Effects of utilitarianism in other fields

The influence of utilitarianism has been widespread, permeating the intellectual life of the last two centuries. Its significance in law, politics, and economics is especially notable.

The utilitarian theory of the justification of punishment stands in opposition to the “retributive” theory, according to which punishment is intended to make the criminal “pay” for his crime. According to the utilitarian, the rationale of punishment is entirely to prevent further crime by either reforming the criminal or protecting society from him and to deter others from crime through fear of punishment.

In its political philosophy, utilitarianism bases the authority of government and the sanctity of individual rights upon their utility, thus providing an alternative to theories of natural law, natural rights, or social contract. What kind of government is best thus becomes a question of what kind of government has the best consequences—an assessment that requires factual premises regarding human nature and behaviour.

Generally, utilitarians have supported democracy as a way of making the interest of government coincide with the general interest; they have argued for the greatest individual liberty compatible with an equal liberty for others on the ground that individuals are generally the best judges of their own welfare; and they have believed in the possibility and desirability of progressive social change through peaceful political processes.

With different factual assumptions, however, utilitarian arguments can lead to different conclusions. If one assumes that a strong government is required to check humans’ basically selfish interests and that any change may threaten the stability of the political order, one may be led by utilitarian arguments to an authoritarian or conservative position. On the other hand, William Godwin, an English political philosopher of the early 19th century, assumed the basic goodness of human nature and argued that the greatest happiness would follow from a radical alteration of society in the direction of anarchism.

Classical economics received some of its most important statements from utilitarian writers, especially David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. Ironically, its theory of economic value was framed primarily in terms of the cost of labour in production rather than in terms of the use value, or utility, of commodities. Later developments more clearly reflected the utilitarian philosophy. The English economist William Jevons, one of the founders of the marginal utility school of analysis, derived many of his ideas from Bentham; and “welfare economics,” while substituting comparative preferences for comparative utilities, reflected the basic spirit of the utilitarian philosophy. In economic policy, the early utilitarians had tended to oppose governmental interference in trade and industry on the assumption that the economy would regulate itself for the greatest welfare if left alone; later utilitarians, however, lost confidence in the social efficiency of private enterprise and were willing to see governmental power and administration used to correct its abuses.

As a movement for the reform of social institutions, 19th-century utilitarianism was remarkably successful in the long run. Most of its recommendations were implemented unless abandoned by the reformers themselves, and, equally important, utilitarian arguments were commonly employed to advocate institutional or policy changes.

Summary and evaluation

As an abstract ethical doctrine, utilitarianism has established itself as one of the small number of live options that must be taken into account and either refuted or accepted by any philosopher taking a position in normative ethics. Utilitarianism now appears in various modified and complicated formulations.

Bentham’s ideal of a hedonic calculus is usually considered a practical if not a theoretical impossibility. In the 20th century, philosophers noticed further problems in utilitarian procedures. One of them, for example, was with the process of identifying the consequences of an action—a process that raises conceptual as well as practical problems as to what are to be counted as consequences, even without precisely quantifying the value of those consequences. For example, the question may arise whether the outcome of an election is a consequence of each and every vote cast for the winning candidate if that person receives more than the number necessary for election, and, in estimating the value of the consequences, one may ask whether the entire value or only a part of the value of the outcome of the election is to be assigned to each vote. There is also difficulty in the procedure of comparing alternative actions. If one action requires a longer period of time for its performance than another, one may ask whether they can be considered alternatives. Even what is to count as an action is not a matter of philosophical consensus.

These problems, however, are common to almost all normative ethical theories, since most of them recognize the consequences—including the hedonic consequences—of an act as being relevant ethical considerations. The central insight of utilitarianism, that one ought to promote happiness and prevent unhappiness whenever possible, seems undeniable. The critical question, however, is whether the whole of normative ethics can be analyzed in terms of this simple formula.