Concept

Utilitarianism

Overview

ethical theory which holds that the right action is the one that maximizes aggregate well-being

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Utilitarianism is discussed.

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
Uses the term “utilitarian” and “utility”. The author is linked to this idea in the knowledge graph.
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It would tend to clearness if we might call this principle, and the method based upon it, by some such name as Universalistic hedonism." As popularly put, the utilitarian standard is the "greatest happiness of the greatest number." While in its calculation "each is to count for one and only one." (_Bentham_). And finally Bain (Emotions and Mill, p.
John Dewey, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics
Uses the term “utilitarianism” and “utilitarian”.
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Its best-known formula is that the result by which actions are to be judged is ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number.’ But it is plain that, if pleasure is the sole good, provided the quantity be equally great, an equally desirable result will have been obtained whether it be enjoyed by many or by few, or even if it be enjoyed by…
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica
Uses the term “utilitarianism” and “utilitarian”.
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If the reply is that the principle must be taken as a guide for governmental action rather than for individual action, we are at once met by the inquiry, what is to be the guide for individual action? If individual action is not to be regulated solely for the purpose of achieving "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," some other principle of regulation for individual action is required, and "the greatest…
Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics
Uses the term “utilitarianism” and “utilitarian”. The author is linked to this idea in the knowledge graph.
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is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned; as between his own happiness and that of others, Utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator." So Sidgwick (_Methods of Ethics_, p. 379): "By Utilitarianism is here meant the ethical theory, first distinctly formulated by Bentham, that the conduct which under any given circumstances is externally or…
John Dewey, Ethics
Uses the term “utilitarianism” and “utilitarian”.
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It was assumed formerly by philosophers of the derivative (41. This term is used in an able article in the ‘Westminster Review,’ Oct. 1869, p. 498. For the “Greatest happiness principle,” see J.S. Mill, ‘Utilitarianism,’ p. 17.) school of morals that the foundation of morality lay in a form of Selfishness; but more recently the “Greatest happiness principle” has been brought prominently forward. It is, however, more…
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
Uses the term “utilitarianism” and “utilitarian”.
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For example, he says (i. 97) that 'philosophers of the derivative school of morals formerly assumed that the foundation of morality lay in a form of Selfishness; but more recently in the Greatest Happiness principle.' But Mr. Mill, to whom Mr. Darwin refers, has expressly shown that the Greatest Happiness principle is a STANDARD, and not a FOUNDATION, and that its validity as a standard of right and wrong action is…
Charles Darwin, More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1
Uses the term “utilitarian” and “greatest happiness”.
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But we seem to be more assured of a law of right than we can be of a divine purpose, that ‘all mankind should be saved;’ and we infer the one from the other. And the greatest happiness of the individual may be the reverse of the greatest happiness in the ordinary sense of the term, and may be realised in a life of pain, or in a voluntary death.
Plato, The Republic
Uses the term “utilitarian” and “utility”.
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Utilitarianism

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Utilitarianism

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