Ad
related to: jeremy bentham views on utilitarianism and moral philosophy
Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Jeremy Bentham (/ ˈ b ɛ n θ ə m /; 4 February 1747/8 O.S. [15 February 1748 N.S.] – 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation is a book by the English philosopher and legal theorist Jeremy Bentham "originally printed in 1780, and first published in 1789." [1] Bentham's "most important theoretical work," [2] it is where Bentham develops his theory of utilitarianism and is the first major book on the topic.
Benthamism, the utilitarian philosophy founded by Jeremy Bentham, was substantially modified by his successor John Stuart Mill, who popularized the term utilitarianism. [3] In 1861, Mill acknowledged in a footnote that, though Bentham believed "himself to be the first person who brought the word 'utilitarian' into use, he did not invent it.
Jeremy Bentham argued that a being's capacity to suffer is what is morally relevant when considering their interests, not their capacity for reason. [ 4 ] The principle is related to broader philosophical concepts of impartiality , though impartiality can refer to many other senses of equality, particularly in justice .
This is what Bentham and Mill call "the principle of utility" or "the greatest-happiness principle." Both Bentham and Mill thus endorse "classical" or "hedonistic" forms of utilitarianism. [4] The key distinction between Mill- utilitarianism- and Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation, is quantity and quality of happiness.
Act utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics that states that a person's act is morally right if and only if it produces the best possible results in that specific situation. Classical utilitarians, including Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick, define happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain. [1]
Born in the first half of the eighteenth century, Bentham proved a conduit for Enlightenment ideas to reach nineteenth century Britain. [1] A disciple of Helvetius, [2] who saw all society as based on the wants and desires of the individual, [3] Bentham began with a belief in reform through enlightened despotism, before becoming a philosophical radical and supporter of universal suffrage.
The felicific calculus is an algorithm formulated by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) for calculating the degree or amount of pleasure that a specific action is likely to induce. Bentham, an ethical hedonist, believed the moral rightness or wrongness of an action to be a function of the amount of pleasure or pain that it ...