Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the ethical theory that the right action, law or institution is the one that produces the greatest total happiness — “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”. Founded as a systematic doctrine by Jeremy Bentham at the end of the eighteenth century and refined by John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick in the nineteenth, it was at once a philosophy and a reform movement: its adherents, the “Philosophical Radicals”, campaigned for democracy, legal reform, prison reform, free trade, the abolition of slavery, the rights of women and the decriminalisation of homosexuality. It is the most influential form of consequentialism — the view, named by Elizabeth Anscombe, that only consequences matter morally — and it remains, with Kantian ethics and virtue ethics, one of the three great approaches in moral philosophy.

Origins

The idea that morality aims at happiness is ancient — Epicurus made pleasure the good — and in the eighteenth century Francis Hutcheson wrote that “that action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers” (1725). David Hume grounded morality in sentiment and utility; the Italian reformer Cesare Beccaria applied the principle to criminal law (1764); William Paley offered a theological version. But it was Bentham who made utility the single foundation of morals and legislation.

Bentham: the felicific calculus

Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) begins: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.” The principle of utility approves or disapproves of every action according to its tendency to increase or diminish the happiness of those affected. Pleasures and pains can be measured by their intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity and extent — the felicific calculus. Quality does not matter: “quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry”. Natural rights were “nonsense upon stilts”. Bentham’s principle extended to animals: “the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

Mill: higher pleasures and liberty

Mill, raised as a utilitarian prodigy by his father James Mill and Bentham, refined the doctrine in Utilitarianism (1861). He distinguished higher pleasures — of intellect, feeling, imagination and moral sentiment — from lower, bodily ones: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” He offered a “proof” of the principle — the only evidence that something is desirable is that people actually desire it — which critics have attacked ever since. He argued that justice is the name for the most important class of social utilities. And in On Liberty (1859) he defended individual freedom on utilitarian grounds, through the harm principle.

Sidgwick and after

Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics (1874), the most rigorous work of the classical tradition, compared egoism, intuitionism and utilitarianism, argued that utilitarianism systematises common-sense morality, and confessed that the conflict between self-interest and the good of all — the “dualism of practical reason” — could not be resolved. In the twentieth century, G. E. Moore defended an “ideal” utilitarianism; R. M. Hare a preference utilitarianism grounded in the logic of moral language; J. J. C. Smart an “act” utilitarianism; and Peter Singer applied it to famine relief, animal liberation and the effective altruism movement. Derek Parfit explored its puzzles about future generations and the Repugnant Conclusion.

Varieties

• Act utilitarianism: each act is right if it produces the best consequences.
• Rule utilitarianism: an act is right if it conforms to rules whose general acceptance would produce the best consequences.
• Hedonistic versus preference utilitarianism: whether the good is pleasure or the satisfaction of desires.
• Total versus average utilitarianism: whether to maximise the sum of welfare or its average — a difference that matters for population ethics.

Objections

Utilitarianism’s critics have argued that it permits the sacrifice of innocents for the greater good — punishing an innocent man to prevent a riot, harvesting one patient’s organs to save five; that it ignores justice, rights and the “separateness of persons” (Rawls); that it demands too much, requiring us to give almost everything to the poor; that it neglects personal integrity and special obligations to family and friends (Bernard Williams); and that pleasure cannot be measured or compared across persons. Its defenders reply that rules, rights and personal commitments themselves have great utility, and that the theory’s demands are only as hard as the facts of suffering in the world.

In conversation

• “The greatest happiness of the greatest number” — the principle of utility.
• Socrates dissatisfied or the pig satisfied — Mill’s higher pleasures.
• “Can they suffer?” — Bentham’s case for animals.