Jeremy Bentham

An English philosopher and legal reformer who founded classical utilitarianism, the view that the right action is the one that produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Bentham proposed the principle of utility as a single, calculable standard for both personal morality and public legislation, and in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation he sketched a felicific calculus intended to weigh pleasures and pains by their intensity, duration, and certainty. He used the same standard to argue, well ahead of most contemporaries, for the moral consideration of animals, for decriminalizing homosexuality, and for extending the franchise, on the ground that suffering and happiness count wherever they occur regardless of species or social rank. His student and intellectual heir John Stuart Mill later refined utilitarianism, distinguishing higher and lower pleasures in response to the charge that Bentham's calculus was too crude to capture what actually makes a life good.