What is Utilitarianism?

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Utilitarianism is an ethical theory founded by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and developed and popularized by John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). It is a form of consequentialist ethics and, as its name suggests, is founded on the principle of utility; meaning, that property of  any object that tends to produce pleasure or happiness and prevents pain or unhappiness.

The aim of utilitarianism is to maximize utility, or the happiness and well-being of all affected individuals. As such, for utilitarianism, an act is morally good if it produces the greatest happiness or pleasure to the greatest number of people, and bad if it produces more pain than pleasure to the greatest number of people. This explains why utilitarians would not care if an action is done using dishonest means as long as it produces maximum benefits to the greatest number of people. Like in, for example, the famous case of Robin Hood.

As is well known, Robin Hood steals properties from the rich and gives them to the poor. From the point of view of Christian ethics—take note, Christian ethics—Robin Hood’s action is immoral because it deprives the rich of the right that is due to them. However, from the point of view of utilitarianism, Robin Hood’s action is morally good because it produces maximum benefits—the greatest happiness—to the majority of the people.

Jeremy Bentham’s Model of Utilitarianism

Now let’s take a look at one of the first models of Utilitarianism, that of its founder Jeremy Bentham. As mentioned earlier, the goal of utilitarianism is to maximize utility, or the happiness of all the affected individuals.

Now, for Bentham, happiness simply means the absence of pain. In order to measure the degree of happiness or pleasure a specific action may produce, he introduced the "felicific calculus" (also called the "utility calculus" or the "hedonic calculus"). The felicific calculus computes for the intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent of the pleasure of a specific action.

For Bentham, an action is to be preferred if the happiness or pleasure it produces is:
  • More intense (intensity)
  • Lasts longer (duration)
  • More certain that it will happen (certainty)
  • Will occur sooner (propinquity)
  • Probable that it will be followed by another pleasure (fecundity)
  • Purer (purity)
  • Benefits the greatest number of people (extent)
The formula of the felicific calculus is simple: Pleasure (or the sum of all the pleasures the action can produce) minus Pain (the sum of all the pain it can produce) is equal to Balance.

Pleasure - Pain = Balance

For Bentham, the balance is the basis of the morality of an action. If the balance is in favor of pleasure, then the act is good; whereas if it is in favor of pain then it is bad. For example, suppose we have an action that produces 10 pleasures and 5 pains, and has a balance of 5 in favor of pleasure. In this case, the action, for Bentham, is morally good or right. However, if an action produces 20 pains and just 8 pleasures, and has a balance of 12 in favor of pain, then that action is morally bad or wrong.

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