GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

324
ETHICS
Statement of Utilitarianism : The Meaning of the Term
1
"Right Action '. Utilitarianism is a perfectly clear and
understandable doctrine and is capable of being stated in
summary form. As expounded by those philosophers with
whom its name is chiefly associated, it seeks to provide an
answer to two questions* First, what do we mean by
a right action? This it answers by saying that a right
action is the one which, of all those which are open to
the agent, has on the whole the best consequences. The
reasons which the utilitarian adduces in support of this
answer have already been incidentally mentioned in the
course of the criticism of Intuitionism in the last Chapter,
where I endeavoured to demonstrate the impossibility of
separating the judgment of an action from the judgment of
its consequences, if only because of the impossibility of
isolating the action from its consequences. 1 Jeremy Bentham
(1748-1832), who may be regarded as the founder of
modern Utilitarianism, is particularly severe in his strictures
upon the willingness evinced by so many of his
predecessors to take some consideration other* than the
consequences of an action into account, when judging
its worth.
That Happiness Alone is Good* The second question
which Utilitarianism seeks to answer is the question,
what consequences are valuable; and to this it answers
that happiness is alone valuable. Combining the two
answers we reach the result that, in the words of John
Stuart Mill, "actions are right in proportion as they tend
to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the
reverse of happiness." When, therefore, a utilitarian wanted
to know whether an action was right, all that he had to
consider was its happiness-producing qualities; he then
pronounced that action to be right which had the property
1
ofpromoting happiness. This is the standard of "utility* to
which Bentham and his followers invariably appeal,
when seeking to adjudge the moral worth of an action,
1 See Chapter VIII, pp. 287-289.