Chapter Info (Click Here)
Book No. – 3 (Political Science – Western Political Thought)
Book Name – Western Political Thought (OP Gauba)
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. What is Utilitarianism?
1.1. Types of Utilitarianism
1.2. Philosophical Radicalism
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Basic Tenets of Utilitarianism
Chapter – 15

What is Utilitarianism?
Utilitarianism is a school of thought flourishing in late-18th and 19th-century England within liberalism.
It holds that the rightness of an act, policy, or decision is determined by its tendency to promote happiness.
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) is the chief exponent of utilitarianism.
Bentham believed pleasure and pain are the chief motives behind all human actions.
The balance of pleasure over pain from an action represents the amount of happiness.
The guiding principle of legislation and public policy is “the greatest happiness of the greatest number“.
Each individual is treated as one unit in calculating total happiness.
Critics argue this can lead to some individuals or groups being deprived of their fair share, a deficiency noted by John Rawls.
Utilitarianism uses utility as the criterion to accept options, meaning the satisfaction derived from goods or services.
The law of diminishing utility states that while identical goods have equal usefulness, the satisfaction from additional units decreases (e.g., first slice of bread gives maximum satisfaction, later slices less).
Utilitarianism was advanced as a scientific alternative to natural rights theory.
Bentham argued political institutions and policies should be judged by empirically measurable satisfaction, not arbitrary or visionary rights.
Karl Popper (1902-94) argued that maximizing happiness is difficult, and it is more practical to seek elimination or minimization of suffering.
Natural Rights
Natural rights refer to the rights of individual that are supposed to be derived from the nature itself. Exponents of the social contract theory held that the natural rights did exist in ‘the state of nature’. John Locke (1632-1704), English philosopher, identified ‘the right to life, liberty and property’ as the natural rights of man. He argued that civil society is set up for protecting these rights.