UTILITARIANISM

A CONSEQUENTIAL THEORY
UTILITARIANISM
• This was proposed by Jeremy Bentham. And later, improvised by John
Stuart Mill - a student of Jeremy Bentham.

• “An action is right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it

tends to produce the reverse of happiness—not just the happiness of
the performer of the action but also that of everyone affected by it.”

• Altruistic - this means it concerns everyone's happiness.

• “What ought a person to do?”
• a person ought to act so as to produce the best consequences possible

• 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.