A History of Utilitarian Ethics

Studies in Private Motivation and Distributive Justice, 1700-1875

Samuel Hollander

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000024036
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Business General

In this landmark volume, Samuel Hollander presents a fresh and compelling history of moral philosophy from Locke to John Stuart Mill, showing that a 'moral sense' can actually be considered compatible with utilitarianism. The book also explores the link between utilitarianism and distributive justice.

Hollander engages in close textual exegesis of the works relating to individual authors, while never losing sight of the intellectual relationships between them. Tying together the greatest of the British moral philosophers, this volume reveals an unexpected unity of eighteenth and nineteenth century ethical doctrine at both the individual and social level.

Essential reading for advanced students and researchers of the history of economic thought, political economy, history of ethics, history of political thought and intellectual history.

Part 1

John Locke

1 John Locke, utilitarian ethics and the moral sense

1.1 Introduction

In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke contributed to utilitarian doctrine by specifying the building blocks of the hedonic structure governing analysis of human conduct in terms of a quest for ‘happiness’.¹ In addition, he rejected the notion of an in-born ‘moral sense’, and more generally that of innate ideas. The ‘true ground of morality’ Locke identified rather with the other-regarding rule of conduct ‘Do unto others…’, and he may, I suggest, be fairly represented as engaged in an essay in persuasion designed to enhance such sympathetic or socially-advantageous conduct by advising self-interested individuals not to discount the distant future when considering the consequences of conduct for ‘happiness’, but rather to supplement the mundane calculations adopted by most men by recognizing ‘a God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hand rewards and punishments, and power enough to call to account the proudest offender’. This perspective is suggestive of ‘theological utilitarianism’ although not in the strictest sense of that term which posits ‘the hope of future rewards and the fear of future punishments [as] the only effective and rational support for good social behavior’ (Viner 1972: 70; emphasis added).

Locke recognized mankind’s ignorance of ‘the true ground of morality’, admitting even that the very concept of God was not an ‘innate’ idea, so that it was understandable (if not excusable) that so many failed to properly take into account the prospect of ‘future’ reward and punishment when contemplating action. Moreover, the scripturally-based ethical rule ‘Do unto others…’ was a ‘truth’, Locke maintained, amenable to trained reasoners drawing on observation, and he relies on reason when, in a discussion ‘Of Faith and Reason, and their distinct Provinces’, he raises doubts regarding belief based on revelation, thereby weakening the theological reinforcement provided for ethical or other-regarding conduct: ‘if any thing shall be thought revelation which is contrary to the plain principles of reason, and the evident knowledge the mind has of its own clear and distinct ideas; there reason must be hearkened to, as to a matter within its province….; and so [one] is bound to consider and judge of it as a matter of reason, and not to swallow it, without examination, as a matter of faith’.

Bentham says nothing of Locke’s positive contribution to ethical utilitarianism perceived in terms of actions advancing the ‘greater good’ or social welfare. Hume too was silent regarding Locke’s designating other-regarding conduct as ethically meritorious despite such conduct being in the individual’s interest. As for the secondary literature, we encounter disparate interpretations. Macpherson represents Locke’s appeal to ‘traditional natural law’ as a ‘façade’ which ‘could be removed, [as] by Hume and Bentham, without damage to the strong and well-built utilitarian structure that lay within’ (Macpherson 1962: 270). This summary statement appears to apply to policy rather than ethics, as also seems to be true of Fraser’s account in his edition of the Essay, which discerns ‘a spirit of prudential utilitarianism’ pervading Lockean social policy, although his evidence is not drawn from the Essay itself (Fraser 1894: xxi). Fraser makes no mention here of the theological–utilitarian category, but his Locke provides an analysis of papers dating to 1677, when ‘the Essay was in the process of formation’, and there he writes of ‘[t]he germ of the theological utilitarianism into which Locke’s ethical and political philosophy resolved itself’, without however providing supportive documentation even of this understated attribution (Fraser 1890: 51–2). For Carey, ‘Locke had effectively tied [religion and morality] together, at least for Christians who relied on the only sure source of moral truth and guidance – the revealed word of Scripture’ a stance opposed by Shaftesbury, writing ‘in a deist vein’ (Carey 2006: 99). Stephen, to the contrary, concluded that Locke cannot be counted amongst the ‘theological utilitarians’ considering the primacy accorded to reason in any clash with revelation (Stephen 1902: 84). Viner does not cite Locke amongst the ‘theological utilitarians’, his definition applying to those who represent the prospect of future reward and punishment as a necessary condition for proper conduct, leaving open where Viner stood regarding a less strict version.

The theological dimension, runs my argument, must be taken seriously in so far as Locke’s prime objective in underscoring the role of reason was to counter appeals to revelation on the part of charlatans and ‘enthusiasts’ leaving untouched genuine appeals. But it is also true that Locke diluted the theological perspective in major ways. Thus, he based his exercise in persuasion on prudential grounds holding good even if only the possibility of a future life with its rewards and punishments is recognized, an unorthodox perspective suggesting Pascal’s Wager whereby a sane person should conduct himself as though God exists. It is important to recognize that such qualifications do not affect the proposition that ethical conduct itself lies in essentially other-regarding considerations, and only weaken the motive for such comportment by placing reliance entirely on the worldly advantages promised by such conduct. And the Essay does in fact propose a wholly secular variety of ethical utilitarianism, the individual induced to behave in the social interest with an eye solely upon such mundane benefits as may be expected to flow from ‘other-regarding’ conduct.

Leslie Stephen affirms that though Locke stated the utility principle, and opposed the notion of ‘innate ideas’, he ‘was not a consistent Utilitarian’ (Stephen 1900: 237n). Stephen does not elaborate, but from his English Thought in the Eighteenth Century it is probable that he intended to refer to Locke’s proposition that morality is capable of demonstration no less than mathematics, which cannot be ‘reconciled with his general utilitarianism’ (Stephen 1902: 85–6). Nonetheless, Stephen’s theme in his English Thought remains that Locke provided the ‘primary impulse’ for later utilitarians, referring to the case against the ethical application of ‘innate’ ideas which presuppose the existence of self-evident or innate moral axioms (80). But this, on Stephen’s account, amounted only to ground clearing. For he finds that the ‘one universal motive’ for Locke remains ‘a desire of happiness and an aversion to misery’, and that when we come to ask ‘what then is morality?’ all we are left with is the proposition that ‘virtue is approved because visibly conducive to happiness’ – it is all a matter of self-interest – Locke thereby failing to provide an alternative to so-called conscience, indeed ‘never think[ing] to supply its place’ (81). (Mandeville is said to carry this line to its logical conclusion by actually denying the ‘real existence of virtue’ and maintaining that virtue – or ‘God’s will’ – is ‘a mere arbitrary fashion’; 83–4.) It seems to me that a proper recognition of Locke’s identification of morality with other-regarding conduct favouring general happiness is lacking here, as in several other accounts, even if such conduct should be motivated by self-interested considerations whether mundane or other-worldly. Stephen does mention the moral rule ‘doing as we would be done by’, but neglects to emphasize that this was regarded by Locke as the overriding ethical rule, not merely one amongst a variety.

The hedonic categories of pain, pleasure, and happiness as treated by John Locke will be addressed in Section 1.2. Section 1.3 presents the evidence on which I base my case to envisage Locke as an ethical utilitarian both in the general sense and in the more specific theological, albeit highly qualified, sense. An elaboration of Locke’s objections to innate ideas follows in Section 1.4 and here we encounter the archetypal, perhaps the original, enlightenment figure appealing for evidence-based reasoning, rather than faith or tradition or mere habit, to justify ethical principles. Section 1.5 elaborates the ‘distinct provinces’ of faith and reason.

1.2 Locke’s ‘Benthamite’ categories: pleasure, pain and happiness

Three chapters of the first volume of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Chapter VII (‘Of Simple Ideas of both Sensation and Reflection’), Chapter XX (‘Of Modes of Pleasure and Pain’) and Chapter XXI (‘Of Power’) spell out Locke’s stance regarding the characteristically ‘Benthamite’ categories of pleasure, pain, and happiness. The first of the chapters describes the role of the ‘ideas’ of pleasure and pain in stimulating action thus:

By pleasure and pain I would be understood to signify whatsoever delights or molests us most; whether it arises from the thoughts of our minds, or any thing operating on our bodies. For whether we call it satisfaction, delight, pleasure, happiness, &c. on the one side; or uneasiness, trouble, pain, torment, anguish, misery, &c. on the other; they are still but different degrees of the same thing, and belong to the ideas of pleasure and pain, delight or uneasiness; which are the names I shall most commonly use for those two sorts of ideas … It has … pleased our wise Creator to annex to several objects, and the ideas which we receive from them, as also to several of our thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and that in several objects, to several degrees; that those faculties which he had endowed us with might not remain wholly idle and unemployed by us.Pain has the same efficacy and use that pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our faculties to avoid that, as to assure this.

(Locke 1823 [1700] 1: 112–13)

The second chapter goes a step further and asserts that

[t]hings are good or evil only in reference to pleasure and pain. That we call good, which is apt to cause or increase pleasure or diminish pain in us; or else to procure or preserve us the possession of any other good, or absence of any evil. And, on the contrary, we name that evil, which is apt to produce or increase any pain or diminish any pleasure in us; or else to procure us any evil, or deprive us of any good’ (231; emphasis added). And the third chapter elaborates the theme that ‘we constantly desire happiness’ (261); and ‘[i]f it be farther asked, what is that moves desire? I answer, Happiness, and that alone. Happiness, then, in its full extent, is the utmost pleasure we are capable of, and misery the utmost pain … [W]hat has an aptness to produce pleasure in us is what we call good, and what is apt to produce pain in us we call evil, for no other reason but for its aptness to produce pleasure and pain in us, wherein consists our happiness and misery

(262; emphasis added).

We note here that while Locke rejected ‘innate’ ideas of virtue he readily allowed at the outset of his Essay that it is nature that ‘puts into man a desire for happiness, and an aversion to misery’, thus accounting for the primary stimulus to action (36). (The allowance for nature will be elaborated in Section 1.4).

The qualifying ‘what we call’ good and evil in the last two citations allows for the fact that the pleasure someone obtains from entirely anti-social actions he may yet call ‘good’. In the second volume this qualification is omitted: ‘Good and evil, as hath been shown [1823 [1700] 1: 231, 262] … are nothing but pleasure or pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us’ (‘Of Moral Relations’; Locke 1823 [1700] 2: 97). However Locke immediately alters the proposition by adding when summarizing the case: ‘Moral good and evil then is only the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions to some law, whereby good or evil is drawn on us by the will and power of the law-maker; which good and evil, pleasure or pain, attending our observance or breach of the law, by the decree of the law-maker, is that we call reward or punishment’ (emphasis added) thereby distinguishing in effect between what may be treated as true morality or rules of conduct emanating from God – which we shall presently show is seen primarily as obedience to the rule ‘Do unto others…’ – and rules of conduct emanating from the civil law and from public opinion, especially the latter, which may deviate therefrom albeit that the conduct in question may popularly be labelled ‘good’ or ‘evil’ and perceived as such by the actor.

The common occurrence of conduct designated as ‘good’ but which, in some objective sense, is in fact ‘evil’ is much emphasized in the chapter ‘Of Power’: ‘though all men desire happiness, yet their wills carry them so contrarily, and consequently some of them to what is evil … [T]he various and contrary choices that men make in the world do not argue that they do not all pursue good, but that the same thing is not good to every man alike’ (Locke 1823 [1700] 1: 272). Essentially, ‘evil’ conduct appears good to some because it adds to their happiness as they perceive it: ‘the greatest happiness consists in the having those things which produce the greatest pleasure, and in the absence of those which cause any disturbance, any pain. Now these, to different men, are very different things’ (273).² Such errors Locke maintains are inexcusable and merit punishment: ‘though it be certain that in all the particular actions that he wills he does, and necessarily does, will that which he then judges to be good. For, though his will be always determined by that which is judged good by his understanding, yet it excuses him not; because by a too hasty choice of his own making, he has imposed on himself wrong measures of good and evil; which, however false and fallacious, have the same influence on all his future conduct as if they were true and right’ (275).

Of high interest is Locke’s concern to account for ‘wrong measures of good and evil’: ‘since men are always constant, and in earnest, in matters of happiness and misery, the question still remains, How men come often to prefer the worse to the better; and to choose that which, by their own confession, has made them miserable (Locke 1823 [1700] 1: 275). ‘By their own confession’, it transpires, reflects a certainty on Locke’s part that sooner or later men will come to realize their failure of judgment (278–9). As for the false choice in the first place, Locke points to two sources both entailing improper allowance for the prospects of reward and punishment in a future life, and this discussion proves essential to our case elaborated in Section 1.3 that Locke is to be considered a ‘theological utilitarian’.

The first type of ‘wrong judgment’ reflects the circumstance that ‘[o]bjects near our view are apt to be thought greater than those of a larger size that are more remote; and so it is with pleasures and pains; the present is apt to carry it, and those at a distance have the disadvantage in the comparison … But that this is a wrong judgment every one must allow, let his pleasure consist in whatever it will: since that which is future will certainly come to be present; and then, having the same advantage of nearness, will show itself in its full dimensions, and discover his willful mistake, who judged of it by unequal measures’ (Locke 1823 [1700] 1: 279–80). The passage of time will ‘bring it home upon himself, and consider it as present, and there take its true dimensions!’ (280). The problem is exacerbated by the fact that ‘absent good, or, what is the same thing, future pleasure, especially if it of a sort we are unacquainted with’ – reflecting a concern with ‘the happiness of another life’– ‘seldom is able to counter-balance any uneasiness, either of pain or desire, which is present’ (281–2).

So much for false judgment reflecting a realization of the evil character of the action in question but undervaluation of what is currently ‘absent’, namely the future consequences. The second source of error is a complete failure to recognize the evil of the act in question namely ‘the wrong judgment, whereby the absent are not only lessened, but reduced to perfect nothing; when men enjoy what they can in present, and make sure of that, concluding amiss that no evil will thence follow. For that lies not in comparing the greatness of future good and evil, which is what we are here speaking of, but in another sort of wrong judgment, which is concerning good or evil, as it is considered to be the cause and procurement of pleasure or pain, that will follow from it’ (Locke 1823 [1700] 1: 280). As to the ‘things good or bad in their consequences and by the aptness in them to procure us good or evil in the future’, the causes of wrong judgment are said to include ignorance and inadvertence (282–4), much of the problem reflecting bad ‘habits’ (285–6). Nonetheless, Locke allows for the possibility of some correction:

it will be possibly entertained as a paradox, if it be said, that men can make things or actions more or less pleasing to themselves; and thereby remedy that, to which one may justly impute a great deal...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• PART 1: John Locke
• PART 2: Eighteenth-century moral-sense literature
• PART 3: Adam Smith
• PART 4: Jeremy Bentham
• PART 5: Thomas Robert Malthus
• PART 6: John Stuart Mill
• Index