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Short Encyclopedia Britannica Article
The sees of Utilitarianism are found in the history of thought long before Bentham.
Antecedents of Utilitarianism among the ancients
A hedonistic theory of the value of life is found in the
early 5th century BC in the ethics of Aristippus of Cyrene, founder of the Cyrenaic school, and 100 years later in that of
Epicurus, founder of an ethic of retirement, and their followers in ancient Greece. The seeds of ethical universalism are
found in the doctrines of the rival ethical school of Stoicism and in Christianity.
Utilitarianism is an effort to provide
an answer to the practical question What ought a man to do? Its answer is that he ought to act so as to produce the best consequences
possible.
Basic concepts
In the notion of consequences the Utilitarian includes all of the good and bad produced
by the act, whether arising after the act has been performed or during its performance. If the difference in the consequences
of alternative acts is not great, some Utilitarians do not regard the choice between them as a moral issue. According to Mill,
acts should be classified as morally right or wrong only if the consequences are of such significance that a person would
wish to see the agent compelled, not merely persuaded and exhorted, to act in the preferred manner.
In assessing the
consequences of actions, Utilitarianism relies upon some theory of intrinsic value: something is held to be good in itself,
apart from further consequences, and all other values are believed to derive their worth from their relation to this intrinsic
good as a means to an end. Bentham and Mill were hedonists; i.e., they analyzed happiness as a balance of pleasure over pain
and believed that these feelings alone are of intrinsic value and disvalue. Utilitarians also assume that it is possible to
compare the intrinsic values produced by two alternative actions and to estimate which would have better consequences. Bentham
believed that a hedonic calculus is theoretically possible. A moralist, he maintained, could sum up the units of pleasure
and the units of pain for everyone likely to be affected, immediately and in the future, and could take the balance as a measure
of the overall good or evil tendency of an action. Such precise measurement as Bentham envisioned is perhaps not essential,
but it is nonetheless necessary for the Utilitarian to make some interpersonal comparisons of the values of the effects of
alternative courses of action.
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Who are we to blame: the utilitarian theory of retribution--jk
Utilitarian ethics as a guidance for government and personal action is based upon the maximization of the good: by government for those within the society, and by individuals. It
is a code for public actions and of personal actions. The issue of what should
be done about behavior that produces significant harm for a society, on a government level, it would be to for to select policies
which would reduce the overall harm. A policy of warehousing that costs $45,000
per year is producing harm to society, harm to the individual, and harm to those separated from that person. To minimize these, a policy of retraining, of supervision upon release, and of making the conditions of
confinement only moderately odious. Odious enough so that those in need of assistance
don ‘t see for example robbing a bank as way to get into a job training & drug rehabilitation program.
Utilitarian
society goes not just to the issue of personal actions and social policy, but also to the very nature of society. It was the understood question in Plato’s Republic: How
to build the ideal society? Utilitarian theory is applied not just to the conditions
of incarceration, but also to that of employment, goods and service, and the distribution of wealth. Utilitarians is about maximizing the good. And if an area
such as administration of programs is found wanting, then positive change is required.
Plato gives us the first extensive example of this approach.
Improving conditions
of confinement and release is not an isolated issue, but ought to be part of an overall program to make society better.
One way
to view society is that like of nature, full of niches. A niche is an environmental
slot which accommodate a certain number animals. Thus there are in a given area
certain number of seed eating birds, of insect eating birds, of nectar gathering birds.
And within this broad categorization, there would be birds that can eat seeds with hard shells, and those that can’t.
In our society there are certain behavior niches. Conditions support a the various
mass religions, gambling casinos, sporting good stores, etc. The same too with
biker clubs, drug dealers, and robbers. Changes in conditions entails changes
in the number and type of churches, of sporting good stores, etc. Changes in
social conditions and the numbers of bikers, recreational drug users, and thieves change.
The change of niches results in a changing of enterprises. The Roosevelt
New Deal had within the constraints of capitalism a vision of changing niches, of maximizing the number of sober, hardworking
citizens. We need to get back to Plato, to making government a good parent.
And we
need a public-interested media (not our corporate media), one which will raise repeatedly the questions of what is the good
life and what should government be doing to promote it? We need a media which
does not give the corporate answer of removing regulations for the sake of profits, and thereby presuming that the law of
the jungle is the road to the good life. We have gone from the wisdom born of
the depression to the idiocy of the 1920s and the era of robber barons. History
is repeating itself: corporate greed is not the way to build a healthy society.
Another similar introduction to utilitarianism
Utilitarianism: The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number
Kerby Anderson
You have probably heard a politician say he or
she passed a piece of legislation because it did the greatest good for the greatest number of citizens. Perhaps you have heard
someone justify their actions because it was for the greater good.
In
this article, we are going to talk about the philosophy behind such actions. The philosophy is known as utilitarianism. Although
it is a long word, it is in common usage every day. It is the belief that the sole standard of morality is determined by its
usefulness.
Philosophers refer to
it as a "teleological" system. The Greek word "telos" means end or goal. This means that this ethical system determines morality
by the end result. Whereas Christian ethics are based on rules, utilitarianism is based on results.
Utilitarianism
began with the philosophies of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Utilitarianism gets its name from
Bentham's test question, "What is the use of it?" He conceived of the idea when he ran across the words "the greatest happiness
of the greatest number" in Joseph Priestly's Treatise of Government.
Jeremy Bentham developed
his ethical system around the idea of pleasure. He built it on ancient hedonism which pursued physical pleasure and avoided
physical pain. According to Bentham, the most moral acts are those which maximize pleasure and minimize pain. This has sometimes
been called the "utilitarian calculus." An act would be moral if it brings the greatest amount of pleasure and the least amount
of pain.
John
Stuart Mill modified this philosophy and developed it apart from Bentham's hedonistic foundation. Mill used the same utilitarian
calculus but instead focused on maximizing the general happiness by calculating the greatest good for the greatest number.
While Bentham used the calculus in a quantitative sense, Mill used this calculus in a qualitative sense. He believed, for
example, that some pleasures were of higher quality than others.
Utilitarianism
has been embraced by so many simply because it seems to make a good deal of sense and seems relatively simple to apply. However,
when it was first proposed, utilitarianism was a radical philosophy. It attempted to set forth a moral system apart from divine
revelation and biblical morality. Utilitarianism focused on results rather than rules. Ultimately the focus on the results
demolished the rules.
In
other words, utilitarianism provided for a way for people to live moral lives apart from the Bible and its prescriptions.
There was no need for an appeal to divine revelation. Reason rather than revelation was sufficient to determine morality.
Founders of Utilitarianism
Jeremy
Bentham was a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law and one of the founders of utilitarianism. He developed
this idea of a utility and a utilitarian calculus in the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1781).
In the
beginning of that work Bentham wrote: "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. On the
one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They
govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but
to demonstrate and confirm it."{1}
Bentham believed that
pain and pleasure not only explain our actions but also help us define what is good and moral. He believed that this foundation
could provide a basis for social, legal, and moral reform in society.
Key
to his ethical system is the principle of utility. That is, what is the greatest good for the greatest number?
Bentham
wrote: "By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according
to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question:
or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that happiness." {2}
John Stuart Mill was a brilliant
scholar who was subjected to a rigid system of intellectual discipline and shielded from boys his own age. When Mill was a
teenager, he read Bentham. Mill said the feeling rushed upon him "that all previous moralists were superseded." He believed
that the principle of utility "gave unity to my conception of things. I now had opinions: a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy;
in one among the best senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation and diffusion of what could be made the principle outward
purpose of a life."{3}
Mill
modified Bentham's utilitarianism. Whereas Bentham established an act utilitarianism, Mill established a rule
utilitarianism. According to Mill, one calculates what is right by comparing the consequences of all relevant agents of alternative
rules for a particular circumstance. This is done by comparing all relevant similar circumstances or settings at any time. The modification was made in order to justify the common moral principles such
as those that bar lying and adultery. It seems that the same conclusion can be
reached by analysis of circumstance with act utilitarianism, though of course there is convenience in having a set of rules.
Both
Mill and Bentham subscribed to the hedonic calculus: intensity, duration, propinquity,
certainty, fecundity, purity, and extent. (1) Intensity, the strength of the
pleasure/pain. (2) Duration. (3)
Propinquity, how soon will it come? (4) Certainty, likelihood. (5) Fecundity, the ability to produce more distant pleasures. (6)
Purity, the consequential amount of pain compared with the total pleasure. (7)
Extent, the number of people affected. However, Mill held that not all pleasures
are equal, certain ones such as poetry, Mill held, are intrinsically better. However,
it seems to me that Bentham’s formulation of the hedonistic calculus is able to account for the effects of poetry, as
opposed to watching cock fighting, upon character development. This and
other issues, such as the utilitarian theory of justice are part of the quagmire of moral philosophy.
Utilitarianism
continues to this day as a viable, academic theory, with articles published thereon in journals of moral philosophy, and on
essentially the same issues raised by Mill and Bentham. The common person of
course looks to the value of what is produced by an action as the leading factor in determining moral praise and blame.
{Last 2 paragraphs by JK}
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