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The History of Utilitarianism
First published Fri Mar 27, 2009
Utilitarianism is one of the most powerful and persuasive approaches to normative ethics in thehistory 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 theview that the morally right action is the action that produces the most good. There are manyways 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 relevantconsequences. 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 tomaximize 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 happinesscounts the same. When one maximizes the good, it is the good
impartially
considered. My goodcounts for no more than anyone else's good. Further, the reason I have to promote the overallgood 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 theClassical version of the theory.
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1. Precursors to the Classical Approach
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 morallyappropriate behavior will not harm others, but instead increase happiness or ‘utility.’ What isdistinctive 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 RichardCumberland (1631-1718) and John Gay (1699-1745). They believed that promoting humanhappiness was incumbent on us since it was approved by God. After enumerating the ways inwhich humans come under obligations (by perceiving the “natural consequences of things”, theobligation 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, canonly be that arising from the authority of
God
; because God only can in all cases make a manhappy or miserable: and therefore, since we are
always
obliged to that conformity called virtue, itis evident that the immediate rule or criterion of it is the will of God.” (R, 412) Gay held thatsince 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 didvirtue itself. Promoting human happiness and one's own coincided, but, given God's design, itwas 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 wascurious about how to explain our practice of approbation and disapprobation of action andcharacter. When we see an act that is vicious we disapprove of it. Further, we associate certainthings with their effects, so that we form positive associations and negative associations that alsounderwrite 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 areliance 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 itsdiminishing 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 rightand wrong, or moral beauty and deformity. Again, aspects of this doctrine would be picked up byFrancis Hutcheson and David Hume (1711-1776). Hume, of course, would clearly reject anyrobust 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 fromour perception of them, that are objective, then Hume clearly was not a moral sense theorist inthis regard. But perception picks up on features of our environment that one could regard ashaving a contingent quality. There is one famous passage where Hume likens moraldiscrimination 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 existindependent of our responses. This is radical. If an act is vicious, its viciousness is a matter of thehuman 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 thetheological option.So, the view that it is part of our very nature to make moral discriminations is very much inHume. 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 intoHume's writings, though modified. It is the virtue that contributes to the good of the wholesystem, in the case of Hume's artificial virtues.Shaftesbury held that in judging someone virtuous or good in a moral sense we need to perceivethat person's impact on the systems of which he or she is a part. Here it sometimes becomesdifficult to disentangle egoistic versus utilitarian lines of thought in Shaftesbury. He clearly statesthat 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, heis 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 tohelp others because it supports a system in which one's own happiness is more likely, then itlooks 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 likeutilitarianism, 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 ableto reflect on character, for example, and represent to themselves the qualities in others that areeither 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, admirableor blameable, right or wrong….we never say of….any mere beast, idiot, or changeling, thoughever 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 necessaryreflective capacities. Animals also lack the capacity for moral discrimination and would thereforeseem to lack the moral sense. This raises some interesting questions. It would seem that themoral sense is a perception
that
something is the case. So it isn't merely a discriminatory sensethat allows us to sort perceptions. It also has a propositional aspect, so that animals, which arenot lacking in other senses are lacking in this one.The virtuous person is one whose affections, motives, dispositions are of the right sort, not onewhose behavior is simply of the right sort and who is able to reflect on goodness, and her owngoodness [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” isnot 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 aredistinct from his moral sense approach, and his overall sentimentalism. However, this approachhighlights the move away from egoistic views of human nature — a trend picked up byHutcheson 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 egoismrather than rationalism.
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The History of Utilitarianism
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