Epicurus (341-270 B.C.E.

)
The most important version of ethical
hedonism among the Ancient Greeks is
Epicureanism, which regards ‘
happiness’ as
a mind free from disturbance and a body free
from pain. The good life is secured by
moderation of appetite and desire, and the
pleasures of reason, peace, friendship, and aesthetic
contemplation.

the highest pleasure (tranquility and freedom from

fear) was obtained by knowledge, friendship and living
a virtuous and temperate life.
Helvétius' philosophy :

Self-interest, founded on the love of pleasure and the fear

of pain, is the sole spring of judgment, action, and
affection. Human beings are motivated solely by the
pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. "These two,"
he says, "are, and always will be, the only principles of
action in man.

Self-sacrifice is prompted by the fact that the sensation of

pleasure outweighs the accompanying pain and is thus the
result of deliberate calculation.
Utilitarianism : Jeremy Bentham (1784-1832)
Born into a wealthy, Tory (British) family
Studied law at Westminster School and
Queen’s College, Oxford
Bentham was known as a British
gentleman, political activist, legal
scholar, social philosopher, linguist, and
contemporary of Adam Smith.
Welcomed both the American and
French Revolutions: He was made an
honorary citizen of the French Republic
in 1792.
Known as the father of Utilitarianism

English philosopher, who was intent on providing a political theory for the
British Parliament and other governments to use in constructing sound,
rational legislation.
Refuted Smith’s principle of utility which rests
on self-interest and natural identity to improve
one’s position via individual attempts to acquire
benefits and avoid costs.

Bentham Two Aim:

Theoretical practical

Evolve a framework of bring about legal

Political rules –science & social reform to
Of politics evolve political
Institution, which
Is efficient
Social institution should be judged by the
principle of Utilitarianism -
Bentham’s most famous writing
A fragment on Government (1776)

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and

Legislation 1781:
(Widely established him as the founder of Utilitarianism)
The Constitutional Code (1830)
(Supposed to be the Magnum Opus – planned 3 vols but
completed only one)
 JEREMY BENTHAM - BACKGROUND
 the theory of Utilitarianism was an
attempt to treat ethics as on would a
science – using empirical method to
determine right or wrong.
 Pleasure and pain test was to be
applied to government and their policies
– those that produce greatest
happiness of the greatest number is
certainly the best
 BENTHAM’S THEORY

 Bentham stated that humanity was

motivated by pleasure and pain –
Hedonism
 He believed humanity pursued pleasure
and avoided pain
 Pleasure and pain identified what we
should and shouldn’t do – hedonic
utilitarianism.
 “Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting point
of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we always
come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to
judge of every good thing.”

“When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and the aim, we do not
mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we
are understood to do through ignorance, prejudice, or willful
misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body
and trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking
bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of fish and other
delicacies of a luxurious table, that produces a pleasant life. It is rather
sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of choice and avoidance,
and banishing those beliefs that lead to the tumult of the soul.”
 BENTHAM’S THEORY
 The principle of utility:-

 There are two sovereign masters – given by

nature : Pain and Happiness
 This govern what we ought to do – they
determine what we shall do – what is right
and wrong –

 Normative & Prescriptive: how to act to

maximize pleasure & minimize pain but also
advocate how to achieve it.
 BENTHAM’S THEORY
 The principle of utility:-

 The rightness or wrongness of an act is

determined by its usefulness.
 Usefulness refers to the amount of pleasure
or happiness caused by an action.
 Also known as the greatest happiness
principle.
 An action is right if it produces the greatest
good (pleasure or happiness) for the greatest
number.
 Democracy is based on Utilitarianism.
Two Formulations of Utilitarian
Theory Greatest Happiness:
Principle of We ought to do
Utility: The best that which
action is that produces the
which produces greatest
the greatest happiness and
happiness least pain for the
and/or reduces greatest number
pain. of people.
The Ethical Judgments in Utilitarianism
 Utilitarianism says that the Result or
the Consequence of an Act is the real
measure of whether it is good or bad.
 This theory emphasizes Ends over
Means.
 Theories, like this one, that emphasize
the results or consequences are called
teleological or consequentialist.
 Universalism: The consequences to be
considered are those of everyone
affected, and everyone equally
 In determining the quantity of happiness that might
be produced by an action, we evaluate the possible
consequences by applying several values:

 The Hedonic Calculus was Bentham’s method of

weighing up pleasure and pain:
 7 factors to be taken into consideration:
 Intensity – Duration – (Un)certainty – Remoteness
(propinquity) – Fecundity (will more pain follow this
pain?) – Purity – Extent (how many people will it
affect?).
 The balance of pleasure and pain can be compared
and the morally correct action will follow.
The utility equation
U = ∑i ∑j (Iij + Dij + Cij + Nij + Fij + Pij)
 Sum over all people (the i’s) — extent
 Sum over all kinds of pleasure/pain (the j’s)
 Six variables for each kind of pleasure or pain:
Intensity Nearness (propinquity)
Duration Fecundity
Certainty Purity
 Positive for pleasure, negative for pain
 Is it a moral Philosophy? Or promoting the selfish
interest of man?

 It is concerned with the happiness of others too –

not individual alone

 Acc. to Bentham when one decides to act in a

particular manner, ones has to be impartial
between one’s own pleasure and that of those
affected by that act..
Community and Society is just membership of
various/several individuals – so interest of community is
the sum of the interest of several members who compost
it.

Action of one individual determines the circle of

individuals affected by it. Thus an individual has to
consider the pleasure and pain of those few around him
who may be affected by his action.

Human being is guided by four motives

Social
Semi Social
A Social
Dissocial
Human being seeks happiness of their own and that of
others – how can they obtain what they seek – for
Bentham human happiness depends on the service men

rendered to each other

Society: When number of person are in term of

conversing with each other and not in habit of paying
obedience to a person or assemblage of person they are
said to be in a state of natural society...and when
number of person are supposed to be in the habit of
paying obedience to a person or assemblage of person
such person all together are said to be in a state of
political society.
Need for State: Action of men produce unhappiness
– but govt cannot be exercised with coercion or
force – bound to produce more unhappiness –
-- without govt there would be more unhappiness –
so reason of the state is that through coercion it is
able to attach sanction to certain unhappiness
producing actions so that individual will not be
motivated to perform it... thus creates a system of
rights and obligation to further the welfare of the
society... End of the state is greatest happiness of
the greatest number

How is this to be achieved– through government

which has four main aim/objectives/end
Subsistence: absence of everything that leads to physical
suffering – if individual is not capable government intervenes

Abundance: necessary to maximize happiness – prosperity –

surplus of wealth – guaranteeing each man the due reward
for his work and protection of his possession

Security: protection of persons property, reputation,

condition of life – govt’s responsibility to provide all its
citizens security by sanction, rights and obligation

Equality: four type of inequality – moral, intellectual,

economic and political – main concern economical and
political - economic – distribution of wealth – political -
democracy
Minimize power attached to public officer to bare minimum –
making them accountable-
Subsistence: absence of everything that leads to physical
suffering – if individual is not capable government intervenes

Abundance: necessary to maximize happiness – prosperity –

surplus of wealth – guaranteeing each man the due reward
for his work and protection of his possession

Security: protection of persons property, reputation,

condition of life – govt’s responsibility to provide all its
citizens security by sanction, rights and obligation

Equality: four type of inequality – moral, intellectual,

economic and political – main concern economical and
political - economic – distribution of wealth – political -
democracy
Minimize power attached to public officer to bare minimum –
making them accountable-
Abundance: Economic Idea
 Advocate Laissez Faire – but not minimal
state – state necessary to provide happiness
– advocates a welfare state
 Favours private property – founded on
expectation – condition for economic
enterprise & investment
 The mass of national wealth would increase if
the wealth of individual increase and each
person was the best judge of his own
interest- govt. should not interfere with such
activity of individual freedom to pursue the
best economic opportunities.
Liberty
 Advocate Laissez Faire – but not minimal
state – state necessary to provide happiness
– advocates a welfare state
 Favours private property – founded on
expectation – condition for economic
enterprise & investment
 The mass of national wealth would increase if
the wealth of individual increase and each
person was the best judge of his own
interest- govt. should not interfere with such
activity of individual freedom to pursue the
best economic opportunities.
Three ways of responding
to crime:
• Retribution
• Deterrence
• Rehabilitation
1. Prison reform: deterrence and rehabilitation,
not vengeance
Deterrence

Attach penalties to
certain sorts of
actions.
Deterrence

So that people won’t

do them.
 Rehabilitation

Provide education and

other kinds of help

Why? So that criminals

will be changed into good
citizens.
 According to Bentham, for any policy it is
considering, the state, should determine how
that policy’s adoption would affect each
individual’s personal well of happiness—
either by increasing or decreasing the amount
in it.
 Maximizing the happiness of the state: means
maximizing the happiness of members of its
community.
 Advantages: has been persistently appealing
to generations of politicians, policymakers,
and theorists, very attractive to proponents of
the modern welfare state
Much of welfare economics is grounded on
Utilitarianism principles – it takes into account the
result of social arrangements – draws attention to the
overall wellbeing of people involve.

-In economic terms – policy goal – out put based –

GDP and GNP – economic well being measured

-Overlook inequalities

-Contemporary revision - Singer, Popper and Rawls

more recently – A Sen and also Martha Nussbaun
 Preference Utilitarianism

•Associated with RM Hare and Peter Singer

•The goal or ‘telos’ of ethical action should
not be happiness but the satisfaction of
one’s preferences.
•e.g. a pupil might choose to play football
bare foot because he thinks he plays better
without boots
 Negative Utilitarianism

•Associated with Karl Popper

•Actions should not strive to create or maximise
pleasure…
•They should seek to reduce the amount of pain existing
in society
•The avoidance of pain is seen as being a more valuable
goal than the creation of happiness
 Criticisms:
 can we really measure people’s happiness,

assuming that happiness only differs in

quantity, not in quality?
J S Mill: we intuitively think that experiences
of “pleasure” not only differ in quantity but
also in quality. “it is better to be a human
dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be
Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
 And if the fool, or the pig, are of different
opinion, it is because they only know their
own side of the question.

 For example, some might find happiness with

a pitcher of beer and a pizza. Others may
find happiness watching a fine
Shakespearean play. The quality of
happiness is greater with the latter.
 the principle of utility however appealing in
theory, is impossible to implement and thus a
false moral “science”.
 Phenomenon of “diminishing
marginal utility”:
 While many critics has dismissed U as
an unworkable theory, many people
argue for some revision of U:
“satisfaction of preference”, a better
way proposed in the later half of 20th to
measure happiness: maximizing the
community’s “utility” simply involves the
maximal satisfaction of preferences of
people in the community.
 Criticisms: as for the idea of “preference
satisfaction”, people can have preferences
involving other’s harm, should we take these
preferences into account? It seems that we
need to be concerned with only people’s
“important” preferences, but how to define
“importance” here? And “importance” here
means a moral notion.
 As preferences change over time, how
to determine which preferences at
which time the society should take
seriously? How about preference of a
child?
 More serious problems plaguing the theory,
having to do with the kind of policy
recommendations it would generate if its
foundational assumptions could be better
clarified and defended: If maximizing the
total happiness depended upon impoverishing
some members of the society? It strikes as
unfair and violates our intuitions about
justice.
 It is the fact that U does not have a principled
commitment to equality to which critics object
and that makes them reject it as a theory of
 justice. It is not enough that the theory may
be able usually to generate egalitarian
policies that eschew the impoverishment of
some; these critics require a theory of justice
that will always be committed to such
policies. U has no principled way of
precluding sacrifices on the part of individuals
for the benefit of the community that are too
great and that cannot be morally defended.
 Criticisms:

 can every one’s pleasure be measured? How

about different types of happiness?

 second : if we can’t exactly know how happy

any of us is, how can politicians or
policymakers know how happy we are?