A consequentialist ethical tradition founded by Jeremy Bentham, holding that the right action, policy, or law is the one that produces the greatest balance of happiness over suffering for everyone affected by it, not merely for the person acting. Bentham's felicific calculus proposed to measure pleasures and pains by quantity alone; his student John Stuart Mill revised the theory in Utilitarianism, arguing that pleasures differ in quality as well as quantity and that intellectual and moral pleasures rank above merely bodily ones, a distinction meant to answer the charge that utilitarianism was a doctrine fit only for swine. The tradition has been highly consequential outside academic philosophy as well as within it, shaping nineteenth century legal and social reform in Britain, including prison and Poor Law reform, and it remains one of the three or four positions any contemporary introduction to ethics treats as a live option, alongside deontology and virtue ethics.
Facts
Founded Date RegionBritain, later worldwide 2 Classification
TraditionModern or Enlightenment 1 Connections
Rejected Here
John Rawls, Philosophers A Theory of Justice was framed explicitly against utilitarianism, which Rawls argued could justify sacrificing an individual's basic rights and liberties whenever doing so raised the aggregate good.
Kant's deontological ethics ground the rightness of an act in duty and universalizable maxims rather than in consequences, explicitly rejecting the utilitarian calculus that could justify treating a person merely as a means to a greater aggregate good.
Associated With
Source John Stuart Mill (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Wired as associated (testing-ground usage), not directional influence: the trolley problem is used across the literature to contrast utilitarian and duty-based judgments, not authored from utilitarianism.
Source Trolley Problem (Wikipedia)
Critiqued Here
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Founded By
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
In Branch
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source Value Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Utilitarianism
WikipediaWikipedia, Utilitarianism, lead sectionQuote, Wikipedia, Utilitarianism, lead section
Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described utility as the capacity of actions or objects to produce benefits, such as pleasure, happiness, and good, or to prevent harm, such as pain and unhappiness.
2. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Informations.v. Utilitarianism, Introduction (Bentham 1789)
Utilitarianism is one of the most powerful and persuasive approaches to normative ethics in the history of philosophy.
- Founded By: Jeremy Bentham
- In Branch: Ethics
- Associated With: Marxism, entry: Karl Marx
View the Source John Stuart Mill (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyAssociated With: John Stuart Mill
Value Theory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyIn Branch: Value Theory, entry: Value Theory, Section 3.1.2Quote, In Branch: Value Theory, entry: Value Theory, Section 3.1.2
Classical consequentialism, and its instantiation in the form of utilitarianism, has been well-explored, and its advantages and costs cannot be surveyed here.
Trolley Problem (Wikipedia)
WikipediaAssociated With: The Trolley Problem, Ethical frameworks sectionQuote, Associated With: The Trolley Problem, Ethical frameworks section
A utilitarian view asserts that it is obligatory to steer to the track with one man on it.
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Associated With: John Rawls
Utilitarian critics have pushed back on Rawls's own framing of the veil of ignorance as a decisive advantage over their view. The objection runs that reasoners behind the veil, facing genuine uncertainty about their own future position, would rationally choose something closer to a risk-averse form of utilitarianism rather than Rawls's maximin difference principle, so the thought experiment does not settle the argument as one-sidedly as A Theory of Justice presents it. This atlas records Rawls's own rejection of utilitarianism as the settled framing of his position, attested, while noting here that the argument was contested on its own methodological ground, not only rejected from outside it.
A dissenting reading, from a reviewerStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Information
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