What is Utilitarianism?

what is utilitarianism utilitarianism is an ethical theory founded by jeremy bentham and developed and popularized by john stuart mill it is a form of consequentialist ethics and as its name suggests is founded on the principle of utility meaning that property of any object that tends to produce pleasure or happiness and prevents pain or unhappiness the aim of utilitarianism is to maximize utility or the happiness and well-being of all affected individuals as such for utilitarianism an act is morally good if it produces the greatest happiness or pleasure to the greatest number of people and bad if

it produces more pain than pleasure to the greatest number of people this explains why utilitarians would not care if an action is done using dishonest means as long as it produces maximum benefits to the greatest number of people like for example in the famous case of robin hood as is well known robin hood steals properties from the rich and gives them to the poor from the point of view of christian ethics take note christian ethics robin hood's action is immoral because it deprives the rich of the right that is due to them however from the

point of view of utilitarianism robin hood's action is morally good because it produces maximum benefits the greatest happiness to the majority of the people now let's take a look at one of the first models of utilitarianism that of its founder jeremy bentham as mentioned earlier the goal of utilitarianism is to maximize utility or the happiness of all the affected individuals now for bentham happiness simply means the absence of pain in order to measure the degree of happiness or pleasure a specific action may produce bentham introduced the fellow civic calculus also called the utility calculus or

the hedonic calculus the fellasific calculus computes for the intensity duration certainty propinquity fecundity purity and extent of the pleasure of a specific action for bentham an action is to be preferred if the happiness or pleasure it produces is more intense lasts longer more certain that it will happen will occur sooner probable that it will be followed by another pleasure pure benefits the greatest number of people the formula of the fellow civic calculus is simple pleasure or the sum of all the pleasures the action can produce minus pain or the sum of all the pain it

can produce is equal to balance for bentham the balance is the basis of the morality of an action if the balance is in favor of pleasure then the act is good whereas if it is in favor of pain then it is bad for example suppose we have an action that produces ten pleasures and five pains and has a balance therefore of five in favor of pleasure in this case the action for bentham is morally good or right whereas if an action produces 20 pains and just eight pleasures and has a balance of 12 in favor

of pain then that action for bentham is morally bad or wrong if you learned something new from this video please give it a like share it with your friends and support our channel by subscribing thank you and see you in our next videos