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In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. [1] [2] In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the greatest good for the greatest number.
Since happiness is the only intrinsic good, and since more happiness is preferable to less, the goal of the ethical life is to maximize happiness. This is what Bentham and Mill call "the principle of utility" or "the greatest-happiness principle." Both Bentham and Mill thus endorse "classical" or "hedonistic" forms of utilitarianism. [4]
Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote "The principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number was as inimical to the idea of liberty as to the idea of rights." [93] Bentham's "hedonistic" theory (a term from J. J. C. Smart) is often criticised for lacking a principle of fairness embodied in a conception of justice.
Bentham's famous formulation of utilitarianism is known as the greatest-happiness principle. It holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest aggregate happiness among all sentient beings, within reason. In a similar vein, Mill's method of determining the best utility is that a moral agent, when given the choice between two or ...
Act utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics that states that a person's act is morally right if and only if it produces the best possible results in that specific situation. Classical utilitarians, including Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick, define happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain. [1]
Rule utilitarianism is a form of utilitarianism that says an action is right as it conforms to a rule that leads to the greatest good, or that "the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of which it is an instance". [1]
The problem lies with squaring utilitarianism with egoism. Sidgwick believes that the basic principles of egoism (“Pursue your own greatest happiness”) and utilitarianism (“Promote the general happiness”) are both self-evident. Like many previous moralists, he argues that self-interest and morality coincide in the great majority of cases.
Hedonimetry is the study of happiness ("experienced utility" [3]) as a measurable economic asset. The first major work in the field was an 1881 publication of Mathematical Psychics by the famous statistician and economist Francis Ysidro Edgeworth , who hypothesized a way of measuring happiness in units.