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Utilitarianism: "The greatest good for the most people." or: "The greatest good over the least pain." A theory that the morality of any action or law is defined by its utility.
Utilitarianism is both a theory of the good and a theory of the right.
Most utilitarian theories deal with producing the greatest amount of good for the greatest number. Negative utilitarianism requires us to promote the least amount of evil or harm, or to prevent the greatest amount of harm for the greatest number. Proponents argue that this is a more efficacious ethical formula, since, they contend, there are many more ways to do harm than to do good, and the greatest harms are more consequential than the greatest goods.
Utilitarianism was originally proposed in 18th century England by Jeremy Bentham and others, although it can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophers such as Epicurus. Bentham found pain and pleasure to be the only absolutes in the world: "nature has put man under the governance of two sovereign masters: pleasure and pain." From this he derived the rule of utility: that the good is whatever brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. Later, after realizing that the formulation recognized two different and potentially conflicting maximanda, he dropped the second part and talked simply about "the greatest happiness principle".
Both Bentham's formulation and the philosophy of Epicurus can be considered different types of hedonistic consequentialism, since they judge the rightness of actions from the happiness that they lead to, and they identify happiness with pleasure. Note, however, that Bentham's formulation is a selfless hedonism. Where Epicurus recommended doing whatever made you happiest, Bentham would have you do what makes everyone happiest.
Although Mill was a utilitarian, he argued that not all forms of pleasure are of equal value, using his famous saying "It is better to be SocratesThis article is about the ancient Greek philosopher. For the Byzantine church historian, see Socrates Scholasticus for the Brazilian football player, see Socrates (football player . Socrates ( June 4, 470 399 BC) ( Greek &#x;Σωκ< dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied." He disagreed with Bentham's hedonic calculus holding that quality is better than quantity.
Utilitarianism influenced economicsEconomics is the social science studying how society uses its limited resources to meet desires and wants. Put otherwise, economics studies what, how and for whom society produces. This involves analyzing the production, distribution and consumption of go, in particular utility theory, where the concept of utility is also used, although with quite different effect. See also Utilitarian ethicsUtilitarian ethics was formulated first by Jeremy Bentham in 1781, and later championed and elaborated by the philosopher John Stuart Mill. This ethic states that the rightness of an action entirely depends on the value of its consequences, and that the u and Utilitarian BioethicsUtilitarian Bioethics is a very controversial branch of Utilitarian ethics that espouses directing medical resources where they will contribute most to the sum of the number of happy people in the world. It is implicitly used in some healthcare planning d for further consequences of its influence.
Other varieties of utilitarianism have also been proposed.
The traditional form of utilitarianism is act utilitarianism, which states that the best act is whichever act would yield the most utility. A common alternative form is rule utilitarianism, which states that the best act is the one that would be enjoined by whichever rule would yield the most utility.
To illustrate, consider the following scenario: A surgeon has six patients: one needs a liver, one needs a pancreas, one needs a gall bladder, and two need kidneys. The sixth just came in to have his appendix removed. Should the surgeon kill the sixth man and pass his organs around to the others? This would obviously violate the rights of the sixth man, but utilitarianism seems to imply that, given a purely binary choice between (1) killing the man and distributing his organs or (2) not doing so and the other five dying, violating his rights is exactly what we ought to do.
A rule utilitarian, however, would look at the rule, rather than the act, that would be instituted by cutting up the sixth man. The rule in this case would be: "whenever a surgeon could kill one relatively healthy person in order to transplant his organs to more than one other person who needs them, he ought to do so." This rule, if instituted in society, would obviously lead to bad consequences. Relatively healthy people would stop going to the hospital, we'd end up performing many risky transplant operations, etc., etc. So a rule utilitarian would say we should implement the opposite rule: don't harvest healthy people's organs to give them to sick people. If the surgeon killed the sixth man, then he would be doing the wrong thing.
Many utilitarians would argue that utilitarianism applies not only to acts, but also to desires and dispositions, praise and blame, rules, institutions and punishment. Once this is recognized, utilitarianism becomes a much more complex, and rich, moral theory, and may align much more closely with our moral intuitions.
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