Utilitarianism

by Adina Lopatin

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) in the mid nineteenth century that states that an action is right if it promotes the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The utilitarian decides what a man ought to do by equating right with pleasure and wrong with pain. Mill believd to have coined the term "utilitarianism" in his essays on Utilitarianism and The Principle of Utility. Mill wrote:

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. [1]

Mill's theory guided many in answering the question: "what should one do?" Utilitarianism

answered this question in every way, reaching across many disciplines. Most utilitarians supported democracy, though some advocated Friedrich Engels' and other interpretations of socialism. Utilitarianism and nineteenth century liberalism grew symbiotically. Also, economic theorists such as David Ricardo relied heavily on utilitarianism, measuring utility in terms of efficiency of commodities and labor. Utilitarianism was often perceived as the denial of feelings and thought, and the promotion of hard facts and efficiency. Charles Dickens' Hard Times is a harsh criticism of what he sees as utilitarians. Mill wrote:

...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... [2]

Though misunderstood by some, utilitarianism was a driving force of modern industrial Victorian society.

Picture Sources

A. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRMill.html

Footnotes

1. http://www.utilitarianism.com/mill2.htm

2. Ibid.