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The History of Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is one of the most powerful and persuasive approaches to normative ethics in the history of philosophy. Though not fully articulated until the 19 th century, proto-utilitarian positions can be discerned throughout the history of ethical theory.

Though there are many varieties of the view discussed, utilitarianism is generally held to be the view that the morally right action is the action that produces the most good. There are many ways to spell out this general claim. One thing to note is that the theory is a form of consequentialism: the right action is understood entirely in terms of consequences produced. What distinguishes utilitarianism from egoism has to do with the scope of the relevant consequences. On the utilitarian view one ought to maximize the overall good — that is, consider the good of others as well as one's own good.

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’.

Utilitarianism is also distinguished by impartiality and agent-neutrality. Everyone's happiness counts the same. When one maximizes the good, it is the good impartially considered. My good counts for no more than anyone else's good. Further, the reason I have to promote the overall good is the same reason anyone else has to so promote the good. It is not peculiar to me.

All of these features of this approach to moral evaluation and/or moral decision-making have proven to be somewhat controversial and subsequent controversies have led to changes in the Classical version of the theory.

1. Precursors to the Classical Approach

2.1 jeremy bentham, 2.2 john stuart mill, 3. henry sidgwick, 4. ideal utilitarianism, 5. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries.

Though the first systematic account of utilitarianism was developed by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the core insight motivating the theory occurred much earlier. That insight is that morally appropriate behavior will not harm others, but instead increase happiness or ‘utility.’ What is distinctive about utilitarianism is its approach in taking that insight and developing an account of moral evaluation and moral direction that expands on it. Early precursors to the Classical Utilitarians include the British Moralists, Cumberland, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Gay, and Hume. Of these, Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) is explicitly utilitarian when it comes to action choice.

Some of the earliest utilitarian thinkers were the ‘theological’ utilitarians such as Richard Cumberland (1631–1718) and John Gay (1699–1745). They believed that promoting human happiness was incumbent on us since it was approved by God. After enumerating the ways in which humans come under obligations (by perceiving the “natural consequences of things”, the obligation to be virtuous, our civil obligations that arise from laws, and obligations arising from “the authority of God”) John Gay writes: “…from the consideration of these four sorts of obligation…it is evident that a full and complete obligation which will extend to all cases, can only be that arising from the authority of God ; because God only can in all cases make a man happy or miserable: and therefore, since we are always obliged to that conformity called virtue, it is evident that the immediate rule or criterion of it is the will of God” (R, 412). Gay held that since God wants the happiness of mankind, and since God's will gives us the criterion of virtue, “…the happiness of mankind may be said to be the criterion of virtue, but once removed ” (R, 413). This view was combined with a view of human motivation with egoistic elements. A person's individual salvation, her eternal happiness, depended on conformity to God's will, as did virtue itself. Promoting human happiness and one's own coincided, but, given God's design, it was not an accidental coincidence.

This approach to utilitarianism, however, is not theoretically clean in the sense that it isn't clear what essential work God does, at least in terms of normative ethics. God as the source of normativity is compatible with utilitarianism, but utilitarianism doesn't require this.

Gay's influence on later writers, such as Hume, deserves note. It is in Gay's essay that some of the questions that concerned Hume on the nature of virtue are addressed. For example, Gay was curious about how to explain our practice of approbation and disapprobation of action and character. When we see an act that is vicious we disapprove of it. Further, we associate certain things with their effects, so that we form positive associations and negative associations that also underwrite our moral judgments. Of course, that we view happiness, including the happiness of others as a good, is due to God's design. This is a feature crucial to the theological approach, which would clearly be rejected by Hume in favor of a naturalistic view of human nature and a reliance on our sympathetic engagement with others, an approach anticipated by Shaftesbury (below). The theological approach to utilitarianism would be developed later by William Paley, for example, but the lack of any theoretical necessity in appealing to God would result in its diminishing appeal.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 3 rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) is generally thought to have been the one of the earliest ‘moral sense’ theorists, holding that we possess a kind of “inner eye” that allows us to make moral discriminations. This seems to have been an innate sense of right and wrong, or moral beauty and deformity. Again, aspects of this doctrine would be picked up by Francis Hutcheson and David Hume (1711–1776). Hume, of course, would clearly reject any robust realist implications. If the moral sense is like the other perceptual senses and enables us to pick up on properties out there in the universe around us, properties that exist independent from our perception of them, that are objective, then Hume clearly was not a moral sense theorist in this regard. But perception picks up on features of our environment that one could regard as having a contingent quality. There is one famous passage where Hume likens moral discrimination to the perception of secondary qualities, such as color. In modern terminology, these are response-dependent properties, and lack objectivity in the sense that they do not exist independent of our responses. This is radical. If an act is vicious, its viciousness is a matter of the human response (given a corrected perspective) to the act (or its perceived effects) and thus has a kind of contingency that seems unsettling, certainly unsettling to those who opted for the theological option.

So, the view that it is part of our very nature to make moral discriminations is very much in Hume. Further — and what is relevant to the development of utilitarianism — the view of Shaftesbury that the virtuous person contributes to the good of the whole — would figure into Hume's writings, though modified. It is the virtue that contributes to the good of the whole system, in the case of Hume's artificial virtues.

Shaftesbury held that in judging someone virtuous or good in a moral sense we need to perceive that person's impact on the systems of which he or she is a part. Here it sometimes becomes difficult to disentangle egoistic versus utilitarian lines of thought in Shaftesbury. He clearly states that whatever guiding force there is has made nature such that it is “…the private interest and good of every one, to work towards the general good , which if a creature ceases to promote, he is actually so far wanting to himself, and ceases to promote his own happiness and welfare…” (R, 188). It is hard, sometimes, to discern the direction of the ‘because’ — if one should act to help others because it supports a system in which one's own happiness is more likely, then it looks really like a form of egoism. If one should help others because that's the right thing to do — and, fortunately, it also ends up promoting one's own interests, then that's more like utilitarianism, since the promotion of self-interest is a welcome effect but not what, all by itself, justifies one's character or actions.

Further, to be virtuous a person must have certain psychological capacities — they must be able to reflect on character, for example, and represent to themselves the qualities in others that are either approved or disapproved of.

…in this case alone it is we call any creature worthy or virtuous when it can have the notion of a public interest, and can attain the speculation or science of what is morally good or ill, admirable or blameable, right or wrong….we never say of….any mere beast, idiot, or changeling, though ever so good-natured, that he is worthy or virtuous. (Shaftesbury IVM; BKI, PII, sec. iii)

Thus, animals are not objects of moral appraisal on the view, since they lack the necessary reflective capacities. Animals also lack the capacity for moral discrimination and would therefore seem to lack the moral sense. This raises some interesting questions. It would seem that the moral sense is a perception that something is the case. So it isn't merely a discriminatory sense that allows us to sort perceptions. It also has a propositional aspect, so that animals, which are not lacking in other senses are lacking in this one.

The virtuous person is one whose affections, motives, dispositions are of the right sort, not one whose behavior is simply of the right sort and who is able to reflect on goodness, and her own goodness [see Gill]. Similarly, the vicious person is one who exemplifies the wrong sorts of mental states, affections, and so forth. A person who harms others through no fault of his own “…because he has convulsive fits which make him strike and wound such as approach him” is not vicious since he has no desire to harm anyone and his bodily movements in this case are beyond his control.

Shaftesbury approached moral evaluation via the virtues and vices. His utilitarian leanings are distinct from his moral sense approach, and his overall sentimentalism. However, this approach highlights the move away from egoistic views of human nature — a trend picked up by Hutcheson and Hume, and later adopted by Mill in criticism of Bentham's version of utilitarianism. For writers like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson the main contrast was with egoism rather than rationalism.

Like Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson was very much interested in virtue evaluation. He also adopted the moral sense approach. However, in his writings we also see an emphasis on action choice and the importance of moral deliberation to action choice. Hutcheson, in An Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil , fairly explicitly spelled out a utilitarian principle of action choice. (Joachim Hruschka (1991) notes, however, that it was Leibniz who first spelled out a utilitarian decision procedure.)

….In comparing the moral qualities of actions…we are led by our moral sense of virtue to judge thus; that in equal degrees of happiness, expected to proceed from the action, the virtue is in proportion to the number of persons to whom the happiness shall extend (and here the dignity , or moral importance of persons, may compensate numbers); and, in equal numbers , the virtue is the quantity of the happiness, or natural good; or that the virtue is in a compound ratio of the quantity of good, and number of enjoyers….so that that action is best , which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers ; and that worst , which, in like manner , occasions misery . (R, 283–4)

Scarre notes that some hold the moral sense approach incompatible with this emphasis on the use of reason to determine what we ought to do; there is an opposition between just apprehending what's morally significant and a model in which we need to reason to figure out what morality demands of us. But Scarre notes these are not actually incompatible:

The picture which emerges from Hutcheson's discussion is of a division of labor, in which the moral sense causes us to look with favor on actions which benefit others and disfavor those which harm them, while consequentialist reasoning determines a more precise ranking order of practical options in given situations. (Scarre, 53–54)

Scarre then uses the example of telling a lie to illustrate: lying is harmful to the person to whom one lies, and so this is viewed with disfavor, in general. However, in a specific case, if a lie is necessary to achieve some notable good, consequentialist reasoning will lead us to favor the lying. But this example seems to put all the emphasis on a consideration of consequences in moral approval and disapproval. Stephen Darwall notes (1995, 216 ff.) that the moral sense is concerned with motives — we approve, for example, of the motive of benevolence, and the wider the scope the better. It is the motives rather than the consequences that are the objects of approval and disapproval. But inasmuch as the morally good person cares about what happens to others, and of course she will, she will rank order acts in terms of their effects on others, and reason is used in calculating effects. So there is no incompatibility at all.

Hutcheson was committed to maximization, it seems. However, he insisted on a caveat — that “the dignity or moral importance of persons may compensate numbers.” He added a deontological constraint — that we have a duty to others in virtue of their personhood to accord them fundamental dignity regardless of the numbers of others whose happiness is to be affected by the action in question.

Hume was heavily influenced by Hutcheson, who was one of his teachers. His system also incorporates insights made by Shaftesbury, though he certainly lacks Shaftesbury's confidence that virtue is its own reward. In terms of his place in the history of utilitarianism we should note two distinct effects his system had. Firstly, his account of the social utility of the artificial virtues influenced Bentham's thought on utility. Secondly, his account of the role sentiment played in moral judgment and commitment to moral norms influenced Mill's thoughts about the internal sanctions of morality. Mill would diverge from Bentham in developing the ‘altruistic’ approach to Utilitarianism (which is actually a misnomer, but more on that later). Bentham, in contrast to Mill, represented the egoistic branch — his theory of human nature reflected Hobbesian psychological egoism.

2. The Classical Approach

The Classical Utilitarians, Bentham and Mill, were concerned with legal and social reform. If anything could be identified as the fundamental motivation behind the development of Classical Utilitarianism it would be the desire to see useless, corrupt laws and social practices changed. Accomplishing this goal required a normative ethical theory employed as a critical tool. What is the truth about what makes an action or a policy a morally good one, or morally right ? But developing the theory itself was also influenced by strong views about what was wrong in their society. The conviction that, for example, some laws are bad resulted in analysis of why they were bad. And, for Jeremy Bentham, what made them bad was their lack of utility, their tendency to lead to unhappiness and misery without any compensating happiness. If a law or an action doesn't do any good, then it isn't any good.

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was influenced both by Hobbes' account of human nature and Hume's account of social utility. He famously held that humans were ruled by two sovereign masters — pleasure and pain. We seek pleasure and the avoidance of pain, they “…govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think…” (Bentham PML, 1). Yet he also promulgated the principle of utility as the standard of right action on the part of governments and individuals. Actions are approved when they are such as to promote happiness, or pleasure, and disapproved of when they have a tendency to cause unhappiness, or pain (PML). Combine this criterion of rightness with a view that we should be actively trying to promote overall happiness, and one has a serious incompatibility with psychological egoism. Thus, his apparent endorsement of Hobbesian psychological egoism created problems in understanding his moral theory since psychological egoism rules out acting to promote the overall well-being when that it is incompatible with one's own. For the psychological egoist, that is not even a possibility. So, given ‘ought implies can’ it would follow that we are not obligated to act to promote overall well-being when that is incompatible with our own. This generates a serious tension in Bentham's thought, one that was drawn to his attention. He sometimes seemed to think that he could reconcile the two commitments empirically, that is, by noting that when people act to promote the good they are helping themselves, too. But this claim only serves to muddy the waters, since the standard understanding of psychological egoism — and Bentham's own statement of his view — identifies motives of action which are self-interested. Yet this seems, again, in conflict with his own specification of the method for making moral decisions which is not to focus on self-interest — indeed, the addition of extent as a parameter along which to measure pleasure produced distinguishes this approach from ethical egoism. Aware of the difficulty, in later years he seemed to pull back from a full-fledged commitment to psychological egoism, admitting that people do sometimes act benevolently — with the overall good of humanity in mind.

Bentham also benefited from Hume's work, though in many ways their approaches to moral philosophy were completely different. Hume rejected the egoistic view of human nature. Hume also focused on character evaluation in his system. Actions are significant as evidence of character, but only have this derivative significance. In moral evaluation the main concern is that of character. Yet Bentham focused on act-evaluation. There was a tendency — remarked on by J. B. Schneewind (1990), for example — to move away from focus on character evaluation after Hume and towards act-evaluation. Recall that Bentham was enormously interested in social reform. Indeed, reflection on what was morally problematic about laws and policies influenced his thinking on utility as a standard. When one legislates, however, one is legislating in support of, or against, certain actions. Character — that is, a person's true character — is known, if known at all, only by that person. If one finds the opacity of the will thesis plausible then character, while theoretically very interesting, isn't a practical focus for legislation. Further, as Schneewind notes, there was an increasing sense that focus on character would actually be disruptive, socially, particularly if one's view was that a person who didn't agree with one on a moral issues was defective in terms of his or her character, as opposed to simply making a mistake reflected in action.

But Bentham does take from Hume the view that utility is the measure of virtue — that is, utility more broadly construed than Hume's actual usage of the term. This is because Hume made a distinction between pleasure that the perception of virtue generates in the observer, and social utility, which consisted in a trait's having tangible benefits for society, any instance of which may or may not generate pleasure in the observer. But Bentham is not simply reformulating a Humean position — he's merely been influenced by Hume's arguments to see pleasure as a measure or standard of moral value. So, why not move from pleasurable responses to traits to pleasure as a kind of consequence which is good, and in relation to which, actions are morally right or wrong? Bentham, in making this move, avoids a problem for Hume. On Hume's view it seems that the response — corrected, to be sure — determines the trait's quality as a virtue or vice. But on Bentham's view the action (or trait) is morally good, right, virtuous in view of the consequences it generates, the pleasure or utility it produces, which could be completely independent of what our responses are to the trait. So, unless Hume endorses a kind of ideal observer test for virtue, it will be harder for him to account for how it is people make mistakes in evaluations of virtue and vice. Bentham, on the other hand, can say that people may not respond to the actions good qualities — perhaps they don't perceive the good effects. But as long as there are these good effects which are, on balance, better than the effects of any alternative course of action, then the action is the right one. Rhetorically, anyway, one can see why this is an important move for Bentham to be able to make. He was a social reformer. He felt that people often had responses to certain actions — of pleasure or disgust — that did not reflect anything morally significant at all. Indeed, in his discussions of homosexuality, for example, he explicitly notes that ‘antipathy’ is not sufficient reason to legislate against a practice:

The circumstances from which this antipathy may have taken its rise may be worth enquiring to…. One is the physical antipathy to the offence…. The act is to the highest degree odious and disgusting, that is, not to the man who does it, for he does it only because it gives him pleasure, but to one who thinks [?] of it. Be it so, but what is that to him? (Bentham OAO , v. 4, 94)

Bentham then notes that people are prone to use their physical antipathy as a pretext to transition to moral antipathy, and the attending desire to punish the persons who offend their taste. This is illegitimate on his view for a variety of reasons, one of which is that to punish a person for violations of taste, or on the basis of prejudice, would result in runaway punishments, “…one should never know where to stop…” The prejudice in question can be dealt with by showing it “to be ill-grounded”. This reduces the antipathy to the act in question. This demonstrates an optimism in Bentham. If a pain can be demonstrated to be based on false beliefs then he believes that it can be altered or at the very least ‘assuaged and reduced’. This is distinct from the view that a pain or pleasure based on a false belief should be discounted. Bentham does not believe the latter. Thus Bentham's hedonism is a very straightforward hedonism. The one intrinsic good is pleasure, the bad is pain. We are to promote pleasure and act to reduce pain. When called upon to make a moral decision one measures an action's value with respect to pleasure and pain according to the following: intensity (how strong the pleasure or pain is), duration (how long it lasts), certainty (how likely the pleasure or pain is to be the result of the action), proximity (how close the sensation will be to performance of the action), fecundity (how likely it is to lead to further pleasures or pains), purity (how much intermixture there is with the other sensation). One also considers extent — the number of people affected by the action.

Keeping track of all of these parameters can be complicated and time consuming. Bentham does not recommend that they figure into every act of moral deliberation because of the efficiency costs which need to be considered. Experience can guide us. We know that the pleasure of kicking someone is generally outweighed by the pain inflicted on that person, so such calculations when confronted with a temptation to kick someone are unnecessary. It is reasonable to judge it wrong on the basis of past experience or consensus. One can use ‘rules of thumb’ to guide action, but these rules are overridable when abiding by them would conflict with the promotion of the good.

Bentham's view was surprising to many at the time at least in part because he viewed the moral quality of an action to be determined instrumentally. It isn't so much that there is a particular kind of action that is intrinsically wrong; actions that are wrong are wrong simply in virtue of their effects, thus, instrumentally wrong. This cut against the view that there are some actions that by their very nature are just wrong, regardless of their effects. Some may be wrong because they are ‘unnatural’ — and, again, Bentham would dismiss this as a legitimate criterion. Some may be wrong because they violate liberty, or autonomy. Again, Bentham would view liberty and autonomy as good — but good instrumentally, not intrinsically. Thus, any action deemed wrong due to a violation of autonomy is derivatively wrong on instrumental grounds as well. This is interesting in moral philosophy — as it is far removed from the Kantian approach to moral evaluation as well as from natural law approaches. It is also interesting in terms of political philosophy and social policy. On Bentham's view the law is not monolithic and immutable. Since effects of a given policy may change, the moral quality of the policy may change as well. Nancy Rosenblum noted that for Bentham one doesn't simply decide on good laws and leave it at that: “Lawmaking must be recognized as a continual process in response to diverse and changing desires that require adjustment” (Rosenblum 1978, 9). A law that is good at one point in time may be a bad law at some other point in time. Thus, lawmakers have to be sensitive to changing social circumstances. To be fair to Bentham's critics, of course, they are free to agree with him that this is the case in many situations, just not all — and that there is still a subset of laws that reflect the fact that some actions just are intrinsically wrong regardless of consequences. Bentham is in the much more difficult position of arguing that effects are all there are to moral evaluation of action and policy.

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was a follower of Bentham, and, through most of his life, greatly admired Bentham's work even though he disagreed with some of Bentham's claims — particularly on the nature of ‘happiness.’ Bentham, recall, had held that there were no qualitative differences between pleasures, only quantitative ones. This left him open to a variety of criticisms. First, Bentham's Hedonism was too egalitarian. Simple-minded pleasures, sensual pleasures, were just as good, at least intrinsically, than more sophisticated and complex pleasures. The pleasure of drinking a beer in front of the T.V. surely doesn't rate as highly as the pleasure one gets solving a complicated math problem, or reading a poem, or listening to Mozart. Second, Bentham's view that there were no qualitative differences in pleasures also left him open to the complaint that on his view human pleasures were of no more value than animal pleasures and, third, committed him to the corollary that the moral status of animals, tied to their sentience, was the same as that of humans. While harming a puppy and harming a person are both bad, however, most people had the view that harming the person was worse. Mill sought changes to the theory that could accommodate those sorts of intuitions.

To this end, Mill's hedonism was influenced by perfectionist intuitions. There are some pleasures that are more fitting than others. Intellectual pleasures are of a higher, better, sort than the ones that are merely sensual, and that we share with animals. To some this seems to mean that Mill really wasn't a hedonistic utilitarian. His view of the good did radically depart from Bentham's view. However, like Bentham, the good still consists in pleasure, it is still a psychological state. There is certainly that similarity. Further, the basic structures of the theories are the same (for more on this see Donner 1991). While it is true that Mill is more comfortable with notions like ‘rights’ this does not mean that he, in actuality, rejected utilitarianism. The rationale for all the rights he recognizes is utilitarian.

Mill's ‘proof’ of the claim that intellectual pleasures are better in kind than others, though, is highly suspect. He doesn't attempt a mere appeal to raw intuition. Instead, he argues that those persons who have experienced both view the higher as better than the lower. Who would rather be a happy oyster, living an enormously long life, than a person living a normal life? Or, to use his most famous example — it is better to be Socrates ‘dissatisfied’ than a fool ‘satisfied.’ In this way Mill was able to solve a problem for utilitarianism.

Mill also argued that the principle could be proven, using another rather notorious argument:

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is that people actually see it…. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practiced, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. (Mill, U, 81)

Mill then continues to argue that people desire happiness — the utilitarian end — and that the general happiness is “a good to the aggregate of all persons.” (81)

G. E. Moore (1873–1958) criticized this as fallacious. He argued that it rested on an obvious ambiguity:

Mill has made as naïve and artless a use of the naturalistic fallacy as anybody could desire. “Good”, he tells us, means “desirable”, and you can only find out what is desirable by seeking to find out what is actually desired…. The fact is that “desirable” does not mean “able to be desired” as “visible” means “able to be seen.” The desirable means simply what ought to be desired or deserves to be desired; just as the detestable means not what can be but what ought to be detested… (Moore, PE, 66–7)

It should be noted, however, that Mill was offering this as an alternative to Bentham's view which had been itself criticized as a ‘swine morality,’ locating the good in pleasure in a kind of indiscriminate way. The distinctions he makes strike many as intuitively plausible ones. Bentham, however, can accommodate many of the same intuitions within his system. This is because he notes that there are a variety of parameters along which we quantitatively measure pleasure — intensity and duration are just two of those. His complete list is the following: intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness, fecundity, purity, and extent. Thus, what Mill calls the intellectual pleasures will score more highly than the sensual ones along several parameters, and this could give us reason to prefer those pleasures — but it is a quantitative not a qualitative reason, on Bentham's view. When a student decides to study for an exam rather than go to a party, for example, she is making the best decision even though she is sacrificing short term pleasure. That's because studying for the exam, Bentham could argue, scores higher in terms of the long term pleasures doing well in school lead to, as well as the fecundity of the pleasure in leading to yet other pleasures. However, Bentham will have to concede that the very happy oyster that lives a very long time could, in principle, have a better life than a normal human.

Mill's version of utilitarianism differed from Bentham's also in that he placed weight on the effectiveness of internal sanctions — emotions like guilt and remorse which serve to regulate our actions. This is an off-shoot of the different view of human nature adopted by Mill. We are the sorts of beings that have social feelings, feelings for others, not just ourselves. We care about them, and when we perceive harms to them this causes painful experiences in us. When one perceives oneself to be the agent of that harm, the negative emotions are centered on the self. One feels guilt for what one has done, not for what one sees another doing. Like external forms of punishment, internal sanctions are instrumentally very important to appropriate action. Mill also held that natural features of human psychology, such as conscience and a sense of justice, underwrite motivation. The sense of justice, for example, results from very natural impulses. Part of this sense involves a desire to punish those who have harmed others, and this desire in turn “…is a spontaneous outgrowth from two sentiments, both in the highest degree natural…; the impulse of self-defense, and the feeling of sympathy.” (Chapter 5, Utilitarianism ) Of course, he goes on, the justification must be a separate issue. The feeling is there naturally, but it is our ‘enlarged’ sense, our capacity to include the welfare of others into our considerations, and make intelligent decisions, that gives it the right normative force.

Like Bentham, Mill sought to use utilitarianism to inform law and social policy. The aim of increasing happiness underlies his arguments for women's suffrage and free speech. We can be said to have certain rights, then — but those rights are underwritten by utility. If one can show that a purported right or duty is harmful, then one has shown that it is not genuine. One of Mills most famous arguments to this effect can be found in his writing on women's suffrage when he discusses the ideal marriage of partners, noting that the ideal exists between individuals of “cultivated faculties” who influence each other equally. Improving the social status of women was important because they were capable of these cultivated faculties, and denying them access to education and other opportunities for development is forgoing a significant source of happiness. Further, the men who would deny women the opportunity for education, self-improvement, and political expression do so out of base motives, and the resulting pleasures are not ones that are of the best sort.

Bentham and Mill both attacked social traditions that were justified by appeals to natural order. The correct appeal is to utility itself. Traditions often turned out to be “relics” of “barbarous” times, and appeals to nature as a form of justification were just ways to try rationalize continued deference to those relics.

In the latter part of the 20th century some writers criticized utilitarianism for its failure to accommodate virtue evaluation. However, though virtue is not the central normative concept in Mill's theory, it is an extremely important one. In Chapter 4 of Utilitarianism Mill noted

… does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people desire virtue, or maintain that virtue is not a thing to be desired? The very reverse. It maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but also that it is to be desired disinterestedly, for itself. Whatever may be the opinion of utilitarian moralists as to the original conditions by which virtue is made virtue … they not only place virtue at the very head of things which are good as a means to the ultimate end, but they also recognize as a psychological fact the possibility of its being, to the individual, a good in itself, without looking to any end beyond it; and hold, that the mind is not in a right state, not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state most conducive to the general happiness, unless it does love virtue in this manner …

In Utilitarianism Mill argues that virtue not only has instrumental value, but is constitutive of the good life. A person without virtue is morally lacking, is not as able to promote the good. However, this view of virtue is someone complicated by rather cryptic remarks Mill makes about virtue in his A System of Logic in the section in which he discusses the “Art of Life.” There he seems to associate virtue with aesthetics, and morality is reserved for the sphere of ‘right’ or ‘duty‘. Wendy Donner notes that separating virtue from right allows Mill to solve another problem for the theory: the demandingness problem (Donner 2011). This is the problem that holds that if we ought to maximize utility, if that is the right thing to do, then doing right requires enormous sacrifices (under actual conditions), and that requiring such sacrifices is too demanding. With duties, on Mill's view, it is important that we get compliance, and that justifies coercion. In the case of virtue, however, virtuous actions are those which it is “…for the general interest that they remain free.”

Henry Sidgwick's (1838–1900) The Methods of Ethics (1874) is one of the most well known works in utilitarian moral philosophy, and deservedly so. It offers a defense of utilitarianism, though some writers (Schneewind 1977) have argued that it should not primarily be read as a defense of utilitarianism. In The Methods Sidgwick is concerned with developing an account of “…the different methods of Ethics that I find implicit in our common moral reasoning…” These methods are egoism, intuition based morality, and utilitarianism. On Sidgwick's view, utilitarianism is the more basic theory. A simple reliance on intuition, for example, cannot resolve fundamental conflicts between values, or rules, such as Truth and Justice that may conflict. In Sidgwick's words “…we require some higher principle to decide the issue…” That will be utilitarianism. Further, the rules which seem to be a fundamental part of common sense morality are often vague and underdescribed, and applying them will actually require appeal to something theoretically more basic — again, utilitarianism. Yet further, absolute interpretations of rules seem highly counter-intuitive, and yet we need some justification for any exceptions — provided, again, by utilitarianism. Sidgwick provides a compelling case for the theoretical primacy of utilitarianism.

Sidgwick was also a British philosopher, and his views developed out of and in response to those of Bentham and Mill. His Methods offer an engagement with the theory as it had been presented before him, and was an exploration of it and the main alternatives as well as a defense.

Sidgwick was also concerned with clarifying fundamental features of the theory, and in this respect his account has been enormously influential to later writers, not only to utilitarians and consequentialists, generally, but to intuitionists as well. Sidgwick's thorough and penetrating discussion of the theory raised many of the concerns that have been developed by recent moral philosophers.

One extremely controversial feature of Sidgwick's views relates to his rejection of a publicity requirement for moral theory. He writes:

Thus, the Utilitarian conclusion, carefully stated, would seem to be this; that the opinion that secrecy may render an action right which would not otherwise be so should itself be kept comparatively secret; and similarly it seems expedient that the doctrine that esoteric morality is expedient should itself be kept esoteric. Or, if this concealment be difficult to maintain, it may be desirable that Common Sense should repudiate the doctrines which it is expedient to confine to an enlightened few. And thus a Utilitarian may reasonably desire, on Utilitarian principles, that some of his conclusions should be rejected by mankind generally; or even that the vulgar should keep aloof from his system as a whole, in so far as the inevitable indefiniteness and complexity of its calculations render it likely to lead to bad results in their hands. (490)

This accepts that utilitarianism may be self-effacing; that is, that it may be best if people do not believe it, even though it is true. Further, it rendered the theory subject to Bernard Williams' (1995) criticism that the theory really simply reflected the colonial elitism of Sidgwick's time, that it was ‘Government House Utilitarianism.’ The elitism in his remarks may reflect a broader attitude, one in which the educated are considered better policy makers than the uneducated.

One issue raised in the above remarks is relevant to practical deliberation in general. To what extent should proponents of a given theory, or a given rule, or a given policy — or even proponents of a given one-off action — consider what they think people will actually do, as opposed to what they think those same people ought to do (under full and reasonable reflection, for example)? This is an example of something that comes up in the Actualism/possibilism debate in accounts of practical deliberation. Extrapolating from the example used above, we have people who advocate telling the truth, or what they believe to be the truth, even if the effects are bad because the truth is somehow misused by others. On the other hand are those who recommend not telling the truth when it is predicted that the truth will be misused by others to achieve bad results. Of course it is the case that the truth ought not be misused, that its misuse can be avoided and is not inevitable, but the misuse is entirely predictable. Sidgwick seems to recommending that we follow the course that we predict will have the best outcome, given as part of our calculations the data that others may fail in some way — either due to having bad desires, or simply not being able to reason effectively. The worry Williams points to really isn't a worry specifically with utilitarianism (Driver 2011). Sidgwick would point out that if it is bad to hide the truth, because ‘Government House’ types, for example, typically engage in self-deceptive rationalizations of their policies (which seems entirely plausible), then one shouldn't do it. And of course, that heavily influences our intuitions.

Sidgwick raised issues that run much deeper to our basic understanding of utilitarianism. For example, the way earlier utilitarians characterized the principle of utility left open serious indeterminacies. The major one rests on the distinction between total and average utility. He raised the issue in the context of population growth and increasing utility levels by increasing numbers of people (or sentient beings):

Assuming, then, that the average happiness of human beings is a positive quantity, it seems clear that, supposing the average happiness enjoyed remains undiminished, Utilitarianism directs us to make the number enjoying it as great as possible. But if we foresee as possible that an increase in numbers will be accompanied by a decrease in average happiness or vice versa , a point arises which has not only never been formally noticed, but which seems to have been substantially overlooked by many Utilitarians. For if we take Utilitarianism to prescribe, as the ultimate end of action, happiness on the whole, and not any individual's happiness, unless considered as an element of the whole, it would follow that, if the additional population enjoy on the whole positive happiness, we ought to weigh the amount of happiness gained by the extra number against the amount lost by the remainder. (415)

For Sidgwick, the conclusion on this issue is not to simply strive to greater average utility, but to increase population to the point where we maximize the product of the number of persons who are currently alive and the amount of average happiness. So it seems to be a hybrid, total-average view. This discussion also raised the issue of policy with respect to population growth, and both would be pursued in more detail by later writers, most notably Derek Parfit (1986).

G. E. Moore strongly disagreed with the hedonistic value theory adopted by the Classical Utilitarians. Moore agreed that we ought to promote the good, but believed that the good included far more than what could be reduced to pleasure. He was a pluralist, rather than a monist, regarding intrinsic value. For example, he believed that ‘beauty’ was an intrinsic good. A beautiful object had value independent of any pleasure it might generate in a viewer. Thus, Moore differed from Sidgwick who regarded the good as consisting in some consciousness. Some objective states in the world are intrinsically good, and on Moore's view, beauty is just such a state. He used one of his more notorious thought experiments to make this point: he asked the reader to compare two worlds, one was entirely beautiful, full of things which complemented each other; the other was a hideous, ugly world, filled with “everything that is most disgusting to us.” Further, there are not human beings, one imagines, around to appreciate or be disgusted by the worlds. The question then is, which of these worlds is better, which one's existence would be better than the other's? Of course, Moore believed it was clear that the beautiful world was better, even though no one was around to appreciate its beauty. This emphasis on beauty was one facet of Moore's work that made him a darling of the Bloomsbury Group. If beauty was a part of the good independent of its effects on the psychological states of others — independent of, really, how it affected others, then one needn't sacrifice morality on the altar of beauty anymore. Following beauty is not a mere indulgence, but may even be a moral obligation. Though Moore himself certainly never applied his view to such cases, it does provide the resources for dealing with what the contemporary literature has dubbed ‘admirable immorality’ cases, at least some of them. Gauguin may have abandoned his wife and children, but it was to a beautiful end.

Moore's targets in arguing against hedonism were the earlier utilitarians who argued that the good was some state of consciousness such as pleasure. He actually waffled on this issue a bit, but always disagreed with Hedonism in that even when he held that beauty all by itself was not an intrinsic good, he also held that for the appreciation of beauty to be a good the beauty must actually be there, in the world, and not be the result of illusion.

Moore further criticized the view that pleasure itself was an intrinsic good, since it failed a kind of isolation test that he proposed for intrinsic value. If one compared an empty universe with a universe of sadists, the empty universe would strike one as better. This is true even though there is a good deal of pleasure, and no pain, in the universe of sadists. This would seem to indicate that what is necessary for the good is at least the absence of bad intentionality. The pleasures of sadists, in virtue of their desires to harm others, get discounted — they are not good, even though they are pleasures. Note this radical departure from Bentham who held that even malicious pleasure was intrinsically good, and that if nothing instrumentally bad attached to the pleasure, it was wholly good as well.

One of Moore's important contributions was to put forward an ‘organic unity’ or ‘organic whole’ view of value. The principle of organic unity is vague, and there is some disagreement about what Moore actually meant in presenting it. Moore states that ‘organic’ is used “…to denote the fact that a whole has an intrinsic value different in amount from the sum of the values of its parts.” (PE, 36) And, for Moore, that is all it is supposed to denote. So, for example, one cannot determine the value of a body by adding up the value of its parts. Some parts of the body may have value only in relation to the whole. An arm or a leg, for example, may have no value at all separated from the body, but have a great deal of value attached to the body, and increase the value of the body, even. In the section of Principia Ethica on the Ideal, the principle of organic unity comes into play in noting that when persons experience pleasure through perception of something beautiful (which involves a positive emotion in the face of a recognition of an appropriate object — an emotive and cognitive set of elements), the experience of the beauty is better when the object of the experience, the beautiful object, actually exists. The idea was that experiencing beauty has a small positive value, and existence of beauty has a small positive value, but combining them has a great deal of value, more than the simple addition of the two small values (PE, 189 ff.). Moore noted: “A true belief in the reality of an object greatly increases the value of many valuable wholes…” (199).

This principle in Moore — particularly as applied to the significance of actual existence and value, or knowledge and value, provided utilitarians with tools to meet some significant challenges. For example, deluded happiness would be severely lacking on Moore's view, especially in comparison to happiness based on knowledge.

Since the early 20th Century utilitarianism has undergone a variety of refinements. After the middle of the 20th Century it has become more common to identify as a ‘Consequentialist’ since very few philosophers agree entirely with the view proposed by the Classical Utilitarians, particularly with respect to the hedonistic value theory. But the influence of the Classical Utilitarians has been profound — not only within moral philosophy, but within political philosophy and social policy. The question Bentham asked, “What use is it?,” is a cornerstone of policy formation. It is a completely secular, forward-looking question. The articulation and systematic development of this approach to policy formation is owed to the Classical Utilitarians.

Primary Literature

• Bentham, Jeremy, 1789 [PML]. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. , Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.
• –––, 1785 [OAO]. “Offences Against Oneself.” Louis Compton (ed.), The Journal of Homosexuality , 3(4) (1978): 389–406, 4(1): 91–107..
• Cooper, Anthony Ashley (3 rd Earl of Shaftesbury), 1711 [IVM]. Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit , in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions and Times , excerpts reprinted in Raphael 1969.
• Cumberland, Richard, 1672. De Legibus Naturae Disquisitio Philosophica , London. English translation by John Maxwell, A Treatise of the Laws of Nature , 1727, reprinted New York, Garland, 1978.
• Gay, John, 1731. A Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle and Immediate Criterion of Virtue in Frances King's An Essay on the Origin of Evil , London.
• Hume, David, 1738. A Treatise of Human Nature , edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.
• Hutcheson, Francis, 1725. An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue , London; excerpts reprinted in Raphael 1969.
• Mill, John Stuart, 1843. A System of Logic , London: John W. Parker.
• –––, 1859. On Liberty , London: Longman, Roberts & Green.
• –––, 1861 [U]. Utilitarianism , Roger Crisp (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Moore, G. E., 1903 [PE]. Principia Ethica , Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1988.
• Price, Richard, 1758 [PE]. A Review of the Principle Questions in Morals , London: T. Cadell in the Strand, 1787.
• Raphael, D. D., 1969 [R]. British Moralists , in two volumes, London: Oxford, Clarendon Press.

Secondary Literature

• Crisp, Roger, 1997. Mill on Utilitarianism. , London: Routledge.
• Darwall, Stephen, 1995. Hume and the Invention of Utilitarianism , University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.
• Donner, Wendy, 1991. The Liberal Self: John Stuart Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 2011. “Morality, Virtue, and Aesthetics in Mill's Art of Life,” in Ben Eggleston, Dale E. Miller, and David Weinstein (eds.) John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Driver, Julia, 2004. “Pleasure as the Standard of Virtue in Hume's Moral Philosophy.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. , 85: 173–194.
• –––, 2011. Consequentialism , London: Routledge.
• Gill, Michael, 2006. The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics , New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Hruschka, Joachim, 1991. “The Greatest Happiness Principle and Other Early German Anticipations of Utilitarian Theory,” Utilitas , 3: 165–77.
• Long, Douglas, 1990. “‘Utility’ and the ‘Utility Principle’: Hume, Smith, Bentham, Mill,” Utilitas , 2: 12–39.
• Rosen, Frederick, 2003. “Reading Hume Backwards: Utility as the Foundation of Morals,” in Frederick Rosen (ed.), Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill , London: Routledge, 29–57.
• Rosenblum, Nancy, 1978. Bentham's Theory of the Modern State , New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Ryan, Alan, 1990. The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill , Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
• Scarre, Geoffrey, 1996. Utilitarianism , London: Routledge.
• Schneewind, J. B., 1977. Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• –––, 1990. “The Misfortunes of Virtue,” Ethics , 101: 42–63.
• Schofield, Philip, 2006. Utility and Democracy: the Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Schultz, Bart, 2004. Henry Sidgwick, Eye of the Universe , New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Skorupski, John, 1989. John Stuart Mill , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

[Please contact the author with suggestions.]

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Bentham, Jeremy | consequentialism | hedonism | Hume, David | Mill, John Stuart | Moore, George Edward | Scottish Philosophy: in the 18th Century | Shaftesbury, Lord [Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of] | Sidgwick, Henry | well-being

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank Gintautas Miliauskas (Vilnius University) for notifying us about several typographical errors in this entry.

Copyright © 2014 by Julia Driver < julia . driver @ austin . utexas . edu >

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Utilitarianism Essay | Essay on Utilitarianism for Students and Children in English

February 13, 2024 by Prasanna

Utilitarianism Essay:  Utilitarianism is one of the most influential theories of morality. It mainly advocates actions that lead to happiness and avoids any form of negativity. The purpose of mortality is to make lives better. It is the greatest principle of happiness. It determines right from wrong. It mainly focuses on the outcomes.

You can also find more  Essay Writing  articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Long and Short Essays on Utilitarianism for Students and Kids in English

We are providing the students with essay samples, of a long essay of 500 words in English and a short essay of 150 words in English for reference.

Long Essay on Utilitarianism 500 Words in English

Long Essay on Utilitarianism is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Utilitarianism usually uses actions that maximize happiness and well-being of an individual. It is a version of consequentialism, which means that the consequences of any actions are either right or wrong. It considers all the interests of humans in an equal manner.

With utilitarianism, an action seems to be morally right or wrong. The concept of utilitarianism was first looked into keenly by Jeremy Bentham. He was an English philosopher, and he believed that happiness is the only true good, and that is the only truth that exists. Bentham’s form of utilitarianism is known as classic utilitarianism in today’s date. According to Bentham, the morally right action had the most net happiness for everyone.

To determine, which action was morally correct, a person had to add up all units of happiness and had to subtract all kinds of sadness that the action would create. Modern utilitarianism has two forms they are, act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism. Classic utilitarianism created by Bentham leads to the act-utilitarianism. The concept of act-utilitarianism means, each time an action is decided upon, that particular event is completely different than any other actions that are needed to be calculated.

Rule-utilitarianism, on the other hand, is the morally correct action that one follows as a general rule. Following these rules brings great happiness. The ultimate goal of utilitarianism, be it act-utilitarianism, or rule-utilitarianism, is to bring happiness. It is a moral theory which denotes that one should aim to maximize utility whenever possible.

Utilitarianism is about people who care about everyone capable of suffering and capable of making their lives better by improving it. It also refers to those actions that maximize pleasure and minimize pain. This theory is based on the elucidation that a consequence of an action justifies the moral acceptability of means to reach an end, and the results of the action outweigh any other considerations. Utilitarianism believes that sacrificing one man to save a community is the right choice because the happiness of a whole bunch of people is being maximized.

Utilitarianism does not take into account personal relationships. It is the duty of every person following utilitarianism to help people without thinking about the consequences. Utilitarianism is based on three principles which are as follows, happiness or pleasure is the only thing that holds intrinsic value, all actions that promote happiness are correct, and the actions that do are not right. Everyone’s happiness counts equally.

Utilitarianism in socio-political construct aims for the betterment of the society as a whole. It is a reason-based approach that determines the right and the wrong. It also has certain limitations based on the consequences of the situation. In the world of business and commerce, utilitarianism holds the most ethical choice that a person will produce the greatest good for the greatest number. If a limitation is applied to utilitarianism, it tends to create a black and white construct of mortality. There are no shades of grey in utilitarianism. It is either black or white.

Short Essay on Utilitarianism 150 Words in English

Short Essay on Utilitarianism is usually given to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Utilitarianism is a traditional and ethical philosophy that is associated with Jeremy Bentham and his fellow mate John Mill. Both were British philosophers, economists and political thinkers. The concept of utilitarianism promotes that an action is right if it leads to happiness.

A utilitarian philosophy aims at making society better. It says that if an action is right, it results in happiness and would lead to the betterment of a group or a society. Utilitarianism also has its types. Apart from act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism, there is a concept known as negative utilitarianism. R.N Smart introduced it. This concept seeks the quickest and the least painful method of killing the existence of humanity.

People who follow utilitarianism are known as utilitarians. The utilitarians believe that the purpose of mortality is to make life better by increasing the number of good things in the world like pleasure and happiness and reducing the bad things in the world like pain and unhappiness. This concept rejects any kinds of moral codes like taboos and commands based on different traditions or any order given by any leader.

10 Lines on Utilitarianism in English

• Utilitarianism is one of the most persuasive approaches to normative ethics.
• Bentham used science to explain human behaviour based on utilitarianism.
• In the spirit of utilitarianism, Bentham requested to deposit his body after death.
• As per Bentham’s request, his body was laid out for public dissection.
• It is considered to be the most influential and effective theory of modern times.
• Utilitarianism is derived from the term “utility”.
• Utility in this context of utilitarianism means happiness or pleasure and not useful.
• Bentham’s commitment to equality was radical
• One of the limitations of utilitarianism is, the outcome of the consequences is not known.
• It is the only moral framework that can define military force or war.

FAQ’s on Utilitarianism Essay

Question 1.  What is the main theme of utilitarianism?

Answer:  The main theme of utilitarianism is, it morally promotes everyone’s values with equal treatment to everyone, centring around happiness.

Question 2. Name one drawback of utilitarianism.

Answer: It fails to take into consideration the concept of justice since its main focus is on happiness and pleasure of the individual, no matter what be the outcome of a situation.

Question 3. Does utilitarianism threaten individual rights?

Answer: It does threaten individual rights to some extent. It weakens the notion of individual rights, making it useless in its context. It talks about sacrifice for the sake of others’ happiness.

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1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

Mill’s Proof of the Principle of Utility

Author: Dale E. Miller Category: Ethics , Historical Philosophy Wordcount: 999

It may seem obvious that happiness is valuable, but is it the only thing valuable for its own sake, as opposed to being useful as a way to get something else?

The 19 th -century utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) argues that it is. [1] His argument is notorious because some critics charge that it contains obvious errors. This essay considers whether Mill really makes elementary blunders.

1. Mill’s Principle of Utility

Mill’s name for the claim that only happiness is valuable for its own sake is the “principle of utility.” This is ripe for confusion.

Mill offers this claim in the course of discussing the moral theory called utilitarianism . In its simplest form, utilitarianism says that actions are right if they would maximize the total amount of happiness in the world in the long run; otherwise they’re wrong. [2]

Yet Mill’s principle of utility doesn’t directly concern the morality of actions. [3] Instead it concerns what’s “desirable as an end.” It’s the foundation of Mill’s utilitarianism, not the theory itself. [4] This subtlety often goes unnoticed.

2. The Proof

Mill’s argument appears in Chapter 4 of his essay Utilitarianism. Today it’s called Mill’s “proof,” although the name is misleading since he admits that the “considerations” he offers aren’t a tidy deduction. [5]

Mill’s argument consists of three steps, each meant to establish a different claim:

1. Happiness is desirable as an end. 2. The “general happiness” is desirable as an end. 3. Nothing except happiness is desirable as an end.

Mill takes these three claims together to compose the principle of utility.

2.1. First Step

In the first step, Mill writes that:

“The only proof … that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. … In like manner, … the sole evidence … that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.”

One criticism of this step is that Mill overlooks the fact that while ‘visible’ means “capable of being seen,” to call something desirable means not that we can desire it but that we ought to. While our actually doing something is proof positive that we can do it, it doesn’t mean that we should . [6]

But notice the shift in Mill’s wording from “only proof” to “sole evidence.” Even if the fact that everyone actually desires happiness doesn’t logically entail that they should , it might still be evidence for this. If happiness isn’t desirable then all of humanity has made the same huge mistake, which may seem implausible. [7]

2.2. Second Step

In the same paragraph, Mill turns to the second step:

“No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person … desires his own happiness.”

Elsewhere, Mill restates this step:

“since A’s happiness is a good, B’s a good, C’s a good, &c., the sum of these goods must be a good.” [8]

Some critics have charged Mill with committing the “fallacy of composition,” which is the fallacy of reasoning that because the members of a collection all have some property, the collection must have it, too. [9] An apple is spherical, but a bushel of apples isn’t. But while collections don’t always have the properties that their members share, sometimes they do. If I know that one gold bar is heavy, I’m not reasoning badly if I conclude that a pallet of these bars will be heavy, too.

Sometimes combining good things might produce something bad, like topping a pizza with hot fudge sauce. Often, though, a collection of valuable items will also be valuable. It depends on the natures of the items, their value, and the collection.

Mill reasons that if every person’s happiness is valuable then a world that contains more happiness is better than one that contains less, other things equal. That’s not obviously fallacious. 

2.3. Third Step

In the third step, Mill argues that happiness is the only thing we desire for itself. This means that it’s the only thing for whose desirability in itself we have evidence.

Someone might challenge Mill by saying that other things are valuable in themselves. On the surface, Mill’s strategy is to agree that people “do desire things which, in common language, are … distinguished from happiness” [10] for their own sakes.  His chief example is being virtuous. However, he asserts, people only desire virtue for its own sake if they have incorporated it into their happiness. If virtue partially constitutes someone’s happiness, then they desire it “as a part of their happiness.” Hence “there is in reality nothing desired except happiness.” [11]

But now Mill may appear inconsistent. He defines ‘happiness’ as “pleasure, and the absence of pain.” [12] How then, some of his critics have challenged, can virtue be part of our happiness? Virtue ≠ pleasure. [13]

The key may be in Mill’s account of how something like virtue can become part of our happiness. He explains how the experience of being treated better by others when we behave virtuously can cause us to form a mental association between virtue and pleasure. When people associate virtue with pleasure then the awareness or “consciousness” that they’re virtuous becomes pleasurable for them.

It might then be this pleasure—not virtue itself, strictly speaking—that they desire as an end. If this is his intention, then contrary to surface appearances Mill’s really denying that some people desire to be virtuous for its own sake. But he’s explaining why they seem to: for them, the connection between virtue and pleasure has become much closer than it is for people who only want to be virtuous so they’ll be treated better. [14]

Reading Mill this way still lets us say that he takes happiness to be the only thing we desire for itself, albeit at the cost of not taking his talk about virtue’s becoming part of our happiness or our desiring it as an end entirely literally.

3. Conclusion

Perhaps, then, Mill’s “proof” doesn’t contain clumsy mistakes. At least Mill has some responses available to the critics who allege that it does. More work would be needed to judge whether the argument ultimately succeeds, and more work still to get from this principle to utilitarian morality, but Mill’s contribution shouldn’t be hastily dismissed. [15]

[1] Mill 1969 [1861], 234–9.

[2] More specifically, this is true of the simplest form of the theory, which is sometimes called classical act utilitarianism .

Some other versions of utilitarianism might apply the requirement to maximize happiness differently. For instance, rule utilitarianism says that whether actions are right or wrong depends on whether they would be permitted or forbidden by the set of rules whose general adoption would maximize happiness. So it applies the criterion of maximizing happiness directly to rules and only indirectly, via rules, to individual actions.

There is some debate about what version of utilitarianism Mill accepts.

[3] Brown (1973).

[4] To add to the potential for confusion, other philosophers (both before and after Mill’s time) have used the term ‘principle of utility’ to refer to principles that are concerned with what makes actions right or wrong. Given this, and the fact that Mill never offers a formal definition of the principle, it’s no surprise that even professional philosophers are often tripped up by this. Mill refers at one point to a ‘Greatest Happiness Principle’ (Mill 1969 [1861], 210), and it’s possible that he intends this to be a principle about the morality of actions, but if so he thinks it’s distinct from and rests on the principle of utility.

While this may sound a bit sloppy on Mill’s part, one thing to bear in mind is that he was writing for a very wide audience, not only for philosophy professors or even philosophy students. The essay that contains his “proof” first appeared in a popular magazine of the day. So he sacrificed some precision for readability.

[5] Here’s how Mill makes this point in Chapter 1:

Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof.  Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof.  The medical art is proved to be good by its conducing to health; but how is it possible to prove that health is good? The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.  We are not, however, to infer that its acceptance or rejection must depend on blind impulse, or arbitrary choice.  There is a larger meaning of the word proof, in which this question is as amenable to it as any other of the disputed questions of philosophy.  The subject is within the cognisance of the rational faculty; and neither does that faculty deal with it solely in the way of intuition.  Considerations may be presented capable of determining the intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine; and this is equivalent to proof. (Mill 1969, 207–8).

[6] Here’s how the early 20th-century philosopher G. E. Moore (1873-1958) articulates this objection:

Well, the fallacy in this step is so obvious, that it is quite wonderful how Mill failed to see it. The fact is that “desirable” does not mean “able to be desired” as “visible” means “able to be seen”. The desirable means simply what ought to be desired or deserves to be desired. (Moore 1903, 67).

[7] Mill makes a very similar move in Chapter 2 of Utilitarianism , where he famously argues that the only way to determine which of two pleasures is of higher quality is by appeal to the judgment of people who have experience of both (Mill 1969, 210–4).

[8] Mill 1972, 1414.

[9] For example, Mackenzie 1901, 218–20.

[10] Mill 1969, 235.

[11] Mill 1969, 235–7.

[12] Mill 1969, 210.

[13] Money is another of Mill’s examples of something that can (seemingly) become part of our happiness, although in contrast with virtue he thinks that it’s unfortunate that some people do so. Moore references this example when criticizes this step of the argument:

Does Mill mean to say that money, these actual coins, which he admits to be desired in and for themselves, are a part either of pleasure or of the absence of pain? Will he maintain that those coins themselves are in my mind, and actually a part of my pleasant feelings? If this is to be said, all words are useless: nothing can possibly be distinguished from anything else; if these two things are not distinct, what on earth is? (Moore 1903, 71–2).

[14] The example of money can help to clarify what’s going on here, since Mill thinks that very much the same process can happen with it. 

Initially, we desire money simply because we can use it to buy things that we want. In some people, though, this leads to a mental association between money and pleasure such that just thinking about their money gives them pleasure. In the case of misers, this association grows so strong that they can’t bear to spend money even on things that are very important; the pleasure of having the money has become much greater than the pleasure of using it.

Mill would say that people who have formed this association have made money part of their happiness and that they desire it as such, although this is speaking rather loosely. Strictly speaking, Mill would say, even misers don’t desire money for its own sake. What they desire for its own sake is the pleasure they get from the knowledge that they have money. It’s this pleasure that is part of their happiness, not the money itself. The real point is just that money and happiness are much more closely connected for people like this than they are for people who simply regard money as a way to buy things.

Mill does think that there’s one important difference between money and virtue in this regard. We should want people to form this association between pleasure and being virtuous. This will help to motivate them to act in ways that lead to an overall happier society. In contrast, this sort of association between pleasure and money is pathological. Society will be much happier if people simply regard money as a tool.

[15] I give a more detailed discussion of Mill’s argument for the principle of utility in Miller 2010, 31–53.

Brown, D. G. (1973). “What is Mill’s Principle of Utility?,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy III: 1–12.

Mackenzie, John S. (1901). A Manual of Ethics 4th ed. New York: Hinds, Hayden & Eldredge.

Mill, John Stuart (1969). Utilitarianism . In John M. Robson (ed.), Collected Works of John Stuart Mill vol. X. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Originally published 1861.

—– (1972). Letter to Henry Jones (13 June 1868). In John M. Robson (ed.), Collected Works of John Stuart Mill vol. XVI. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1413–4.

Miller, Dale E (2010). John Stuart Mill: Moral, Social and Political Thought . Cambridge: Polity.

Moore, G. E. (1903). Principia Ethica . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reprinted 1992 .

For Further Reading

Brink, David (2018). “Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy.” In Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

Related Essays

Consequentialism by Shane Gronholz

John Stuart Mill on The Good Life: Higher-Quality Pleasures by Dale E. Miller

“Can They Suffer?”: Bentham on our Obligations to Animals  by Daniel Weltman

Happiness by Kiki Berk

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5 Utilitarianism

Frank Aragbonfoh Abumere

Introduction

Let us start our introduction to utilitarianism with an example that shows how utilitarians answer the following question, “Can the ends justify the means?” Imagine that Peter is an unemployed poor man in New York. Although he has no money, his family still depends on him; his unemployed wife (Sandra) is sick and needs $500 for treatment, and their little children (Ann and Sam) have been thrown out of school because they could not pay tuition fees ($500 for both of them). Peter has no source of income and he cannot get a loan; even John (his friend and a millionaire) has refused to help him. From his perspective, there are only two alternatives: either he pays by stealing or he does not. So, he steals $1000 from John in order to pay for Sandra’s treatment and to pay the tuition fees of Ann and Sam. One could say that stealing is morally wrong. Therefore, we will say that what Peter has done— stealing from John—is morally wrong.

Utilitarianism, however, will say what Peter has done is morally right. For utilitarians, stealing in itself is neither bad nor good; what makes it bad or good is the consequences it produces. In our example, Peter stole from one person who has less need for the money, and spent the money on three people who have more need for the money. Therefore, for utilitarians, Peter’s stealing from John (the “means”) can be justified by the fact that the money was used for the treatment of Sandra and the tuition fees of Ann and Sam (the “end”). This justification is based on the calculation that the benefits of the theft outweigh the losses caused by the theft. Peter’s act of stealing is morally right because it produced more good than bad. In other words, the action produced more pleasure or happiness than pain or unhappiness, that is, it increased net utility.

The aim of this chapter is to explain why utilitarianism reaches such a conclusion as described above, and then examine the strengths and weaknesses of utilitarianism. The discussion is divided into three parts: the first part explains what utilitarianism is, the second discusses some varieties (or types) of utilitarianism, and the third explores whether utilitarianism is persuasive and reasonable.

What is Utilitarianism?

Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism. For consequentialism, the moral rightness or wrongness of an act depends on the consequences it produces. On consequentialist grounds, actions and inactions whose negative consequences outweigh the positive consequences will be deemed morally wrong while actions and inactions whose positive consequences outweigh the negative consequences will be deemed morally right. On utilitarian grounds, actions and inactions which benefit few people and harm more people will be deemed morally wrong while actions and inactions which harm fewer people and benefit more people will be deemed morally right.

Benefit and harm can be characterized in more than one way; for classical utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), they are defined in terms of happiness/unhappiness and pleasure/pain. On this view, actions and inactions that cause less pain or unhappiness and more pleasure or happiness than available alternative actions and inactions will be deemed morally right, while actions and inactions that cause more pain or unhappiness and less pleasure or happiness than available alternative actions and inactions will be deemed morally wrong. Although pleasure and happiness can have different meanings, in the context of this chapter they will be treated as synonymous.

Utilitarians’ concern is how to increase net utility. Their moral theory is based on the principle of utility which states that “the morally right action is the action that produces the most good” (Driver 2014). The morally wrong action is the one that leads to the reduction of the maximum good. For instance, a utilitarian may argue that although some armed robbers robbed a bank in a heist, as long as there are more people who benefit from the robbery (say, in a Robin Hood-like manner the robbers generously shared the money with many people) than there are people who suffer from the robbery (say, only the billionaire who owns the bank will bear the cost of the loss), the heist will be morally right rather than morally wrong. And on this utilitarian premise, if more people suffer from the heist while fewer people benefit from it, the heist will be morally wrong.

From the above description of utilitarianism, it is noticeable that utilitarianism is opposed to deontology, which is a moral theory that says that as moral agents we have certain duties or obligations, and these duties or obligations are formalized in terms of rules (see Chapter 6). There is a variant of utilitarianism, namely rule utilitarianism, that provides rules for evaluating the utility of actions and inactions (see the next part of the chapter for a detailed explanation). The difference between a utilitarian rule and a deontological rule is that according to rule utilitarians, acting according to the rule is correct because the rule is one that, if widely accepted and followed, will produce the most good. According to deontologists, whether the consequences of our actions are positive or negative does not determine their moral rightness or moral wrongness. What determines their moral rightness or moral wrongness is whether we act or fail to act in accordance with our duty or duties (where our duty is based on rules that are not themselves justified by the consequences of their being widely accepted and followed).

Some Varieties (or Types) of Utilitarianism

The above description of utilitarianism is general. We can, however, distinguish between different types of utilitarianism. First, we can distinguish between “actual consequence utilitarians” and “foreseeable consequence utilitarians.” The former base the evaluation of the moral rightness and moral wrongness of actions on the actual consequences of actions; while the latter base the evaluation of the moral rightness and moral wrongness of actions on the foreseeable consequences of actions. J. J. C. Smart (1920-2012) explains the rationale for this distinction with reference to the following example: imagine that you rescued someone from drowning. You were acting in good faith to save a drowning person, but it just so happens that the person later became a mass murderer. Since the person became a mass murderer, actual consequence utilitarians would argue that in hindsight the act of rescuing the person was morally wrong. However, foreseeable consequence utilitarians would argue that—looking forward (i.e., in foresight)—it could not be foreseen that the person was going to be a mass murderer, hence the act of rescuing them was morally right (Smart 1973, 49). Moreover, they could have turned out to be a “saint” or Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr., in which case the action would be considered to be morally right by actual consequence utilitarians.

A second distinction we can make is that between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism focuses on individual actions and says that we should apply the principle of utility in order to evaluate them. Therefore, act utilitarians argue that among possible actions, the action that produces the most utility would the morally right action. But this may seem impossible to do in practice since, for every thing that we might do that has a potential effect on other people, we would thus be morally required to examine its consequences and pick the one with the best outcome. Rule utilitarianism responds to this problem by focusing on general types of actions and determining whether they typically lead to good or bad results. This, for them is the meaning of commonly held moral rules: they are generalizations of the typical consequences of our actions. For example, if stealing typically leads to bad consequences, stealing in general would be considered by a rule utilitarian to be wrong. [1]

Hence rule utilitarians claim to be able to reinterpret talk of rights, justice, and fair treatment in terms of the principle of utility by claiming that the rationale behind any such rules is really that these rules generally lead to greater welfare for all concerned. We may wonder whether utilitarianism in general is capable of even addressing the notion that people have rights and deserve to be treated justly and fairly, because in critical situations the rights and wellbeing of persons can be sacrificed as long as this seems to lead to an increase overall utility.

For example, in a version of the famous “trolley problem,” imagine that you and an overweight stranger are standing next to each other on a footbridge above a rail track. You discover that there is a runaway trolley rolling down the track and the trolley is about to kill five people who cannot get off of the track quickly enough to avoid the accident. Being willing to sacrifice yourself to save the five persons, you consider

jumping off the bridge, in front of the trolley…but you realize that you are far too light to stop the trolley….The only way you can stop the trolley killing five people is by pushing this large stranger off the footbridge, in front of the trolley. If you push the stranger off, he will be killed, but you will save the other five. (Singer 2005, 340)

Utilitarianism, especially act utilitarianism, seems to suggest that the life of the overweight stranger should be sacrificed regardless of any purported right to life he may have. A rule utilitarian, however, may respond that since in general killing innocent people to save others is not what typically leads to the best outcomes, we should be very wary of making a decision to do so in this case. This is especially true in this scenario since everything rests on our calculation of what might possibly stop the trolley, while in fact there is really far too much uncertainty in the outcome to warrant such a serious decision. If nothing else, the emphasis placed on general principles by rule utilitarians can serve as a warning not to take too lightly the notion that the ends might justify the means.

Whether or not this response is adequate is something that has been extensively debated with reference to this famous example as well as countless variations. This brings us to our final question here about utilitarianism—whether it is ultimately a persuasive and reasonable approach to morality.

Is Utilitarianism Persuasive and Reasonable?

First of all, let us start by asking about the principle of utility as the foundational principle of morality, that is, about the claim that what is morally right is just what leads to the better outcome. John Stuart Mill’s argument that it is is based on his claim that “each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness” (Mill [1861] 1879, Ch. 4). Mill derives the principle of utility from this claim based on three considerations, namely desirability, exhaustiveness, and impartiality. That is, happiness is desirable as an end in itself; it is the only thing that is so desirable (exhaustiveness); and no one person’s happiness is really any more desirable or less desirable than that of any other person (impartiality) (see Macleod 2017).

In defending desirability, Mill argues,

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner…the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. (Mill [1861] 1879, Ch. 4)

In defending exhaustiveness, Mill does not argue that other things, apart from happiness, are not desired as such; but while other things appear to be desired , happiness is the only thing that is really desired since whatever else we may desire, we do so because attaining that thing would make us happy. Finally, in defending impartiality, Mill argues that equal amounts of happiness are equally desirable, whether the happiness is felt by the same person or by different persons. In Mill’s words, “each person’s happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons” (Mill [1861] 1879, Ch. 4). We may wonder, however, whether this last argument is truly adequate. Does Mill really show here that we should treat everyone’s happiness as equally worthy of pursuit, or does he simply assert this?

Let us grant that Mill’s argument here is successful and the principle of utility is the basis of morality. Utilitarianism claims that we should thus calculate, to the best of our ability, the expected utility that will result from our actions and how it will affect us and others, and use that as the basis for the moral evaluation of our decisions. But then we may ask, how exactly do we quantify utility? Here there are two different but related problems: how can I come up with a way of comparing different types of pleasure and pain, benefit or harm that I myself might experience, and how can I compare my benefit and yours on some neutral scale of comparison? Bentham famously claimed that there was a single universal scale that could enable us to objectively compare all benefits and harms based on the following factors: intensity, duration, certainty/uncertainty, proximity, fecundity, purity, and extent. And he offered on this basis what he called a “felicific calculus” as a way of objectively comparing any two pleasures we might encounter (Bentham [1789] 1907).

For example, let us compare the pleasure of drinking a pint of beer to that of reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet . Suppose the following are the case:

• The pleasure derived from drinking a pint of beer is more intense than the pleasure derived from reading Hamlet (intensity).
• The pleasure of drinking the beer lasts longer than that of reading Hamlet (duration).
• We are confident that drinking the beer is more pleasurable than reading Hamlet (certainty/uncertainty).
• The beer is closer to us than the play, and therefore it is easier for us to access the former than the latter (proximity).
• Drinking the beer is more likely to promote more pleasure in the future while reading Hamlet is less likely to promote more pleasure in the future (fecundity).
• Drinking the beer is pure pleasure while reading Hamlet is mixed with something else (purity).
• Finally, drinking the beer affects both myself and my friends in the bar and so has a greater extent than my solitary reading of Hamlet (extent).

Since, on all of these measures, drinking a pint of beer is more pleasurable than reading Hamlet , it follows according to Bentham that it is objectively better for you to drink the pint of beer and forget about reading Hamlet , and so you should. Of course, it is up to each individual to make such a calculation based on the intensity, duration, certainty, etc. of the pleasure resulting from each possible choice they may make in their eyes, but Bentham at least claims that such a comparison is possible.

This brings us back to the problem we mentioned before that, realistically, we cannot be expected to always engage in very difficult calculations every single time we want to make a decision. In an attempt to resolve this problem, utilitarians might claim that in the evaluation of the moral rightness and moral wrongness of actions, the application of the principle of utility can be backward-looking (based on hindsight) or forward-looking (based on foresight). That is, we can use past experience of the results of our actions as a guide to estimating what the probable outcomes of our actions might be and save ourselves from the burden of having to make new estimates for each and every choice we may face.

In addition, we may wonder whether Bentham’s approach misses something important about the different kinds of pleasurable outcomes we may pursue. Mill, for example, would respond to our claim that drinking beer is objectively more pleasurable than reading Hamlet by saying that it overlooks an important distinction between qualitatively different kinds of pleasure. In Mill’s view Bentham’s calculus misses the fact that not all pleasures are equal—there are “higher” and “lower” pleasures that make it “better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied” (Mill [1861] 1879, Ch. 2). Mill justifies this claim by saying that between two pleasures, although one pleasure requires a greater amount of difficulty to attain than the other pleasure, if those who are competently acquainted with both pleasures prefer (or value) one over the other, then the one is a higher pleasure while the other is a lower pleasure. For Mill, although drinking a pint of beer may seem to be more pleasurable than reading Hamlet , if you are presented with these two options and you are to make a choice—each and every time or as a rule—you should still choose to read Hamlet and forego drinking the pint of beer. Reading Hamlet generates a higher quality (although perhaps a lower quantity) of pleasure, while drinking a pint of beer generates lower quality (although higher quantity) of pleasure.

In the end, these issues may be merely technical problems faced by utilitarianism—is there some neutral scale of comparison between pleasures? If there is, is it based on Betham’s scale which makes no distinctions between higher and lower pleasures, or Mill’s which does? The more serious problem, however, remains, which is that utilitarianism seems willing in principle to sacrifice the interests and even perhaps lives of individuals for the sake of the benefit of a larger group. And this seems to conflict with our basic moral intuition that people have a right not to be used in this way. While Mill argued that the notion of rights could be accounted for on purely utilitarian terms, Bentham simply dismissed it. For him such “natural rights” are “simple nonsense, natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts”  (Bentham [1796] 1843, 501).

Let us conclude by revisiting the question we started with: can the ends justify the means? I stated that as far as utilitarianism is concerned the answer to this question is in the affirmative. While the answer is plausible and right for utilitarians, it is implausible for many others, and notably wrong for deontologists. As we have seen in this chapter, on a close examination utilitarianism is less persuasive and less reasonable than it appears to be when it is far away.

Bentham, Jeremy. (1789) 1907. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Bentham, Jeremy. (1796) 1843. Anarchical Fallacies. In The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. John Bowring. Vol 2. Edinburgh: William Tait.

Driver, Julia. 2014.  “The History of Utilitarianism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/utilitarianism-history/

Hooker, Brad. 2016. “Rule Consequentialism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/consequentialism-rule/

Macleod, Christopher. 2017. “John Stuart Mill.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/mill/

Mill, John Stuart . Utilitarianism . (1861) 1879. 7th ed. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11224

Singer, Peter. 2005. “Ethics and Intuitions.” The Journal of Ethics 9(3/4): 331-352.

Smart, J. J. C. 1973. “An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics.” In Smart, J. J. C. and Bernard Williams.

Smart, J. J. C. and Bernard Williams. 1973. Utilitarianism: For and Against . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Further Reading

Hare, R. M. 1981. Moral Thinking. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hooker, Brad. 1990. “Rule-Consequentialism.” Mind 99(393): 66-77.

Scheffler, Samuel. 1988. Consequentialism and Its Critics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sen, Amartya and Bernard Williams, eds. 1982. Utilitarianism and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sidgwick, Henry. 1907. The Methods of Ethics. London: Macmillan.

Singer, Peter. 2000. Writings on an Ethical Life. New York: HarperCollins.

Thomson, Judith Jarvis. 1985. “The Trolley Problem.” The Yale Law Journal 94(6): 1395-1415.

Williams, Bernard. 1973. “A Critique of Utilitarianism.” In Smart, J. J. C and Bernard Williams.

• Of course, there may be exceptions to such a rule in particular, atypical cases if stealing might lead to better consequences. This raises a complication for rule utilitarians: if they were to argue that we should follow rules such as “do not steal” except in those cases where stealing would lead to better consequences, then this could mean rule utilitarianism wouldn’t be very different from act utilitarianism. One would still have to evaluate the consequences of each particular act to see if one should follow the rule or not. Hooker (2016) argues that rule utilitarianism need not collapse into act utilitarianism in this way, because it would be better to have a set of rules that are more clear and easily understood and followed than ones that require us to evaluate many possible exceptions. ↵

Utilitarianism Copyright © 2019 by Frank Aragbonfoh Abumere is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• Introduction

Basic concepts

Methodologies.

• Antecedents of utilitarianism among the ancients
• Growth of classical English utilitarianism
• Utilitarianism since the late 19th century
• Effects of utilitarianism in other fields
• Summary and evaluation

utilitarianism

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• Table Of Contents

utilitarianism , in normative ethics , a tradition stemming from the late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill according to which an action (or type of action) is right if it tends to promote happiness or pleasure and wrong if it tends to produce unhappiness or pain—not just for the performer of the action but also for everyone else affected by it. Utilitarianism is a species of consequentialism , the general doctrine in ethics that actions (or types of action) should be evaluated on the basis of their consequences. Utilitarianism and other consequentialist theories are in opposition to egoism , the view that each person should pursue his or her own self-interest, even at the expense of others, and to any ethical theory that regards some actions (or types of action) as right or wrong independently of their consequences ( see deontological ethics ). Utilitarianism also differs from ethical theories that make the rightness or wrongness of an action dependent upon the motive of the agent—for, according to the utilitarian, it is possible for the right thing to be done from a bad motive. Utilitarians may, however, distinguish the aptness of praising or blaming an agent from whether the action was right.

(Read Peter Singer’s Britannica entry on ethics.)

The nature of utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an effort to provide an answer to the practical question “What ought a person to do?” The answer is that a person ought to act so as to maximize happiness or pleasure and to minimize unhappiness or pain.

In the notion of consequences the utilitarian includes all of the good and bad produced by the action, whether arising after the action has been performed or during its performance. If the difference in the consequences of alternative actions is not great, some utilitarians would 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.

As a normative system providing a standard by which an individual ought to act and by which the existing practices of society, including its moral code, ought to be evaluated and improved, utilitarianism cannot be verified or confirmed in the way in which a descriptive theory can, but it is not regarded by its exponents as simply arbitrary. Bentham believed that only in terms of a utilitarian interpretation do words such as “ought,” “right,” and “wrong” have meaning and that, whenever people attempt to combat the principle of utility , they do so with reasons drawn from the principle itself. Bentham and Mill both believed that human actions are motivated entirely by pleasure and pain, and Mill saw that motivation as a basis for the argument that, since happiness is the sole end of human action, the promotion of happiness is the test by which to judge all human conduct.

One of the leading utilitarians of the late 19th century, the Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick , rejected such theories of motivation as well as Bentham’s theory of the meaning of moral terms and sought to support utilitarianism by showing that it follows from systematic reflection on the morality of “ common sense .” Most of the requirements of commonsense morality , he argued, could be based upon utilitarian considerations. In addition, he reasoned that utilitarianism could solve the difficulties and perplexities that arise from the vagueness and inconsistencies of commonsense doctrines.

Most opponents of utilitarianism have held that it has implications contrary to their moral intuitions—that considerations of utility, for example, might sometimes sanction the breaking of a promise. Much of the defense of utilitarian ethics has consisted in answering these objections, either by showing that utilitarianism does not have the implications that its opponents claim it has or by arguing against the opponents’ moral intuitions . Some utilitarians, however, have sought to modify the utilitarian theory to accommodate the objections.

One such criticism is that, although the widespread practice of lying and stealing would have bad consequences, resulting in a loss of trustworthiness and security, it is not certain that an occasional lie to avoid embarrassment or an occasional theft from a rich person would not have good consequences and thus be permissible or even required by utilitarianism. But the utilitarian readily answers that the widespread practice of such acts would result in a loss of trustworthiness and security. To meet the objection to not permitting an occasional lie or theft, some philosophers have defended a modification labelled “ rule ” utilitarianism. It permits a particular act on a particular occasion to be adjudged right or wrong according to whether it is in keeping with or in violation of a useful rule, and a rule is judged useful or not by the consequences of its general practice . Mill has sometimes been interpreted as a “rule” utilitarian, whereas Bentham and Sidgwick were “ act” utilitarians.

Another objection, often posed against the hedonistic value theory held by Bentham, holds that the value of life is more than a balance of pleasure over pain. Mill, in contrast to Bentham, discerned differences in the quality of pleasures that make some intrinsically preferable to others independently of intensity and duration (the quantitative dimensions recognized by Bentham). Some philosophers in the utilitarian tradition have recognized certain wholly nonhedonistic values without losing their utilitarian credentials. Thus, the English philosopher G.E. Moore , one of the founders of contemporary analytic philosophy , regarded many kinds of consciousness —including friendship, knowledge, and the experience of beauty—as intrinsically valuable independently of pleasure, a position labelled “ ideal ” utilitarianism. Even in limiting the recognition of intrinsic value and disvalue to happiness and unhappiness, some philosophers have argued that those feelings cannot adequately be further broken down into terms of pleasure and pain and have thus preferred to defend the theory in terms of maximizing happiness and minimizing unhappiness. It is important to note, however, that, even for the hedonistic utilitarians, pleasure and pain are not thought of in purely sensual terms; pleasure and pain for them can be components of experiences of all sorts. Their claim is that, if an experience is neither pleasurable nor painful, then it is a matter of indifference and has no intrinsic value.

Another objection to utilitarianism is that the prevention or elimination of suffering should take precedence over any alternative act that would only increase the happiness of someone already happy. Some modern utilitarians have modified their theory to require this focus or even to limit moral obligation to the prevention or elimination of suffering—a view labelled “negative” utilitarianism.

• Famine, Affluence, and Morality
• Utilitarianism: Simply Explained

Utilitarianism and Practical Ethics

Are we to extend our concern to all the beings capable of pleasure and pain whose feelings are affected by our conduct? or are we to confine our view to human happiness? The former view is the one adopted by… the Utilitarian school… it seems arbitrary and unreasonable to exclude from the end, as so conceived, any pleasure of any sentient being. – Henry Sidgwick 1

Introduction

Utilitarianism has important implications for how we should think about leading an ethical life. In this chapter, we focus on five of its theoretical implications. First, unlike many other ethical theories, utilitarianism does not regard actions and omissions as morally different. Second, it is unusually demanding: it asks us to sacrifice more than many other ethical theories do. Third, it implies that we should be cause-impartial : that we should apply our altruistic efforts wherever we can have the most positive impact. Fourth, it urges us to consider the well-being of individuals regardless of what country they live in, what species they belong to, and at what point in time they exist. Fifth, despite differing radically from commonsense morality as an approach to ethics, utilitarianism generally does endorse commonsense moral prohibitions.

We discuss how utilitarians should conduct their lives in the article Acting on Utilitarianism . In brief, most utilitarians should donate a significant portion of their income to address the world’s most pressing problems, devote their careers to doing good , and aspire to high degrees of cooperativeness, personal integrity, and honesty.

Is There a Difference Between Doing and Allowing Harm?

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.” – John Stuart Mill , On Liberty

Many non-consequentialists believe there is a morally relevant difference between doing harm and allowing harm , even if the consequences of an action or inaction are the same. This position is known as the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, according to which harms caused by actions—by things we actively do—are worse than harms of omission. Those who subscribe to this doctrine may, for instance, claim that it’s worse to harm a child, all else being equal, than it is to fail to prevent the same child from being harmed in an accident.

Of course, all else is typically not equal. From the perspective of consequentialists and non-consequentialists alike, a societal norm allowing people to harm children would be worse than one allowing people to neglect preventing children from being harmed accidentally. This is because actively harming children could set a precedent encouraging others to harm children more, which would have worse overall consequences. Doing harm may well be instrumentally worse than allowing harm even if the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing is false.

However, while consequentialists—including utilitarians—accept that doing harm is typically instrumentally worse than allowing harm, they deny that doing harm is intrinsically worse than allowing harm. For utilitarians, only the outcomes matter. To the harmed child, the result is the same—whether you do the harming, or someone else does and you fail to prevent it. When considered from the child’s perspective, the action-omission distinction is irrelevant: whether their suffering results from your deliberate action or your neglect, they suffer the same either way.

It matters a great deal whether or not there is an intrinsic moral difference between doing and allowing harm. As pointed out above, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing is at the heart of the disagreement between many consequentialists and non-consequentialists. Furthermore, it matters for real-world decision-making. For instance, the ethics guidelines of many medical associations never allow doctors to actively and intentionally cause the death of a patient. However, it’s acceptable for doctors to intentionally let a patient die under certain circumstances, such as if the patient is in great pain and wants to end their life. This distinction—between a doctor letting a terminally ill patient die and a doctor actively assisting a patient who wants to end their life—is regarded as less relevant from a utilitarian perspective. If we allow doctors to let a terminally ill patient (who wishes to end their suffering) die, a utilitarian would argue that doctors should also be permitted to actively assist a patient to bring about their death with their consent.

Demandingness

Utilitarianism is typically understood to be a very demanding ethical theory: it maintains that any time you can do more to help other people than you can to help yourself, you should do so. 2 For example, if you could sacrifice your life to save the lives of several other people then, other things being equal, according to utilitarianism, you ought to do so.

Though occasions where sacrificing your own life is the best thing to do are rare, utilitarianism may realistically recommend many other significant sacrifices. For example, by donating to a highly effective global health charity , you can save a child’s life for just a few thousand dollars. 3 As long as the benefits others receive from such donations exceeds what you would gain from keeping the money for yourself—as they almost certainly do, if you are a typical citizen of an affluent country—you should give it away. Indeed, you should probably donate the majority of your lifetime income. According to utilitarianism, it’s only truly justifiable to spend money on yourself—such as by going out to the movies or buying nice clothes—if you think that this expenditure would do more good than any possible donation (for example by helping you work harder so that you will subsequently give away even more). This is a very high bar.

As well as recommending very significant donations, utilitarianism claims that you ought to choose whatever career will most benefit others , too. This might involve non-profit work, conducting important research, or going into politics or advocacy.

Cause Impartiality

The prevailing view on helping others is that whom we should help and how we should help them is a matter of personal preference. On this common view, one may choose whether to focus on education, the arts, endangered species, or some other cause on the basis of one’s personal passions. 4

However, utilitarians argue that we should not choose our focus based primarily on personal attachment to a social cause; instead, we should apply our focus wherever we can have the most positive impact on others. Utilitarianism entails what we may call cause impartiality : 5

Cause impartiality is the view that one’s choice of social cause to focus on should just depend on the expected amount of good that one would do by focusing on that cause.

To illustrate this idea, suppose that you could donate to one of two different charities. One provides bednets to protect children from malaria; the other treats cancer patients. Suppose that you will save twice as many lives by donating to the bednet charity than by donating to the cancer charity; however, a family member died of cancer, so you have a personal attachment to that cause. Should you, therefore, give to the cancer charity?

The utilitarian would argue not. On the utilitarian view, the importance of saving twice as many lives outweighs the personal attachment that might bring the donor to prioritize the cancer sufferers. From the viewpoint of utilitarianism, we should be completely impartial in deciding which social cause to support, and instead let this decision be driven only by the question of where we can do the most good.

Importantly, we know that some ways of benefiting individuals do much more good than others. For example, within the cause of global health and development, some interventions are over 100 times as effective as others. 6 Furthermore, many researchers believe that the difference in expected impact among causes is as great as the differences among interventions within a particular cause . If so, focusing on the very best causes is vastly more impactful than focusing on average ones.

The Expanding Moral Circle

A crucial question in deciding which cause to dedicate our efforts to regards which individuals we should include in our moral deliberations.

We now recognize that characteristics like race, gender, and sexual orientation do not justify discriminating against individuals or disregarding their suffering. Over time, our society has gradually expanded our moral concern to ever more groups, a trend of moral progress often called the expanding moral circle . 7 But what are the limits of this trend? Should the moral circle include all humans but stop there? Should it be expanded to include non-human animals as well? Or should it ultimately extend even to plants and the natural environment?

Utilitarianism provides a clear response to this question: We should extend our moral concern to all sentient beings , meaning every individual capable of experiencing positive or negative conscious states. This includes humans and many non-human animals, but presumably not plants or other non-sentient entities. This view is sometimes called sentiocentrism as it regards sentience as the characteristic that entitles individuals to moral concern. Justifying this perspective, Peter Singer writes:

The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a child. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being tormented, because mice will suffer if they are treated in this way… If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that the suffering be counted equally with the like suffering—in so far as rough comparisons can be made—of any other being. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there is nothing to be taken into account. This is why the limit of sentience… is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others. 8

On this basis, a priority for utilitarians may be to help society to continue to widen its moral circle of concern. For instance, we may want to persuade people that they should help not just those in their own country, but also those on the other side of the world; not just those of their own species but all sentient creatures; and not just people currently alive but any people whose lives they can affect, including those in generations to come.

Cosmopolitanism: Expanding the Moral Circle Across Geography

According to utilitarianism, geographical distance and national membership are not intrinsically morally relevant. This means that, by the lights of utilitarianism, we have no grounds for discriminating against someone because of where they live, where they come from, or their nationality. This makes utilitarianism an example of moral cosmopolitanism . Proponents of moral cosmopolitanism believe that if you have the means to save a life in a faraway country, doing so matters just as much as saving a life close by in your own country; all lives deserve equal moral consideration, wherever they are.

Of course, the geographical distance between oneself and one’s beneficiary may matter instrumentally—it’s often easier to help people close by than people far away. However, in an increasingly globalized world it has become much easier to benefit even those who live on the other side of the world. And because of extreme global economic inequalities, an additional unit of resources benefits people in the least-developed countries much more than people in affluent countries like the United States or the United Kingdom—potentially 100 to 1,000 times more. 9

We discuss the implications of cosmopolitanism for ethical action in the article Acting on Utilitarianism .

Anti-Speciesism: Expanding the Moral Circle Across Species

Utilitarianism cares not only about the well-being of humans, but also about the well-being of non-human animals. Consequently, utilitarianism rejects speciesism : the practice of giving some individuals less moral consideration than others or treating them worse based on their species membership. To give individuals moral consideration is simply to consider how one’s behavior will affect them, whether by action or omission. As Peter Singer describes it:

Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favoring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case. 10

There is a growing scientific consensus that many non-human animals are sentient, 11 though not necessarily to the same degree. This includes most vertebrates, such as mammals, birds and fish, and potentially some invertebrates, such as octopodes or even insects. These animals can feel pleasure and pain, and these experiences are morally relevant from a utilitarian perspective.

Rejecting speciesism entails giving equal moral consideration to the well-being of all individuals, but does not entail treating all species equally. Species membership is not morally relevant in itself , but individuals belonging to different species may differ in other ways that do matter morally. In particular, it’s likely that individuals from different species do not have the same capacity for conscious experience—for instance, because of the differing numbers of neurons in their brains. Since utilitarians believe that only sentience matters morally in itself, the utilitarian concern for individuals is proportional to their capacity for conscious experience. It’s perfectly consistent with a rejection of speciesism to say we should equally consider the well-being of a fish and a chimpanzee, without implying that they have the capacity to suffer to the same degree.

From the utilitarian perspective, what matters intrinsically is the well-being of individual sentient beings, not the survival of the species, or the integrity of the ecosystem, or of nature. Individuals can suffer, while a “species”, an “ecosystem”, or “nature” cannot. Of course, the survival of species and the integrity of ecosystems and of nature may well be important instrumentally, to the extent that they contribute to the well-being of individuals.

Speciesism underlies the current exploitation of billions of non-human animals by humans. Animals are widely seen as resources: raised and slaughtered for food, used for clothing, or exploited for their work. These practices often result in the animals experiencing extreme suffering .

However, not all animal suffering is caused by humans. There are many more wild animals living in nature than there are domesticated animals. 12 In contrast to the widespread romanticized view of nature, wild animals generally live short lives in harsh environments. They experience suffering from many sources including predation, disease, parasites, exposure to extreme heat or cold, hunger, thirst, and malnutrition. Against this background, it would be wrong to consider only the well-being of domesticated animals which humans actively harm, while ignoring the well-being of wild animals which humans merely allow to be harmed. 13 As noted earlier, for the utilitarian, the distinction between doing and allowing harm is irrelevant. Therefore, from the utilitarian viewpoint, we should care equally about the welfare of domestic and wild animals. That said, we currently know little about how to systematically improve the lives of wild animals. By contrast, reducing society’s consumption of factory-farmed meat, or improving conditions on factory farms, would yield clear and enormous benefits for animals. 14

We discuss the implications of rejecting speciesism for ethical action in the article Acting on Utilitarianism .

Longtermism: Expanding the Moral Circle Across Time

From the utilitarian perspective, people on the other side of the planet matter no less than people closer to us geographically. In the same way, utilitarianism regards the well-being of future generations as no less important simply because they are far away in time than the well-being of those alive today.

A striking fact about the history of civilization is just how early in it we appear to be. There are 5,000 years of recorded history behind us, but how many years are potentially still to come? If we merely last as long as the typical mammalian species, we still have 200,000 years to go. But humans are not typical mammals, and if we can preserve our species, there could be a further one billion years until the Earth is no longer habitable, 15 and other planets and solar systems will be around for trillions of years. Even on the most conservative of these timelines, we’ve progressed through a tiny fraction of recorded history. If humanity’s saga were a novel, we would still be on the first page.

There could be astronomically more people in the future than in the present generation. This strongly suggests that, to help people in general, your key concern should not be to merely help the present generation, but to ensure that the long-term future goes as well as possible. 16 This idea is known as strong longtermism :

Strong longtermism is the view that the most important determinant of the value of our actions today is how those actions affect the very long-run future.

Strong longtermism is implied by most plausible forms of utilitarianism 17 if we assume that some of our actions can meaningfully affect the long-term future and that we can estimate which effects are positive and which negative. For example, there are risks to the continued survival of the human race, including from nuclear war, extreme climate change, man-made pathogens, and artificial general intelligence. 18 If we believe that the continued survival of the human race is positive in value, then reducing the risk of human extinction is a way of positively influencing the very long-run future. 19 A discussion of longtermism would go beyond the scope of this chapter, but to learn more, we recommend reading this academic paper . 20

We discuss the implications of longtermism for ethical action in the article Acting on Utilitarianism .

Respecting Commonsense Moral Norms

Sometimes people mistake utilitarianism as claiming that one ought always to explicitly calculate the expected value of each possible action, and do whatever act scores highest. Utilitarianism does not in fact recommend adopting this “naïve utilitarian” decision procedure. 21

Instead, as a multi-level theory , utilitarianism specifies moral goals—criteria for objectively judging the moral merits of an action, given all the relevant factual details 22 —but leaves open the question of what kind of decision procedure we should try to follow in practice. After all, it’s an open empirical question how best to actually achieve the specified moral goals.

Utilitarianism implies that we should use whatever decision procedure would best help us to promote overall well-being (in expectation). While we cannot be certain what decision procedure satisfies this criterion, we can offer some educated guesses. As psychologists Stefan Schubert and Lucius Caviola argue in Virtues for Real-World Utilitarians , we may best promote overall well-being by ambitiously pursuing robustly good actions that effectively help others , while minimizing downside risks by means of commonsense virtues and constraints.

It’s widely recognized that humans are unreliable at calculating utilities, 23 especially when they conflict with generally-reliable rules and heuristics (such as those prohibiting harm to others). As a result, we cannot take rule-violating expected value calculations at face value. Even if you’ve calculated that it would somehow serve the greater good to murder your rival, you should be very skeptical that this is true. After all, if you don’t really believe that it would overall be best for others (similarly situated) to do likewise, then you must believe that most calculations favoring murder have actually gone awry. So, if you’ve no special (symmetry-breaking) evidence establishing that you, in particular, are the rare exception to this rule, then you must conclude that your own murderous calculations have most likely gone awry. 24 Thus, absent special evidence, you should conclude that your rule-breaking actually has lower expected value, despite your initial calculation to the contrary.

We can be most confident that our actions have positive expected value when we instead seek to help others in ways that are supported by good evidence and minimize downside risk. 25 Over the long run, we should expect honest, cooperative altruism to do more good than ruthless scheming for the “greater good”, because (i) historically, ruthless schemers often do more harm than good, (ii) people rightly don’t trust ruthless schemers, and (iii) in a complex world, it’s difficult to get much done without others’ trust and cooperation. If that’s right, honest cooperative altruism systematically has higher expected value than ruthless scheming, and should be preferred by utilitarians.

In summary, utilitarianism does not tell us to constantly calculate utilities and blindly follow whatever our calculations recommend. That would be predictably counter-productive, contrary to the pragmatic spirit of the theory. Instead, utilitarianism recommends decision-procedures based on their expected value. When we are uncertain, we should be guided by whatever decision procedure can most reasonably (in light of everything we know about human biases and cognitive limitations) be expected to yield better outcomes. This means following heuristics or generally-reliable rules of thumb.

As a very rough first pass, a plausible utilitarian decision-procedure might direct us to: 26

• Pursue any “low-hanging fruit” for effectively helping others while avoiding harm,
• Inculcate virtues for real-world utilitarians (including respect for commonsense moral norms), and
• In a calm moment, reflect on how we could better prioritize and allocate our moral efforts, including by seeking out expert cost-benefit analyses and other evidence to better inform our overall judgments of expected value. 27

Utilitarianism has important implications for how we should think about leading an ethical life.

The theory rejects an intrinsic moral difference between doing and allowing harm. This position contributes to the demandingness of utilitarianism, since it implies that whenever we decide not to help another person, we are complicit in their misery.

By the lights of utilitarianism, we should choose carefully which moral problems to work on and by what means, based on where we can do the most good. We should extend our moral concern to all sentient beings, meaning every individual capable of experiencing happiness or suffering. Utilitarianism urges us to consider the well-being of all individuals regardless of what species they belong to, what country they live in, and at what point in time they exist.

Though utilitarians should try to use their lives to do the most good they can, in practice, they should do so while respecting commonsense moral virtues like honesty, integrity, fairness, and law-abidingness. There are reasons we do not see utilitarians robbing banks to donate the proceeds: these commonsense moral prohibitions help society to function smoothly, and any naive calculation that violating such a prohibition would promote the greater good is almost always mistaken.

The next chapter discusses important rival theories that may overlap significantly with utilitarianism in practice.

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Resources and Further Reading

• Fiona Woollard & Frances Howard-Snyder (2016). Doing vs. Allowing Harm . The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
• Jonathan Bennett (1995). The Act Itself . Oxford University Press.
• Peter Singer (1997). The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle . New Internationalist .
• Peter Singer (2011). The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress . Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Poverty & Our Response to It: Crash Course Philosophy #44
• Peter Singer (2019). The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty , 2nd ed. The Life You Can Save, Bainbridge Island, WA and Sydney, available free at <www.thelifeyoucansave.org>.
• Peter Singer (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality . Philosophy & Public Affairs . 1(2): 229–243.
• Samuel Scheffler (1999). Conceptions of Cosmopolitanism . Utilitas . 11(3): 255–276.
• Non-Human Animals: Crash Course Philosophy #42
• Peter Singer (2023) Animal Liberation Now: The Definitive Classic Renewed , New York: HarperCollins.
• Jeff McMahan (2002). Animals. In R. G. Frey and Christopher Wellman (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Applied Ethics . Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 525–536.
• Jeff Sebo (2019). A Utilitarian Case for Animal Rights . Effective Altruism Global .
• Toby Ord (2020). The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity . London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Hilary Greaves & William MacAskill (2019). The Case for Strong Longtermism . Global Priorities Institute .
• Nick Beckstead (2013). On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far-Future . PhD Dissertation, Rutgers University.
• Nick Bostrom (2003). Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development . Utilitas . 15(3): 308–314.
• William MacAskill (2022). What We Owe the Future . Basic Books.
• Allan Gibbard (1984). Utilitarianism and Human Rights . Social Philosophy and Policy , 1(2): 92–102.
• R.M. Hare (1981). Moral Thinking . Oxford University Press.
• J.L. Mackie (1985). Rights, Utility, and Universalization. In R.G. Frey (ed.) Utility and Rights . Basil Blackwell.
• Philip Pettit & Geoffrey Brennan (1986). Restrictive Consequentialism . Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 64(4): 438–455.

Sidgwick, H. (1981). The Methods of Ethics . Hackett Publishing. Book IV, p. 414  ↩︎

Though as flagged in our chapter on the demandingness objection , this may not actually be so demanding if the “should” claim merely indicates what is morally ideal , rather than what is required to avoid deserving moral blame or criticism .

For a discussion of demandingness in the context of global poverty alleviation, see Singer, P. (2019). The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty , 2nd ed. The Life You Can Save, Bainbridge Island, WA and Sydney, available free at <www.thelifeyoucansave.org>.  ↩︎

GiveWell (2019). Your dollar goes further overseas .  ↩︎

Berman, J. Z., Barasch, A., Levine, E. E., & Small, D. A. (2018). Impediments to Effective Altruism: The Role of Subjective Preferences in Charitable Giving . Psychological Science . 29(5): 834–844.  ↩︎

The case for cause neutrality is made in Effective Altruism Foundation (2017). The Benefits of Cause-Neutrality .  ↩︎

Ord, T. (2013). The Moral Imperative Towards Cost-Effectiveness in Global Health . Center for Global Development .  ↩︎

Cf. Singer, P. (2011). The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress . Princeton: Princeton University Press.  ↩︎

Singer, P. (2011). Practical Ethics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 50  ↩︎

Cf. MacAskill, W. (2015). Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and How You Can Make a Difference . New York: Penguin Random House. Chapter 1.  ↩︎

Singer, P. (2023) Animal Liberation Now: The Definitive Classic Renewed , New York: HarperCollins, p. 8. Indeed, there is psychological evidence suggesting that speciesism goes hand in hand with other discriminatory attitudes like racism, sexism, and homophobia: Cf. Caviola, L; Everett, J. A. C. & Faber, N. S. (2017). The Moral Standing of Animals: Towards a Psychology of Speciesism . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . 116(6): 1011–1029.  ↩︎

For instance, see the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness from Low, P. et al. (2012)  ↩︎

Tomasik, B. (2019). How Many Wild Animals Are There? .  ↩︎

There is an ongoing academic debate about the moral importance of wild animal welfare. For example, see the following: Ng, Y. (1995). Towards Welfare Biology: Evolutionary Economics of Animal Consciousness and Suffering . Biology and Philosophy . 10 (3): 255–285. McMahan, J. (2013). The Moral Problem of Predation . In Chignell, A; Cuneo, T. & Halteman, M. (eds.). Philosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments on the Ethics of Eating . London: Routledge. Moen, O. M. (2016). The Ethics of Wild Animal Suffering . Etikk I Praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics . 10 : 1–14.  ↩︎

For a further discussion of this topic we recommend this interview with researcher Persis Eskander: Eskander, P. (2019). Animals in the wild often suffer a great deal. What, if anything, should we do about that? . 80,000 Hours Podcast with Rob Wiblin .  ↩︎

Adams, F. C. (2008). Long-Term Astrophysical Processes. In Bostrom, N. and Cirkovic, M. (eds.) ​Global Catastrophic Risks .​ Oxford: Oxford University Press.  ↩︎

For a discussion of this idea and its underlying assumptions, see Beckstead, N. (2013). On the Overwhelming Importance of Shaping the Far-Future . PhD Dissertation, Rutgers University.  ↩︎

Cf. Greaves, H. & MacAskill, W. (2019). The Case for Strong Longtermism . Global Priorities Institute . Section 4.1.  ↩︎

For a detailed discussion of existential risks and the moral importance of the long-run future of humanity, see Ord, T. (2020). The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity . London: Bloomsbury Publishing.  ↩︎

For a classic paper on the importance of reducing existential risk, see Bostrom, N. (2013). Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority . Global Policy . 4 (1): 15–31.  ↩︎

Note that William MacAskill, coauthor of this website, is also a coauthor of this paper.  ↩︎

As Chapter 2 explains : “[T]o our knowledge no one has ever defended single-level utilitarianism [i.e., using the utilitarian criterion as a universal decision procedure], including the classical utilitarians. Deliberately calculating the expected consequences of our actions is error-prone and risks falling into decision paralysis.”  ↩︎

Such details might simply be stipulated in a hypothetical example. In real life cases, our uncertainty about relevant factual details should generally carry over to make us similarly uncertain about our moral verdicts and evaluations.  ↩︎

See, e.g., J.L. Mackie (1985). Rights, Utility, and Universalization. In R.G. Frey (ed.) Utility and Rights . Basil Blackwell.  ↩︎

In particular, you can’t take at face value your inclination to think that there are special reasons in your case, if you believe that most people in subjectively similar situations are mistaken in taking themselves to have such special reasons. Symmetry-breaking evidence is evidence that distinctively establishes your reliability in comparison to others with similar (but, in their case, misguided) beliefs. Note that such symmetry-breaking evidence is very hard to come by!  ↩︎

That’s not to say that we should strictly optimize for confidence in positive expected value (EV): Something that’s certainly barely-good in expectation may be less worth pursuing than something that is almost certainly high EV even if there’s a slight risk that you’ve overlooked something that would mean the action is actually mildly negative in expectation. Such uncertainty could still result in higher “all things considered” expected value, in principle. The point is just that grounds for doubting a positive verdict from our initial EV calculations should rationally lead us to assign lower (and in some cases, even negative ) expected value to that option, all things considered. And in practice, it seems that we should often have strong priors that rights-violating actions are net-negative, which a rough and broadly unreliable calculation should not suffice to overturn.  ↩︎

These claims are not, strictly speaking, built into utilitarianism as a fundamental moral theory. Rather, we are speculating about the further question of what decision-procedure has the highest expected value in typical circumstances . (Note that, in principle, the answer may differ for individuals in different circumstances. Nothing in utilitarianism requires uniformity, if that would not be for the best.)  ↩︎

This might (but need not) include performing some “back of the envelope” calculations of expected value. Even then, to truly maximize expected value, these naive calculations must be tempered by constraints against ruthless scheming, given our prior judgment that the latter is most likely counterproductive. That is, if we calculate a slightly higher explicit “expected value” for one act than another, but the former involves egregious norm-breaking, we should probably conclude that the latter (safer) option is actually better in expectation.  ↩︎

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Deontology Vs. Utilitarianism

Checked : Mark A. , Alexandra L.

Latest Update 21 Jan, 2024

11 min read

Table of content

Deontology and   Utilitarianism theory   can be simply defined as the idea of the moral quality of an act based on its utility. It focuses on the maximization of utility and minimization of bad utility. It’s feeling minus pain. Deontology is a concept that was established by Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), a German philosopher. It implies duty, or responsibility, a single means of making an ethical conclusion. Deontology can also be looked at as the constitution of this approach, considering a point at which priority is made to these basic rules (Thomson et al. 2000). That philosophy states that it is right when it encourages happiness, and it is wrong when it promotes unhappiness.

Deontology and Utilitarianism are theories that try to specify and justify moral rules and principles. In other words, they attempt to guide humanity into what should be considered right, and what should not be considered right. Utilitarianism is the principle of the right form of action that should be taken to benefit the largest number of people, whereas deontology is a branch of ethics based on responsibility, moral duty, and commitment. Both these theories try to explain the ethics and consequences of one’s actions and behavior, no matter the results. Deontology ethics has been considered rigid in its values on duties, where functional ethics can be used to override basic human rights. These two theories together relate to how one reacts in specific situations. They are used to explain different behaviors based on what is ethically right or wrong in different aspects of human existence. In economics, these theories are instrumental in understanding consumer and firm decisions considering what is beneficial to them and society at large. Humanity is a social being, and it exists because of interacting with other humans and nature. Therefore, there would be no humanity if there were not proper relations and guidelines to direct over these relations.

People must make decisions in their daily lives. And it is these decisions that define what we do with our lives. According to Deontology ethics, every person has a duty of responsibility. It has a lot to do with how the decisions we make affect the other people around us and us. Economics looks at consumers as rational-decision makers. They take steps and react to situations based on the idea of less risk and more benefit. It is logical for one to want something that benefits them the most. And it is also right for them to make a decision while considering the consequences of that particular decision.

Deontology was introduced by Kant as a model that reminds individuals about their moral obligation to act according to the underlying set of principles and guidelines, no matter the outcome. On the other hand, the utilitarianism theory was established by John Sturt Mill, indicating that the results of specific action or decisions determine whether it is justified as right or wrong. The two theories have been used separately and together to explain different actions and their outcome. Many examples relating to the comparison between the two theories have been made for academic purposes. The best comparison can be made using a simple model called duty-based. In this case, the main focus is on what people do, and not the outcomes of their actions. According to Kant, it was necessary for people to focus on doing what is right. Everyone has a moral obligation to do only the right things while refraining from wrong things for reasons that they are considered wrong. In other words, it does not matter the consequences of the action, as long as it was done in good faith.

Widely, Kant insists on the thought that an individual cannot justify an action by showing that it resulted in good results. This is why the theory is sometimes referred to as no-Consequentialist. This name has its roots originating from the Green word deon, which stands for duty. It is, therefore, good to also note that duty-based ethics is concerned with the common principle of the thing common among the people. Kant had a lot of followers, who together argue that certain acts can be seen as right or wrong based on what they are, and the actor has a moral obligation to act accordingly, irrespective of the outcomes resulting from the same. For deontologists, moral rules must be used to guide the universe. For example, the belief it is not right to kill, tell lies, steal, or take any other action might be harmful.

And on the other hand, keeping a promise is the right thing to do. The theory extends into the extreme where it states that one is obligated to do the right thing at all times, even if the result is more harm than good. Not also, deontologists hold on the thought that it does not matter the circumstances under which the actor is operating, they still have to do the right things, irrespective of what comes out in the end. And according to Kant’s thought on the application of the theory, it might look inapplicable. Yet, he still maintains a firm stand on it, that it will often lead to a harmonious coexistence in the society.

In another example, Kant holds that it would be unethical to tell a lie in an attempt to save a friend from murder charges. Even though this decision will have a bad ending for the friend, the actor will be considered to have done right because their actions have moral standing. Most importantly, deontologists believe that every human being should be treated with equal respect, no matter their standing in society. Kant continues to insist that morals or principles are founded on reason (Burnor & Raley 155). Deontology establishes respect and dignity for every person, including those seen as odd by the larger group. And this forms the foundation of modern human rights. In addition, Kantian ethics highlights that some action should never be done, no matter how good the result may be. This idea is a true reflection of how individuals think and/or make decisions. Kant continues to emphasize that moral rules should have the quality of universality. For example, he shows that one should act only according to the maxim and rationally be to universal law or principle.

In other words, moral rules should always carry universal traits where the results must be similar, no matter where they are applied. Kant (21) states that every human being needs to be treated equally regardless of their position in society. He believes that society turns into an ideal environment when people oblige to moral rules. Deontologists look more on the intentions of particular actions. They try to answer why people behave in the way they do, based on a thought that the motive behind an action supersedes the consequences of the action. And this is why the outcomes of action mean so little to them. Kant says that goodwill freely chooses to fulfill its duty, and moral responsibilities emerge from reason.

In summary, Kant’s deontology theory ignores many aspects of human actions and considers them as premeditated events that can be controlled/ regulated by moral rules within the society they exist. For instance, the thought does not consider that some actions come from the sub-conscious response to environmental factors. Some human actions and reactions do not require thinking because there is not enough time to determine their ethical outcomes. Hence, the implications of these actions are judged as immoral instantly. Deontology is more applicable to actions that the actor had time to think about and acted according to the set rules and principles. The theory of seven duties believed to be fundamental to human existence.

First is the duty of beneficence, which emphasizes on assisting other people in increasing their pleasure of better their personality. This duty is followed by that of non-maleficent, which forbids a person from harming other people. The duty of justice comes third, indicating that one should make sure other people receive what is rightfully theirs without being judged based on their knowledge of it. Then there is the duty of self-improvements, which insists that individuals should always strive to make themselves better in all areas of their existence, including social-economic and intellectual wellbeing, among others. This can be echoed by the duty of reparation, where one must recompense others for wrong actions, they do towards them. Kant and the deontology theory agree that humanity is flawed, and no one is perfect. However, an individual ought to make compensation to those if they cause the pain of loss too. He emphasizes that we should never stop other people’s toes for our gain rather treat them as deserving respect. There is also the duty of gratitude, which demands that one is obliged to appreciate those who helped them. In this duty, if anyone does something good to you, have the moral responsibility to return the favor. The last duty is that of promise-keeping. It compels an individual to honor the commitments that they make to others through various interactions.

Mills presents   Utilitarianism   as a though that stands for the moral rightness or wrongness of the action based on the outcome. He argues that actions are only right if they result in happiness, and where they produce mystery, they are wrong. In simple terms, Mills is saying the end justifies the means. He considers the fact that each one of use strikes to find happiness and pleasure in our actions. And at times, the results of our adventure may be undesirable outcomes of pain and suffering. Mills, therefore, shows that an action is good if it brings about positive results, and it cannot be considered otherwise. And it is wrong where the end result causes bad outcomes.

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According to Utilitarianism, therefore, the intention or motive of the action does not have any effect on determining its moral position. Mills gives an example that if a person finds themselves held by armed robbers and lies to them to save their lives, the action is morally right. Even though the person lied, the outcome of their lies is the salvation of their lives. Utilitarian theorists hold that the overall reason for morality in society is to make life better by having more good things. Hence, a person should decrease the number of negative things like unhappiness and pain, leading to human suffering. Mills, therefore, highlights three basic principles that hold the foundation of Utilitarianism. First, he shows he indicates that pleasure and happiness are the only aspects of human life that have real value. Second, those actions are seen as right as long as they end up causing happiness, and wrong where they lead to suffering. Thirdly, in each one’s happiness counts in an equal way.

Mills says that society is obligated to focus only on what makes human life better, encouraging people to engage in activities that promote wellbeing in society. Deontology, on the other hand, focuses more on the action itself, no matter the consequences. These two theories differ a lot in their definition and the definition of morality. Deontologists are more concerned about rules and regulations of morality, as opposed to the purpose of this morality. Nevertheless, the two theories both serve to improve the general wellbeing of society.

Utilitarianism focuses on a person, while deontology is all about the action. In deontology, one must live according to rules, and there is no justification for breaking them. Human actions are motivated by certain things, which should form the basis of judging wrong from right. Utilitarianism has its eye on rules and regulations, while deontology encourages stability of the society. Based on this, Utilitarianism hangs on systems and institution, and not the people. These theorists hold that people cannot be trusted with decisions on certain matters. On the other hand, deontologists trust more in people, which is why they judge an action as right or wrong based on the outcome. Their focus is on the larger society, and there should be no objection to anything that makes a society happy. According to the theory, the greatest objective of life includes creating happiness and please, which is why it encourages giving people freedom of choice. Utilitarianism believes that people are inherently evil. Despite the differences, these two theories are useful in establishing law and order in society. Society remains a dynamic institution that requires changing rules and regulations to accommodate new issues, which makes applying these theories almost impossible.

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Theories of Utilitarianism and Deontology and Its Application Within Society

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Published: Apr 29, 2022

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