each possible outcome by its probability, yielding an overall expected value. This essay explains Expected Utility Maximization as a decision theory and defends its most distinctive feature: that it can advise us to choose options that will predictably lose.

Introduction to Utilitarianism

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“The task of the benevolent is surely to diligently seek to promote the benefit of the world and eliminate harm to the world and to take this as a model throughout the world. Does it benefit people? Then do it. Does it not benefit people? Then stop.”

– Mòzǐ¹

Table of Contents

What, morally, ought we to do? Utilitarianism gives an answer: we ought always to promote overall well-being. Compared to other ethical theories, utilitarianism is less deferential to ordinary thought and may tell us to make substantial changes to how we lead our lives. Perhaps more so than any other ethical theory, it has produced a fierce philosophical debate between its proponents and its critics.

Elements and Types of Utilitarianism

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Introduction

As explained in Chapter 1: Introduction to Utilitarianism, the core idea of utilitarianism is that we should want to improve the well-being of everyone by as much as possible. Utilitarian theories share four elements: consequentialism, welfarism, impartiality, and aggregationism. Classical utilitarianism is distinctive because it accepts two additional elements: first, hedonism as a theory of well-being; second, the total view of population ethics. There are several further important distinctions between utilitarian theories: we can distinguish scalar from maximizing or satisficing utilitarianism, expectational from objective utilitarianism, multi-level from single-level utilitarianism, and global from hybrid utilitarianism.

Arguments for Utilitarianism

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Introduction: Moral Methodology & Reflective Equilibrium

You cannot prove a moral theory. Whatever arguments you come up with, it’s always possible for someone else to reject your premises—if they are willing to accept the costs of doing so. Different theories offer different advantages. This chapter will set out some of the major considerations that plausibly count in favor of utilitarianism. A complete view also needs to consider the costs of utilitarianism (or the advantages of its competitors), which are addressed in Chapter 8: Objections to Utilitarianism. You can then reach an all-things-considered judgment as to which moral theory strikes you as overall best or most plausible.

Theories of Well-Being

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?”

– Jeremy Bentham¹

Table of Contents

Introduction

A core element of utilitarianism is welfarism—the view that only the welfare (also called well-being) of individuals determines how good a particular state of the world is. While consequentialists claim that what is right is to promote the amount of good in the world, welfarists specifically equate the good to be promoted with well-being.

Expected Value Fanaticism

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Expected value maximization can seem ‘fanatical’ when it prioritizes tiny chances of extraordinarily large gains over more certain smaller benefits. But it turns out that there are powerful arguments both for and against expected value fanaticism, and no alternative approach that is clearly superior. This essay introduces some of the complexities.

Population Ethics

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Introduction

Utilitarians agree that if the number of people that were ever to exist is held constant, we should promote the sum total of well-being in that fixed population.¹ But in reality, the population is not fixed. We have the option of bringing more people into existence, such as by having children. If these additional people would have good lives, is that a way of making the world better? This question falls in the domain of population ethics, which deals with the moral problems that arise when our actions affect who and how many people are born and at what quality of life.

Utilitarianism and Practical Ethics

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Are we to extend our concern to all the beings capable of pleasure and pain whose feelings are affected by our conduct? or are we to confine our view to human happiness? The former view is the one adopted by… the Utilitarian school… it seems arbitrary and unreasonable to exclude from the end, as so conceived, any pleasure of any sentient being.

– Henry Sidgwick¹

Table of Contents

Introduction

Utilitarianism has important implications for how we should think about leading an ethical life. In this chapter, we focus on five of its theoretical implications. First, unlike many other ethical theories, utilitarianism does not regard actions and omissions as morally different. Second, it is unusually demanding: it asks us to sacrifice more than many other ethical theories do. Third, it implies that we should be cause-impartial: that we should apply our altruistic efforts wherever we can have the most positive impact. Fourth, it urges us to consider the well-being of individuals regardless of what country they live in, what species they belong to, and at what point in time they exist. Fifth, despite differing radically from commonsense morality as an approach to ethics, utilitarianism generally does endorse commonsense moral prohibitions.

Harsanyi’s Utilitarian Theorems without Tears

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This essay explains, as simply and intuitively as possible, Harsanyi’s three famous arguments for utilitarian aggregation: the social-aggregation theorem, the impartial-observer theorem, and the separability theorem. While Harsanyi’s contribution does not completely establish utilitarianism, it transforms how we think about aggregation in ethics. The key question becomes not whether to add up, but what to add up.

Near-Utilitarian Alternatives

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Introduction

There are several different ways that one might end up departing from utilitarianism. How much of a practical difference do such departures make?

Utilitarianism is a particular form of aggregative consequentialism, one that is welfarist and impartial: taking well-being to be the only intrinsic value and giving equal weight to everyone’s well-being. Other consequentialist views may weigh different people’s interests differently or count additional things (beyond just well-being) as intrinsically good or worth promoting. Despite these theoretical differences, such views may be considered close cousins of utilitarianism. They tend to be motivated by similar arguments, are subject to similar objections, and have broadly similar practical implications.

Utilitarianism and Business Ethics

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Business ethicists sometimes associate utilitarianism with neoclassical arguments that maximizing profits is the best route to promoting social welfare. But this is a mistake, as the present essay argues: there are systematic ways in which what maximizes profits can predictably diverge from what does the most good. When the two come apart, utilitarian principles imply that promoting well-being is more important than maximizing profits.

Welfare Economics and Interpersonal Utility Comparisons

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Many students of economics and philosophy have been puzzled by whether utility is cardinally or only ordinally measurable, and whether interpersonal comparisons of utility are possible in principle and in practice. This essay attempts to answer these questions, using simple arguments.

Naturalistic Arguments for Ethical Hedonism

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Many deny that objective and universal moral truth exists. Many more deny that it can be empirically discovered within natural reality. The arguments in this essay seek to empirically discover objective and universal moral truth in natural reality. This truth is that pleasure is goodness.

Analytic Hedonism and Observable Moral Facts

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this summary of her 2016 book The Feeling of Value, Sharon Hewitt Rawlette defends “analytic hedonism”. From our direct acquaintance with the intrinsic value of good and bad experiential states, we can build an entire ethical system that is fully grounded in observable fact.

Bentham and Criminal Law

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) sought to design a set of legal and political institutions that would conform to the ‘principle of utility’, i.e. produce the most happiness. This article presents a survey of his famous work, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, and discusses Bentham’s thinking about what utilitarian criminal law would look like.

The Rights Objection

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Introduction

According to commonsense morality and many non-utilitarian theories, there are certain moral constraints you should never violate. These constraints are expressed in moral rules like “do not lie!” and “do not kill!”. These rules are intuitively very plausible. This presents a problem for utilitarianism. The reason for this is that utilitarianism not only specifies which outcomes are best⁠—those having the highest overall level of well-being⁠—but also directs us to realize these outcomes.

The Mere Means Objection

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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The Mere Means Objection

Critics often allege that utilitarianism objectionably instrumentalizes people—treating us as “mere means” to the greater good, rather than properly valuing individuals as “ends in themselves”.¹ In this article, we assess whether this is a fair objection.

There is something very appealing about the Kantian Formula of Humanity, that one should “act in such a way as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of anyone else, always as an end and never merely as a means.”² If utilitarianism were truly incompatible with the plain meaning of this formula, then that would constitute a serious objection to the theory. For it would then be shown to be incompatible with the basic point that people have intrinsic value as ends in themselves.

The Separateness of Persons Objection

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Introduction

It’s widely agreed that self-interest (or prudence) calls for aggregating harms and benefits across different moments within one’s life, to maximize one’s overall well-being. For example, visiting the dentist is prudent despite the immediate unpleasantness because it helps to avert greater harm to one’s future self. Aggregative consequentialist theories like utilitarianism go one step further: they aggregate harms and benefits between different people’s lives to maximize overall societal well-being. It can be worth imposing harms on some individuals, utilitarians claim, if that prevents greater harms to others. This leads some critics to claim that utilitarianism neglects the moral significance of the boundaries between individuals.

The Demandingness Objection

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Utilitarianism doesn’t ask us to be morally perfect. It asks us to face up to our moral limitations and do as much as we humanly can to overcome them.

— Joshua Greene, Moral Tribes, p. 284

Table of Contents

The Demandingness Objection

Many critics argue that utilitarianism is too demanding, because it requires us to always bring about the best outcome. The theory leaves no room for actions that are permissible yet do not bring about the best consequences. Philosophers label such actions that are morally good but not required as supererogatory; maximizing utilitarianism (like maximizing consequentialism more broadly) denies that any action can be supererogatory. As a result, some critics claim that utilitarianism is a morality only for saints.¹

The Alienation Objection

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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The Alienation Objection

Most of us have a wide range of concerns and motivations. We care about our friends and family. We strive for success in our studies, careers, and personal projects. We become absorbed in hobbies, social or political causes, or cheer on the local sports team. And perhaps we have some general desire that the world as a whole become a better place. All of these things matter to us.

The Special Obligations Objection

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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The Special Obligations Objection

Impartiality is clearly important within institutional contexts, where we want judges, policy-makers, and other civic actors to make fair and unbiased decisions. But a striking feature of utilitarianism is that it does not restrict impartiality to just those special contexts. It holds that, fundamentally, all individuals are always deserving of receiving full and equal consideration. This starkly conflicts with much of our ordinary decision-making, as in everyday life we would not usually think twice about prioritizing our friends and loved ones over total strangers. Indeed, many would think it outright wrong for a parent to fail to prioritize the needs of their own children. It’s usually thought that certain relationships, like parenthood or guardianship, give rise to special obligations to protect those who fall under our care. If utilitarianism denied this, for example by recommending that parents neglect their own children in order to save a larger number of strangers, that could seem to count seriously against the theory. In this article, we explore this special obligations objection against utilitarianism.

The Equality Objection

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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The Equality Objection

Some argue that utilitarianism conflicts with the ideal of equality. Suppose, for example, that you could choose between two possible distributions of well-being, Equality and Inequality: Equality has 1,000 people at well-being level 45, while Inequality has 500 people at 80 well-being and another 500 people at 20 well-being.

The Cluelessness Objection

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Utilitarianism directs us to promote overall well-being. But we cannot be certain how to do this. Worse, there are powerful reasons to think we are completely clueless about the long-run consequences of our actions, including whether they will be positive or negative overall. Does this make utilitarianism unworkable? Is it a reason to think that utilitarianism is false?

The Abusability Objection

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Introduction

As a consequentialist theory, utilitarianism directs us to promote good outcomes. When we can’t be certain of the consequences of our actions, it tells us to promote expected value. Because it gives no intrinsic weight to commonsense constraints or rights, some worry that utilitarian ethics is too easily abusable, allowing people to construct false justifications for horrifically harmful actions. Blindly following the results of their expected value (mis-)calculations might lead even well-meaning individuals into disaster. As a result, many have claimed that utilitarianism is self-effacing, or recommends against its own acceptance.

Resources and Further Reading

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction to Utilitarianism

Resources for Introduction to Utilitarianism:

An Introduction to Utilitarianism

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This peer-reviewed, open-access textbook introduces modern utilitarianism in a concise and engaging way, making it both accessible for undergraduates and informative for advanced readers.¹ It avoids philosophical jargon where possible and provides definitions where necessary.

The 2024 print edition of this textbook is available from Hackett Publishing, featuring all the core textbook chapters from this website.

Introduction to Utilitarianism

This chapter introduces utilitarianism, and its major costs and benefits as a moral theory.