UTILITARIANISM

in normative ethics, a tradition dating from late-18th-century England in which action is held to be right if it tends to promote happinessnot only that of the agent but of everyone affected by his act. Thus, Utilitarians focus upon the consequences of an act rather than upon its intrinsic nature or the motives of the agent. The leading proponents of Utilitarianism were the English philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism is among those moral theories, often called teleological (concerning ends or purposes), that derive judgments about right or wrong from judgments about the quality of certain states of affairse.g., the quality of people's lives. Its main opposition comes from those moral theories, often called deontological (concerning duty or moral obligation), that maintain that, although some judgments about right can be derived from judgments about desirable states of affairs, others cannot be. Prominent among the latter, according to deontologists, are certain judgments about justice. Mill saw justice as Utilitarianism's largest problem, and that opinion persists. Many Utilitarians have met such objections by defining new forms of the theory. One range derives from differing attitudes toward the value theory. The classical form is hedonist, but one can employ values other than, or in addition to, pleasure (ideal Utilitarianism), or one can, more neutrally, and in a version popular in economics, regard anything as valuable that appears as an object of (rational or informed) desire (preference Utilitarianism). One can also deny parity to the two sides of the value scale, maintaining that avoidance of disutility is morally more important than promotion of utility (negative Utilitarianism). One can also apply the test of utility maximization directly to single acts (act, or direct, Utilitarianism), or to acts only indirectly through some other suitable object of moral assessment, such as rules of conduct (rule Utilitarianism). Some of the strands of Utilitarianism, especially hedonism and consequentialism, are traceable to ancient Greek philosophy; but Utilitarianism in its full sense, with its emphasis on impartial utility maximization, is an essentially modern theory. British antecedents of Bentham include Bishop Richard Cumberland in the late 17th century, Francis Hutcheson in the early 18th, and David Hume. There were two important non-British influences on Bentham, in the Frenchman Claude-Adrien Helvtius and the Italian Cesare Beccaria, both of the 18th century. Bentham's own major statement, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, was published in 1789, and John Stuart Mill's essay Utilitarianism, perhaps the most compact and attractive of the classical statements, appeared in 1861. By the time of the publication of The Methods of Ethics by the British philosopher Henry Sidgwick in 1874, Utilitarianism had become one of the foremost ethical theories of the day. It continued to be advocated, challenged, and redefined into the 20th century. G.E. Moore, in Principia Ethica (1903) and Ethics (1912), proposed new criteria for the Utilitarian ideal. Economists have developed their own theory largely in Utilitarian terms, and many of the important 20th-century developments in Utilitarianism are to be found in the economic literature. The Utilitarian framework has also been employed by social scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians in formal decision theory. in normative ethics, a tradition stemming from the late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill that an action is right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it tends to produce the reverse of happinessnot just the happiness of the performer of the action but also that of everyone affected by it. Such a theory is in opposition to egoism, the view that a person should pursue his own self-interest, even at the expense of others, and to any ethical theory that regards some acts or types of acts as right or wrong independently of their consequences. Utilitarianism also differs from ethical theories that make the rightness or wrongness of an act dependent upon the motive of the agent; for, according to the Utilitarian, it is possible for the right thing to be done from a bad motive. Additional reading The classical texts on Utilitarianism are Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 2nd ed., 1823); John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1861; 4th ed., 1871); Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (1874; 7th ed., 1907); G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica (1903) and Ethics (1912); D.D. Raphael (ed.), British Moralists: 16501800, 2 vol. (1969), containing selected readings. Useful anthologies include Mary Peter Mack (ed.), A Bentham Reader (1969); J.B. Schneewind (ed.), Mill's Ethical Writings (1965); Samuel Gorovitz (ed.), Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill with Critical Essays (1971).Secondary, historical, and contemporary studies include David Lyons, Jeremy Bentham (1972); Ernest Albee, A History of English Utilitarianism (1902, reprinted 1957); Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians, 3 vol. (1900, reprinted 1968); Elie Halevy, La Formation du radicalisme philosophique, 3 vol. (190104; Eng. trans., The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism, 1928); J.P. Plamenatz, The English Utilitarians (1949); J.B. Schneewind (ed.), Mill: A Collection of Critical Essays (1968); Stephen Toulmin, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (1950); P.H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics, ch. 16 (1954); Richard Brandt, Ethical Theory, ch. 1215 (1959); David Lyons, Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (1965); Jan Narveson, Morality and Utility (1967); Michael D. Bayles (ed.), Contemporary Utilitarianism (1968); J.J.C. Smart, An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics (1961). Donald Regan, Utilitarianism and Cooperation (1980), a presentation of a new utilitarian theory with a good survey of disputes among utilitarians.