Utilitarianism

Introduction

Utilitarianism is the moral and political philosophical tradition that takes the maximization of aggregate well-being or happiness as the foundation of moral and political evaluation. The tradition was founded by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) in the late eighteenth century, developed by John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) in the nineteenth, and has continued through Henry Sidgwick's systematic treatment in The Methods of Ethics (1874), the twentieth-century formal developments through R.M. Hare, J.J.C. Smart, and others, and the contemporary work of Peter Singer, Derek Parfit, and the effective altruism movement.

The central thesis — that the right action is the one that produces the greatest aggregate good — has been continuously contested and continuously refined. The tradition has developed in directions that include act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism, hedonistic and preference utilitarianism, total and average versions, and the contemporary developments in consequentialism more broadly. The influence on practical political philosophy, especially through the nineteenth-century legal and political reform movement and through the twentieth-century welfare economics, has been substantial.

Founding moment

Founded by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) in late eighteenth-century England, especially through An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (composed 1780, published 1789). The founding statement of the doctrine is the principle of utility: that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.

The intellectual context was the British empiricist tradition (especially Hume's moral sentimentalism and the work of Francis Hutcheson, whose 1725 Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue developed the greatest happiness principle), the continental Enlightenment (especially Helvétius and Beccaria), and the practical context of legal and political reform in late-eighteenth-century England.

Bentham's work was developed by his circle (especially James Mill, 1773–1836) and transmitted to the nineteenth century through the Philosophical Radicals movement. The systematic articulation of the doctrine as a moral philosophy came through John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism (1861, originally serialized in Fraser's Magazine and published as a book in 1863).

Core doctrines

Utilitarianism is a family of related positions rather than a single doctrine, but the shared commitments are substantial.

1. Consequentialism. The moral worth of actions is constituted by their consequences rather than by intrinsic features of the actions themselves. The Kantian deontological tradition (which treats the moral worth of actions as constituted by features intrinsic to the actions) is the principal contrast.
2. Welfarism. The relevant consequences are constituted by their effects on the well-being of conscious beings. well-being is the foundational ethical value; everything else (rights, duties, virtues, social institutions) is derivative from it.
3. The greatest happiness principle. The right action is the one that produces the greatest aggregate well-being for all those whose well-being is affected. The aggregation across individuals is the distinctive feature.
4. Impartiality. The well-being of all conscious beings counts equally in the aggregation. The Benthamite slogan each to count for one, and none for more than one captures the impartialist commitment.
5. Empiricism in moral epistemology. moral judgments are empirical judgments about consequences and effects on well-being. The role of intuition is evidential rather than foundational; intuitions that conflict with considered utilitarian judgments are to be revised.
6. The progressive political implications. The tradition has had progressive political implications (substantial criticism of slavery, of gender inequality, of cruelty to non-human animals, of poverty) on the grounds that existing institutions fail to produce the greatest aggregate well-being.

Major figures

• Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) — the Scottish predecessor; the greatest happiness principle in the 1725 Inquiry.
• David Hume (1711–1776) — the empiricist predecessor whose moral sentimentalism shaped the utilitarian framework.
• Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) — the Italian legal reformer whose On Crimes and Punishments (1764) shaped Bentham.
• Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) — the founder; An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789).
• James Mill (1773–1836) — the Benthamite and father of John Stuart Mill.
• John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) — the systematic developer; Utilitarianism (1861); On Liberty (1859); The Subjection of Women (1869).
• Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900) — the Cambridge systematic articulator; The Methods of Ethics (1874).
• G.E. Moore (1873–1958) — the early-twentieth-century developer; Principia Ethica (1903).
• R.M. Hare (1919–2002) — the Oxford utilitarian; Moral Thinking (1981).
• J.J.C. Smart (1920–2012) — the Australian act utilitarian.
• Peter Singer (1946–) — the contemporary preference utilitarian; Animal Liberation (1975); Practical Ethics (1979); the founder of the effective altruism movement.
• Derek Parfit (1942–2017) — the contemporary moral philosopher; Reasons and Persons (1984); the three-volume On What Matters (2011–17).

Major texts

• Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789); The Rationale of Reward (1825); Constitutional Code (1830).
• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1861); On Liberty (1859); Considerations on Representative Government (1861); The Subjection of Women (1869).
• Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (1874).
• Moore, Principia Ethica (1903).
• Hare, Freedom and Reason (1963); Moral Thinking (1981).
• Smart, An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics (1961); Utilitarianism: For and Against (with Bernard Williams, 1973).
• Singer, Animal Liberation (1975); Practical Ethics (1979); The Most Good You Can Do (2015).
• Parfit, Reasons and Persons (1984); On What Matters (three volumes, 2011–17).

Internal tensions and rival schools

The major internal tension within utilitarianism has been the dispute between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism (defended by Smart and others) holds that the right action is the one that produces the greatest aggregate well-being in the particular situation. Rule utilitarianism (defended by Mill in some passages, by Brandt, and by others) holds that the right action is the one that conforms to the rules that would produce the greatest aggregate well-being if generally followed. The dispute turns on questions about the relation between rules and consequences, the epistemic situation of moral agents, and the role of integrity in moral life.

The second tension is between hedonistic and preference versions of utilitarianism. hedonistic utilitarianism (Bentham and portions of Mill) identifies well-being with pleasure or happiness; preference utilitarianism (Singer and contemporary work) identifies well-being with the satisfaction of preferences. The dispute turns on questions about the nature of well-being and the relation between subjective experience and objective good.

The third tension is between total and average versions of utilitarianism. Total utilitarianism (the more orthodox position) maximizes the total aggregate well-being across all conscious beings; average utilitarianism (defended by some) maximizes the average well-being. The Parfitian Repugnant Conclusion (that total utilitarianism implies that a world with billions of lives barely worth living is better than a world with billions of flourishing lives, provided the total is larger) shapes the contemporary debate.

The great external rivals are Kantian deontology (the view that the moral worth of actions is constituted by intrinsic features rather than consequences), virtue ethics (the revived Aristotelian tradition through Anscombe, MacIntyre, Foot, and others), natural law ethics (the Thomist and Catholic tradition), and contractualism (through Rawls and post-Rawlsian work).

Legacy

Utilitarianism's legacy operates along multiple distinct trajectories.

Within political and legal reform, the Benthamite tradition shaped nineteenth-century legal reform across England, colonial India, and beyond. The work of Benthamite reformers (especially James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Edwin Chadwick, and the Philosophical Radicals) shaped the development of parliamentary reform, poor law reform, public health reform, educational reform, and colonial administration.

Within economics, the utilitarian framework shaped the development of welfare economics through Alfred Marshall, Arthur Pigou, and the twentieth-century welfare economics tradition. The framework underlies the cost-benefit analysis that shapes contemporary policy evaluation.

Within philosophy, the twentieth-century developments through Hare, Smart, Parfit, and Singer have developed the tradition. The contemporary effective altruism movement (through MacAskill's Doing Good Better, 2015; What We Owe the Future, 2022) extends utilitarian categories into practical moral reasoning about charitable giving, career choice, and the future of humanity.

Within animal ethics, Singer's Animal Liberation (1975) founded the contemporary animal rights movement and shaped contemporary practice around factory farming, animal experimentation, and the moral consideration of non-human animals.

Internal debates within the tradition

The defining intramural dispute is the act–rule controversy described above. The dispute has been continuously consequential; the twentieth-century formal developments refined both positions and developed intermediate positions (especially indirect utilitarianism, two-level utilitarianism through Hare, and motive utilitarianism).

A second sustained debate concerns the relation between utilitarian moral judgments and moral intuitions. The Sidgwickian approach (the dominant tradition) treats moral intuitions as evidence to be weighed against theoretical considerations; the Singer-style approach gives more weight to theoretical considerations and less to intuitive resistance to utilitarian conclusions; the Williams-style critique (Bernard Williams's Utilitarianism: For and Against, 1973) argues that utilitarian conclusions that conflict with deep moral intuitions indicate defects in the theory rather than revisions to be adopted.

Third, the question of the demands of utilitarianism on the individual has been continuously debated. The impartiality requirement seems to require that moral agents give equal weight to the well-being of all individuals, which seems to require massive sacrifice of personal projects and relationships. The Williams-style critique argues that this undermines integrity; defenders argue that properly understood utilitarianism does not require such sacrifice.

Fourth, the question of the relation between utilitarianism and rights has been continuously contested. critics argue that utilitarianism cannot accommodate individual rights (since rights would constrain maximization of aggregate well-being even when violation would produce greater aggregate well-being). defenders argue that rules-based or indirect versions of utilitarianism can accommodate rights as constraints whose general observance maximizes aggregate well-being.

Fifth, the Parfitian developments in population ethics have produced new problems within the tradition. The Repugnant Conclusion, the Non-Identity Problem, the Mere Addition Paradox, and the related problems raise difficult questions about how utilitarian frameworks apply across changes in the number and identity of conscious beings.

Texts and transmission

Bentham's corpus has been edited through the Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham edited by the Bentham Project at University College London (begun 1968 and still in progress; new editions of works continue to appear). The Bentham Nachlass at UCL (digitized through the Transcribe Bentham crowdsourcing project) makes portions of the unpublished work available.

John Stuart Mill's corpus is gathered in the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill edited by John Robson (Toronto, 33 volumes, 1963–91), one of the standard scholarly editions. The Cambridge University Press editions of individual works (Utilitarianism, On Liberty, The Subjection of Women) anchor the pedagogical literature.

Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics has been continuously in print since its 1874 publication and is the foundational text of Anglo-American moral philosophy through the twentieth century. The seventh edition (1907, with revisions by Sidgwick before his death) is the standard text.

The twentieth-century utilitarian tradition has developed through Oxford and Cambridge moral philosophy. Hare's corpus (the Language of Morals, 1952; Freedom and Reason, 1963; Moral Thinking, 1981) shaped Oxford moral philosophy through the second half of the twentieth century. Smart's Australian tradition developed at the Australian National University. The recent developments through Singer (now at Princeton), Parfit (Oxford), and the effective altruism movement anchor contemporary utilitarian work.

The institutional transmission of utilitarianism has been through the Bentham Society, the Mill Society, the Utilitas journal (begun 1989), and the effective altruism organizations (GiveWell, 80,000 Hours, the Centre for Effective Altruism). The pedagogical literature is substantial; the Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism (Eggleston and Miller, eds., 2014) anchors the introductory literature.

The moral and political philosophical tradition that takes the maximization of aggregate well-being as the foundation of moral and political evaluation.