And Jeremy Bentham also said that whatever that does not maximize the happiness is consider morally wrong. He adopted what he took to be a simple and ‘scientific’ approach to the problems of law and morality and grounded his approach in the “Principle of Utility.”. If he should have said to himself, No: for that the sentiment which he proposes as a standard must be grounded on reflection, let him say on what particulars the reflection is to turn? Bentham argues that if utility is defined as the ability to produce happiness, then the rightness of an action is determined by its utility. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account. The Originals: Classic Readings in Western Philosophy, Next: John Stuart Mill – On Utilitarianism, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The Principle of Utility A. Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) There are two main people that talked about the principles of utility and they were Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. This want of a sufficiently manifest connexion between the ideas of happiness and pleasure on the one hand, and the idea of utility on the other, I have every now and then found operating, and with but too much efficiency, as a bar to the acceptance, that might otherwise have been given, to this principle. Otherwise they’re wrong. The principle that tells us an action is right or wrong according to how easy the action is to perform. The principle of utility, or "greatest happiness principle," forms the cornerstone of all Bentham's thought. IX. according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words to promote or to oppose that happiness. As a social reformer, Bentham applied this principle to the laws of England– for example, those areas of the law concerning crime and punishment. Bentham also argues that if happiness is viewed as the only thing which is intrinsically good, then the principle of utility is the only right principle of human action. IV. To disprove the propriety of it by arguments is impossible; but, from the causes that have been mentioned, or from some confused or partial view of it, a man may happen to be disposed not to relish it. Jeremy Bentham, 1748 -1832 CE, was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism. 1. XIII. Bentham lived during a time of major social, political and economic change. On account of the pleasures of all kinds which it enables a man to produce, and what comes to the same thing the pains of all kinds which it enables him to avert. It may, however, be always kept in view: and as near as the process actually pursued on these occasions approaches to it, so near will such process approach to the character of an exact one. Jeremy Bentham. But enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such means that moral science is to be improved. He argued against “natural … Bentham also argues that if happiness is viewed as the only thing which is intrinsically good, then the principle of utility is the only right principle of human action. expensive: When Bentham speaks of a punishment as being A man may be said to be a partizan of the principle of utility, when the approbation or disapprobation he annexes to any action, or to any measure, is determined by and proportioned to the tendency which he conceives it to have to augment or to diminish the happiness of the community: or in other words, to its conformity or unconformity to the laws or dictates of utility. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of This constitutes the fecundity of the first pleasure and the impurity of the first pain. Dangerous it therefore really was, to the interest—the sinister interest—of all those functionaries, himself included, whose interest it was, to maximize delay, vexation, and expense, in judicial and other modes of procedure, for the sake of the profit, extractible out of the expense. Yet Mill’s principle of utility doesn’t directly concern the morality of actions. This is so, and in a variety of ways. According to J.S. The utility of human actions, Bentham said in the 1776 preface to A Fragment on Government, is their tendency to promote the common end of all such actions – happiness; and from utility in this sense, he went on, we can ‘denominate a principle...a principle that is … When an action, or in particular a measure of government, is supposed by a man to be conformable to the principle of utility, it may be convenient, for the purposes of The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law. and whether even to the same man, the same thing, which is right today, may not (without the least change in its nature) be wrong tomorrow? Of the value of each pain which appears to be produced by it in the first instance. Defend your answer. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. 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