utilitarianismJeremy Bentham was a philosopher, economist, jurist, and legal reformer and the founder of modern utilitarianism, an ethical theory holding that actions are morally right if they tend to promote happiness or pleasure (and morally wrong if they tend to promote unhappiness or pain) among all those affected by them.
Bentham and Mill both believed that human actions are motivated entirely by pleasure and pain, and Mill saw that motivation as a basis for the argument that, since happiness is the sole end of human action, the promotion of happiness is the test by which to judge all human conduct.
Jeremy Bentham developed a quantifiable method for determining what was beneficial and what was detrimental. He called this method utilitarianism, because its basic unit, the “util,” acted like a monetary unit. Bentham's protégé, John Stuart Mill, refined this system to include human rights.
Jeremy Bentham was an English philosopher and political radical. He is primarily known today for his moral philosophy, especially his principle of utilitarianism, which evaluates actions based upon their consequences.
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was the most famous and influential British philosopher of the nineteenth century. He was one of the last systematic philosophers, making significant contributions in logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and social theory.
John Stuart Mill believed in the philosophy of utilitarianism, which he would describe as the principle that holds "that actions are right in the proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness".
Both thought that the moral value of an act was determined by the pleasure it produced. Bentham considered only quantity of pleasure, but Mill considered both quantity and quality of pleasure.
Jeremy Bentham (1748—1832) was the father of utilitarianism, a moral theory that argues that actions should be judged right or wrong to the extent they increase or decrease human well-being or 'utility'.
If seven like chocolate and three like vanilla and if all of them get the same amount of pleasure from the flavor they like, then you should choose chocolate. This will yield what Bentham, in a famous phrase, called “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.”
Jeremy Bentham is often regarded as the founder of classical utilitarianism. According to Bentham himself, it was in 1769 he came upon “the principle of utility”, inspired by the writings of Hume, Priestley, Helvétius and Beccaria.
He was a proponent of liberty and the highest form of social organization, which is individualism. Mill argued that it was in the best interest of society to give people as much freedom as they could handle while still maintaining social order. He coined the phrase "the greater good" to describe this ideal.
Both thought that the moral value of an act was determined by the pleasure it produced. Bentham considered only quantity of pleasure, but Mill considered both quantity and quality of pleasure.
Bentham advocated the rational revision of the legal system, a restructuring of the process of determining responsibility and of punishment, and a more extensive freedom of contract. This, he believed, would favor not only the development of the community, but the personal development of the individual.
Jeremy BenthamThough the first systematic account of utilitarianism was developed by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the core insight motivating the theory occurred much earlier. That insight is that morally appropriate behavior will not harm others, but instead increase happiness or 'utility.
This is where Mill’s principle of utility deviates from Bentham’s. While Bentham, as stated above, advocated the idea of the quantification of happiness, Mill’s theory operates under the explicit assumption that quantification of pleasures is not always possible. According to Mill, the differences between some pleasures are differences in kind ...
Bentham also advocated a principle of utility that present s a balance between self interest (or enlightened self interest) and altruism. In contrast to this, John Stuart Mill’s theory of utilitarianism introduced methods that would make altruism more likely to produce the greatest good than Bentham’s self-interested utilitarianism.
Jeremy Bentham described the total pleasure to be derived from an action as something that could be computed through tallying its intensity, duration, and the speed with which the pleasure occurs after the act is performed. This computation would also include the likelihood of the pleasure to avoid harm or pain.
These intellectual pleasures are ones that will allow for an altruistic type of utilitarianism. This type of utilitarianism has the ability to sacrifice the pleasure of the primary individual, when it has been determined that the sacrifice will lead to pleasure for a larger group of persons.
As demonstrated earlier, Mill’s own version of utilitarianism is very similar to that of Jeremy Bentham. Yet, it does offer some very significant differences. One of the problems that utilitarianism faces is based on one of its minor premises.
The idea of utilitarianism has been advocated by John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. Both thinkers base their theories of morality upon the Greatest Happiness Principle, or the principle of Utility. This principle is one that views actions as right and moral to the extent that they promote pleasure and exclude pain.