Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher, economist, jurist, and legal reformer and the founder of modern utilitarianism, an ethical theory holding that actions are morally right if they tend to promote happiness or pleasure (and morally wrong if they tend to promote unhappiness or pain) among all those affected by them.

Utilitarianism

Bentham tells us that moving from one individual’s complete happiness and sadness to the overall joy or suffering of all the individuals of the group put together is important. In the other hand, Kant implies that our acts can only be governed by obligation and law, as implications are outside our grasp.

Utilitarianism is a theory of morality, which advocates actions that foster happiness or pleasure and opposes actions that cause unhappiness or harm. When directed toward making social, economic, or political decisions, a utilitarian philosophy would aim for the betterment of society as a whole.

Utilitarianism is now often used as a pejorative term, meaning something like ‘using a person as a means to an end’, or even worse, akin to some kind of ethical dystopia.

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF UTILITARIANISM

There are two types of utilitarians–rule utilitarians and act utilitarians–and both strive to maximize the utility of actions for the good of humankind. They only differ in the way they approach this task.

morally right

Therefore, utilitarianism protects and enhances human rights. The most significant alleged problem of utilitarianism is its rejection of the conventional view of justice: According to utilitarianism, taken per se, the well-being of a murderer is as important as the well-being of the President of the United States.

In its political philosophy, utilitarianism bases the authority of government and the sanctity of individual rights upon their utility, thus providing an alternative to theories of natural law, natural rights, or social contract.

Utilitarianism says that the morally best thing to do is to promote everyone’s values (by maximizing welfare), with all values treated equally. Many other ethical philosophies say that morality consists of promoting only some values, or promoting some values as more important than other values.

Abstract. The greatest happiness principle is the ultimate standard of morality set up by classical utilitarianism (see Utilitarianism). That classical creed conceives of good as happiness (see Happiness) and holds that right actions are those which maximize the total happiness of the members of the community.

The Greatest Happiness Principle holds that the more pleasure and the least pain an action causes, the better it is morally. So the only consistent general moral principle must be: Seek the greatest good for the greatest number. That is a clear expression of the Utilitarian ethic.

The Classical Utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, identified the good with pleasure, so, like Epicurus, were hedonists about value. They also held that we ought to maximize the good, that is, bring about ‘the greatest amount of good for the greatest number’.

The principle of utility, or “greatest happiness principle,” forms the cornerstone of all Bentham’s thought. His principle of utility regards good as that which produces the greatest amount of pleasure and the minimum amount of pain and evil as that which produces the most pain without the pleasure.

Hedonism holds that physical pleasure for one self is the only good thing, and more is always better. Utilitarianism holds that the action that produces the most utility is the only good thing, and utility may be defined as greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest number of people, not just one self.

The origins of Utilitarianism are often traced back to the Epicureanism of the followers of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. It can be argued that David Hume and Edmund Burke were proto-Utilitarians. But as a specific school of thought, it is generally credited to the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham.

John Stuart Mill

Save This Word! A goal put forth for governments: that they should be judged by the results of their policies, and specifically, whether those policies benefit the majority.

Mill delineates how to differentiate between higher- and lower-quality pleasures: A pleasure is of higher quality if people would choose it over a different pleasure even if it is accompanied by discomfort, and if they would not trade it for a greater amount of the other pleasure.

Mill defines utilitarianism as a theory based on the principle that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Mill defines happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain. The theory of utilitarianism has been criticized for many reasons.

Finally, as a utilitarian, enjoy your life! Your happiness counts too! Take joy in doing the most good you can do, and building close relationships with others doing the same, whose values you can respect and share. Don’t be fanatical about it, recognize your limitations, but keep trying to do better.

As explained in Chapter 1: Introduction to Utilitarianism, the core idea of utilitarianism is that we ought to act to improve the wellbeing of everyone by as much as possible. Utilitarian theories generally share four elements: consequentialism, welfarism, impartiality, and additive aggregationism.