The ethical theory advanced by Bentham, both James and J. S. Mill, Sidgwick, and many others, that answers all questions of what to do, what to admire, or how to live, in terms of maximizing utility or happiness. As well as an ethical theory, utilitarianism is, in effect, the view of life presupposed in most modern political and economic planning, when it is supposed that happiness is measured in economic terms. In J. S. Mill’s statement of the doctrine, ‘actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness’. The view is a form of consequentialism, in which the relevant consequences are identified in terms of amounts of happiness. Different conceptions of happiness separated Mill’s version (‘better a Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied’), which recognized qualitative differences between different kinds of pleasure, from Bentham’s forthright attempt to reduce all questions of happiness to presence of pleasure or pain (‘other things being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry’). Bentham’s version aims to render the basic concepts of ethics susceptible of comparison and measurement (see felicific calculus, hedonism), but this goal will not be met in Mill’s system. Critics of this aspect of the doctrine also query whether there is a conception of human happiness that stands sufficiently apart from general conceptions of behaving and acting well, to act as an independent target of action (see eudaimonia, virtue ethics).

The doctrine that applies utilitarianism to actions directly, so that an individual action is right if it increases happiness more than any alternative, is known as direct or act utilitarianism; the contrast is with indirect utilitarianism.

http://www.utilitarianism.com A list of internet resources on utilitarianism, including links to topical websites

http://ethics.sandiego.edu/theories/Utilitarianism/index.asp A list of internet resources on utilitarianism, including video presentations and classic writings