‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure’. Jeremy Bentham invented the first form of Utilitarianism – Act utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham’s quantitative hedonistic utilitarianism The principle of utility is that an action is good if it maximises pleasure, i.e., if it leads to the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people.
Since pleasure and happiness come in degrees, an action is better the more pleasure it produces and the best action we could do is the one which maximises pleasure. In the case of Utilitarianism, it holds that goodness is pleasure or happiness. An ethical theory based on utility is therefore consequentialist, meaning it holds that what makes an action good is not the type of action that it is but the consequences it leads to. Thinking of the goodness of an action in terms of usefulness refers to the action’s consequences.
Moral Philosophy What is meant by ‘utility’ and ‘maximising utility’
