Utilitarianism

A moral theory that emphasises ends over means, Utilitarianism holds that a good act is one that increases pleasure in the world and decreases pain. The tradition flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and has antecedents in ancient philosophy. According to Bentham, happiness is the means for assessing the utility of an act, declaring “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” Mill and others went on to refine and challenge Bentham’s views and to defend them from critics such as Thomas Carlyle, who termed Utilitarianism a “doctrine worthy only of swine.”

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Guests

• Melissa Lane 10 episodes
  The Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University
• Janet Radcliffe Richards 5 episodes
  Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Oxford
• Brad Hooker No other episodes
  A Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading

Reading list

• Three Methods of Ethics: A Debate
  Marcia Baron, Philip Pettit, and Michael Slote (Blackwell, 2001) Google Books →
• An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
  Jeremy Bentham (Dover Publications, 2007) Google Books →
• Mill on Utilitarianism
  Roger Crisp (Routledge, 1997) Google Books →
• Consequentialism
  Julia Driver (Routledge, 2011) Google Books →
• The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism
  Ben Eggleston and Dale E. Miller (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2014) Google Books →
• Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy
  Robert E. Goodin (Cambridge University Press, 1995) Google Books →
• The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics
  Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer (Oxford University Press, 2014) Google Books →
• Utilitarianism
  John Stuart Mill (ed. George Sher) (Hackett Publishing Co, 2002) Google Books →
• Consequentialism and Its Critics
  Samuel Scheffler (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1988) Google Books →
• The Methods of Ethics
  Henry Sidgwick (TheClassics.us, 2013) Google Books →
• The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress
  Peter Singer (Princeton University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• Utilitarianism: For and Against
  J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams (Cambridge University Press, 1973) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b05xhwqf

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05xhwqf

Auto-category: 100 (Philosophy)