History and Historiography in Classical Utilitarianism, 1800–1865

This first comprehensive account of the utilitarians' historical thought intellectually resituates their conceptions of philosophy and politics, at a time when the past acquired new significances as both a means and object of study. Drawing on published and unpublished writings - and set against the intellectual backdrops of Scottish philosophical history, German and French historicism, romanticism, positivism, and the rise of social science and scientific history - Callum Barrell recovers the depth with which Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, George Grote, and John Stuart Mill thought about history as a site of philosophy and politics. He argues that the utilitarians, contrary to their reputations as ahistorical and even antihistorical thinkers, developed complex frameworks in which to learn from and negotiate the past, inviting us to rethink the foundations of their ideas, as well as their place in - and relationship to - nineteenth-century philosophy and political thought.

Individualist Utilitarianism and Converging Theories of Rights

The paper develops two core themes of Derek Parfit’s philosophy. The first is his goal of unifying the two main rival impartial moral theories, Kantian deontology and consequentialism, therefore reinforcing their claim to pertain to objective moral truths. The second is his focus on the moral significance of the combined effects of many agents’ behaviour, and on the challenges this poses to ordinary moral thinking. This is a theme that runs throughout his work, that he returns to at the very end of volume iii of On What Matters. Kantianism and consequentialism have been thought to fundamentally diverge on the issue of rights and trade-offs. The chapter first outlines the version of consequentialism taken to be most plausible, calling it ‘individualist utilitarianism’, which differs from so-called ‘classical utilitarianism’ in taking the moral importance of well-being to be grounded on the moral importance of the persons whose well-being it is. This paves the way for a pluralist Kantian and utilitarian account of human rights, grounded on the moral significance both of persons’ well-being and their dignity as rational autonomous agents. The chapter then turns to the topic of the threat to access to the means of subsistence, both for the current poor and future generations, posed by global as well as domestic socio-economic structures and anthropogenic climate change. This harm is the combined effect of the ongoing patterns of behaviour of a vast number of agents. The chapter argues that individualist utilitarianism and Kantianism converge on the conclusion that the duty to avoid harms of this kind should be analysed as a shared duty of basic justice, non-fulfilment of which constitutes a structural human rights violation.

En torno a la lectura rawlsiana de la filosofía moral de David Hume

John Rawls shows a deep influence of David Hume’s thought, mainly at his Theory of Justice, though also at the rest of his works. This influence is well-known in the field of political philosophy, much less in the field of moral philosophy. Rawls reads Hume’s thought with a sceptic and naturalistic key, attributing him what he calls a “nature fideism”. Besides this, attributes to Hume an ethical and political position linked with the classical utilitarianism. Nevertheless, his skeptical epistemology will move away, paradoxically, to Hume from the utilitarian positions. Hume’s ethics and politics will finish, according to Rawls, showing a purely descriptive character and a lack of normative purposes. Hume does not have in the strict sense a theory of practical reason. This article examines and puts in question this interpretation of Hume proposed by John Rawls. The philosophy of Hume is not aporetically skeptical, articulates the moral roles of reason and the passions; and finally, is not only connected with utilitarianism; his defense of the role of utility frees to his theory of some of the main contradictions of classical utilitarianism. Besides this, the theory of the “judicious spectator” can be considered a form of a theory of practical rationality.

Introduction

I argue that a theory is consequentialist if and only if it is, in the important respects, sufficiently similar to classical utilitarianism. Unfortunately, though, philosophers can’t seem to agree on what the important respects are. So there is no one way that the term “consequentialism” is used, but only several different ways that it’s used by various sets of philosophers with different views about what’s most important about classical utilitarianism. But if, like many philosophers, we accept that what’s most important about classical utilitarianism is that it takes the deontic statuses of actions to be a function of how various possible outcomes rank, then we can, I show, reconcile consequentialism with deontology. And I explore whether this ability to be reconciled with other theories, such as deontology, undermines the importance of the consequentialism/nonconsequentialism distinction. I then end by summarizing each of this anthology’s four parts and the issues that are explored in their corresponding chapters.

Epistemological Foundations Of Early Legal Utilitarianism

This article analyzes the aggregate of reality cognition methods used in certain theories in the history of ethics and legal thought that are based on the principle of utility. The objective of this article is to provide a full study of the methodology of the utilitarianism to determine the place of the methodology in the establishment of utilitarianism, and also to expand the understanding of the development of legal utilitarianism, origin of ethics and legal prerequisites for the emergence of legal utilitarianism. The article used methods such as universal reality cognition methods, general scientific methods, such as the historical method, formal and logic (dogmatic) method, analysis, synthesis and others and specific (specifically scientific) methods. The main result of the article is the justification that the emergence of utilitarianism is conditioned, inter alia, by the synthesis of the empirical and theoretical methodology. efore that, the application of purely empirical or purely theoretical methodologies for considering the state and legal phenomena through the prism of utility did not lead to the creation of a separate branch of philosophy, ethic and legal thought – utilitarianism. The main conclusion of this article is that the "moral arithmetic" created under classical utilitarianism and later developed in the contemporary utilitarianism,based on which it is possible to compute the utility of this or that action (totality of actions), contradicts such universal legal values as justice, defense, enforcement of rights and freedoms, principle of equality, and the moral values, and, therefore, cannot be supported.

Sidgwick, Henry (1838–1900)

Henry Sidgwick was a Cambridge philosopher, psychic researcher and educational reformer, whose works in practical philosophy, especially The Methods of Ethics (1874), brought classical utilitarianism to its peak of theoretical sophistication and drew out the deep conflicts within that tradition, perhaps within the age of British imperialism itself. Sidgwick was profoundly influenced by J.S. Mill, but his version of utilitarianism – the view that those social or individual actions are right that maximize aggregate happiness – also revived certain Benthamite doctrines, though with more cogent accounts of ultimate good as pleasure, of total versus average utility, and of the analytical or deductive method. Yet Sidgwick was a cognitivist in ethics who sought both to ground utilitarianism on fundamental intuitions and to encompass within it the principles of common-sense ethics (truthfulness, fidelity, justice, etc.); his highly eclectic practical philosophy assimilated much of the rationalism, social conservatism and historical method of rival views, reflecting such influences as Butler, Clarke,Aristotle, Bagehot, Green, Whewell and Kant. Ultimately, Sidgwick’s careful academic inquiries failed to demonstrate that one ought always to promote the happiness of all rather than one’s own happiness, and this dualism of practical reason, along with his doubt about the viability of religion, led him to view his results as largely destructive and potentially deleterious in their influence.

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)

This chapter discusses the thought and works of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). Since the late 1960s Bentham scholarship has been driven by the appearance of volumes in the new authoritative edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, prepared by the Bentham Project under the supervision of University College London’s Bentham Committee. The thirty-third volume in the edition, entitled Preparatory Principles, was published in December 2016. Bentham was the pre-eminent representative of the Enlightenment. He was the founder of the doctrine of classical utilitarianism, which remains one of the main strands in liberal moral philosophy; he set the parameters for the modern discipline of jurisprudence by distinguishing law as it is from law as it ought to be; his commentary on the French Declaration of Rights of 1789 constitutes a devastating attack on the philosophy of natural rights, and hence on that of human rights.

Comment on Jens Timmermann, ‘Autonomy, Progress and Virtue: Why Kant Has Nothing to Fear from the Overdemandingness Objection’

Jens Timmermann’s scholarship illuminates the nuances and contexts of Kant’s thought. I have learned a great deal from reading his article. His question is whether Kant’s ethics is overdemanding, in something like the way that ‘classical utilitarianism’ has been thought to be. He is aware that this is not a clear-cut question, however he is inclined to reply that the answer is ‘no’. I too think the question is not clear-cut, but I am inclined to answer ‘yes’.

Gross National Happiness (GNH)

This theoretical commentary explores the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) and connects it with several central macromarketing concepts such as QoL, ethics, the common good, the purpose of market activity as well as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The paper portrays GNH as a normative concept that captures collective well-being; it categorizes GNH, at least from the standpoint of Western moral philosophy, as most closely aligned with classical utilitarianism, and it distinguishes GNH from QoL on the basis of its predominantly aspirational and subjective orientation. It asserts that GNH can be seen as one manifestation of the common good, and, in that manner can be perceived as a ‘more ethical’ conception of the purpose of business activity. Finally, it links GNH to promising areas of Macromarketing scholarship. One essential contribution of this commentary is that it differentiates subjective community happiness from more objective measures of QoL familiar to macromarketing studies.