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Early Utilitarians - Lives and Ideals (Paperback, 1st ed. 2021)
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Early Utilitarians - Lives and Ideals (Paperback, 1st ed. 2021)
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People who put the public good before their own self interest have
been admired throughout history. But what is the public good? Sages
and prophets who think they know better what is good for us than we
know ourselves held sway on this subject for more than two thousand
years. The world had to wait for the Enlightenment that burst upon
the world in the eighteenth century for an account of the public
good free from the prejudices of the privileged classes.
Utilitarianism is our name for this new way of thinking about
morality. Francis Hutcheson encapsulated its aims by inventing its
catchphrase "The greatest happiness for the greatest number'' fifty
years before Jeremy Bentham, to whom the slogan is usually
attributed. But what is happiness? Why did Jeremy Bentham and John
Stuart Mill prefer to speak of utility? How did economists develop
this notion? Does it really make sense to compare the utilities of
different people? Bob may complain more than Alice in the dentist's
chair, but is he really suffering more? Why should I put the sum of
everybody's utility before my own utility? This short book asks how
such questions arose from the social and political realities of the
times in which the early utilitarians lived. Nobody need fear being
crushed by heavy metaphysical reasoning or incomprehensible algebra
when this story is told. This book argues that the answers to all
the questions that the early utilitarians found so difficult are
transparent when we stand upon their shoulders to look back upon
their work. The problem for the early utilitarians was to free
themselves from the prejudices of their time. The lesson for us is
perhaps that we too need to free ourselves from the prejudices of
our own time.
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