Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism, broadly speaking, is a theory which holds that any behavior or action must be judged on moral grounds for the **utility** it yields. There have been different conceptions of what utility is and how the utility of an act can be appropriately judged.

# Jeremy Bentham - Principles of Morals and Legislation

Jeremy Bentham is often referred to as the father of utilitarianism. In 1780 he published his *Principles of Moral and Legislation* in which he outlines both a definition for utility as well as a general proceeding to determine the utility of an act in question.

For Bentham, utility has both a positive and a negative definition. Something is of great utility if it either adds to the pleasure of an individual whose interests are concerned by the act in question or if it takes away from the pain of that individual. So any action as well as government measure has to be judged according to the tendency to contribute to the good or happiness or benefit of those affected or the tendency to diminish the bad or unhappiness or disadvantage of those people. For an individual the act in question has utility if it either augments the sum of his pleasures or diminishes the sum of his pains.

The interest of a community for Bentham is composed of the sum of all the interests of the individuals constituting the community. In parallel to the utility of an action for an individual, an action conforms to the principle of utility for the community whenever it contributes to increasing the pleasure of the community (the sum of pleasure of all the individuals in the community) or diminishes the pain of the community (the sum of pain of all the members of the community).

Bentham then also establishes a set of conditions which determine the value of pleasure or pain for an individual.

1. **Intensity** of either
2. **Duration**
3. **Certainty** or **Uncertainty**
4. **Propinquity** or **Remoteness**
5. **Fecundity**, the likelihood by which the pleasure it has produced will be followed by another sensation of pleasure, equally if the first sensation has been pain how likely it is that the second will also be pain
6. **Purity**, likewise, the chance an act has to not be followed by a sensation of the opposite kind, pleasure to be followed by pain or pain to be followed by pleasure

In order to judge the utility of an act Bentham then proposes to proceed in the following way. After having established the value of each distinguishable pleasure produced by the action in the first instance and then either the fecundity or impurity of the action (so the pleasure or pain produced in the second instance) by weighing it according to the list of conditions cited above, all the pleasures are summed up. Then by the same process of weighing and testing its fecundity all the pains are summed up. The sum of pleasures and pains is then set into a balance and whichever of the two exceeds the other determines whether the action will be undertaken or not.
The same procedure applies for the judgement of utility for the community as the whole, only be summing up the balance of all individuals that constitute the community and then creating a balance for the community as a whole.