Utilitarianism and Other Essays Paperback – August 4, 1987

Good

The paperback cover of the book said it was Utilitarianism but the actual text inside was a book called How Markets Fail by a completely different author.

Numerous liberal politics have in their origins some utilitarianism. Happiness as a good, pleasure, pain, and the laws that increase among a majority of people the feelings of pleasure and minimize pain are, apparently, so accepted that the American general public rarely thinks of many liberal policies as having some connection to Victorian age thinkers like Bentham. Also, climate campaigns heavily draw on this moral theory. For example, the loss and damage debate in 2022 uses this, implicitly. Future climate goals talk about millions of people suffering in heatwaves as a social ill that is a moral wrong.The reproductive rights debate considers whether the rights of some women, men, and third trimester fetuses can be balanced against inconvenience among women who either have to use birth control religiously or travel to other states for abortions. The conservatives mention the pain and suffering experienced by third trimester fetuses and then ask if this exceeds the social and financial responsibilities imposed when the US Supreme Court rules that states, or the Congress, not the US Supreme Court, determines abortion rights.The utilitarians were famous for a time in Britain, but fell into disrepute when their ideas were combined with social Darwinism and eugenics in the US and UK in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Jeremy Bentham is the father of the doctrine called Utilitarianism, and John Stuart Mill (son of the second-rank philosopher James Mill and a kind of mouthpiece for Jeremy) is his most known disciple. «Utilitarianism and other Essays » presents the reader some of the most important and exciting excerpts texts written by the two thinkers, who, despite outwardly embracing the same doctrine, had to do a lot of theoretical gymnastics to accomodate each other points of view under the same ideological umbrella, thus demonstrating that sometimes the battle is fiercest, albeit muffled, inside than outside ideological headquarters. In hindsight , it seems that John Stuart Mill, who ran the rudders of the Economic doctrine of England until the 1860's, had some scores to settle with Jeremy, who was many years his senior and had ben, by some, the person behind the culturally sophisticated (although stripped of any emotional and religious overtones) education John received as a boy, learning Greek at 3, Latin at 8 and revising at 15 (in French) the first volume of the book « Democracy in America », by Tocqueville. The outcome of all this is that Mill developed a type of melancholic character who almost pushed him to the depths of depression, only rescued by his second marriage in his mid-life, when he embraced a lot of libertarian and anti-establishment proposals. The writting styles of the two are blatantly different, James being the pragmatical dogmatist who accepted no exception to his utilitarian praecepts, Mill, on the contrary, the soft-minded scholar who diligently tried to mend the many defficiencies of a theory so rigidly framed and which was supposed to answer to all demands of human action. This dogmatism by Bentham, forced Mill later in life to abscond that doctrine, althoug never converting himself to any religion creed. Worthy of mention if the superb introduction by Alan Ryan, being a book on utilitarianism in itself.

Mill's Utilitarianism is a very interesting and modern essay. It surely has endured the test of time so far and will continue to do so for many generations to come.

This book covers Bentham's utilitarianism and Mill's utilitarianism. Mill amended Bentham's utilitarianism in many respects. It is interesting to study intersections between Bentham and Mill

Essential reading for your study

This is a Classic. :)

Fake product. Bad paper quality

takes a bit of time to get into it but worth the effort. If only the powers that be could understand this ideology