Utilitarianism and Evil

Scarre, Geoffrey

doi:10.4324/9781351138406-9

Utilitarianism and Evil

Scarre, Geoffrey

Authors

Geoffrey Scarre

Contributors

Douglas Hedley
Editor

Chad Meister
Editor

Charles Taliaferro
Editor

Abstract

“Utilitarianism” is the name of a family of ethical theories that take as the yardstick of moral appraisal the propensity of acts to increase or decrease human well-being (or, more generally, the well-being of all sentient creatures). Emerging to prominence in the European Enlightenment, utilitarianism was, and continues to this day to be, a secular, pragmatic and humane philosophy which favours reason and experience rather than religion or tradition as the paramount guides to the ethical life. For utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the proper end of action, for individuals and institutions alike, was the promotion of happiness and the reduction of pain. For Bentham, acts possessed “utility” when they served to “produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness (all this … comes to the same thing), or what also comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered” (Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 126). And since, according to utilitarianism, no one’s happiness or misery counts for more or less than anyone else’s, whose interest is in question is irrelevant. The important thing is to advance “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” – an uncompromising egalitarian stance that predictably raised enemies for utilitarianism from the start.

Citation

Scarre, G. (2018). Utilitarianism and Evil. In D. Hedley, C. Meister, & C. Taliaferro (Eds.), The history of evil in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries : 1700-1900 CE (118-135). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351138406-9

Online Publication Date	Jun 14, 2018
Publication Date	Jun 14, 2018
Deposit Date	Nov 20, 2018
Publicly Available Date	Dec 14, 2019
Publisher	Routledge
Pages	118-135
Series Title	The history of evil
Book Title	The history of evil in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries : 1700-1900 CE
Chapter Number	8
ISBN	9781138236837
DOI	https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351138406-9

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Copyright Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The History of Evil in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: 1700–1900 CE on 14 June 2018, available online: http://www.routledge.com/9781351138406