Utilitarian Ethics
Anthony Quinton
Language: English
Pages: 123
ISBN: 0812690524
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The book begins with a definition of utilitarianism, and goes on to consider hedonism as a criterion of value and theory of motivation. Early hedonism is surveyed, followed by the emergence of utilitarianism proper with Hume, Tucker and Paley. The contributions of Bentham, James Mill and J.S. Mill are analyzed, with particular attention to J.S. Mill’s arguments concerning the sanction of morality, the proof of the principle of utility and the question of justice and utility. The criticisms of Grote, Sidgwick, Moore and later writers are also appraised.
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protest that utilitarians are not, as Mackintosh alleges, in¬ and superficial. Mill was right to take exception to the view that Bentham and his disciples 'clung to their opinions because they different to the 'pleasures of taste and imagination' and interested only in 'visible and tangible' pleasures. Finally, Mill takes a clear position about the logical status of the principle of utility. 'The theory of utility', he says, 'makes the utility of an act and the were obnoxious' or that they
writings in relevant fields, in particular on politics, he departs even further from the letter of his intellectual inheri¬ tance. On Liberty, for example, is only vestigially utilitarian. The ultimate value on which his defence of freedom, personal, intellectual and political, depends is the self-development and perfection of the individual. He relates this to the utilitarian end of the general happiness only in passing, by way of a reference to 'the permanent interests of man as a progressive
that an action is honest is a sufficient reason for thinking that it is right. But, for the utilitarian, the rightness of honesty is not absolute and unconditional. He recognises that there are circum¬ stances in which the honest thing to do is not the right thing to do, because, for example, it would cause pain or endanger the state. Similarly, he could argue, the fact that an action or practice is just, in the intuitive sense that has been examined, is generally a sufficient reason for taking
tinuing responsibility for the welfare of his mistress, but then it was not, as he must have supposed, representative of all forms abusive quotation-marks, as 'our great modern logician'. But in 1876 Mill had been safely dead for three years. In Mr Sidgmck's Hedonism, a pamphlet of 1877, whose subject was very much alive, his tone is much more moderate and cautious. For the righteously against Mill. On the point of philosophical substance, the chief defect of Bradley's handling of this example
There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You can never find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but it is the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object.'13 But the moral judgement as the motto of much recent ethics; 'In every system of morality, is not a report or
