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

OBJECTIVE UTILITARIANISM 333
being one who keeps this standard always
in mind and
directs his legislation by reference to it. Hence the good
legislator is he who, being concerned to promote the welfare
of makes an societyf accurate calculation of the effects
which his measures will have* in increasing the happiness
of its members.
And not only the good legislator, but also the good citizen !
He, too, should aim at the general happiness. And if it
be asked why he should, or why he should find satisfaction
in other people's happiness, if he can only desire his own
(position A) , or why any course of action should appeal
to him as being good or right except in so far as he judges .
it likely to increase his own happiness (position B), Bentham
answers by casually invoking the operation of a vaguely
conceived social sense which, he holds, leads us to take
pleasure in the pleasure of other persons.
Bentham, as I have already remarked, failed to work
out any detailed and consistent theory of ethics, but, if
pressed, he would defend his position much as Hobbes,
whose treatment of pity I have already referred to,
1
defends a similar position, by saying that benevolence is
a motive to action, only because men are so constituted
that the pleasure* of others give them pleasure. Finally,
Bentham might take a leaf out of the book of Glaucon
and Adeimantus* and point out that, since society takes
pains to encourage socially benevolent and to discourage
socially injurious actions, the action which benefits other
people will, in a good society, be the same as the action
which benefits oneself.
J. S. Mill on the Duty of Promoting Others' Happiness.
Bcntham's theory identifies "is" and "ought." To quote an
illuminating judgment by M. Hallvy, Bentham believed
' '
that he had discovered in the principle of utility a practical
commandment as well as a scientific law, a proposition
which teaches us at one and the same time what as and
what ought to be". But things cannot, one feels, be quite
1 See Chapter VI, p. 185.
* See Chapter I, pp. 92-23.