Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill

Frederick Rosen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134599097
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

This book presents a new interpretation of the principle of utility in moral and political theory based on the writings of the classical utilitarians from Hume to J.S. Mill. Discussion of utility in writers such as Adam Smith, William Paley and Jeremy Bentham is included.

1

INTRODUCTION

The aims of the book

The object of this book is to present an account of the idea of utility roughly from Hume’s Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals to J.S. Mill’s Utilitarianism that is historically accurate and philosophically significant. Its starting point is the counter-intuitive idea that utility can somehow stand as the foundation of morality and particularly of justice, an idea adopted by all the thinkers considered here and taken by them from earlier writers within the Epicurean tradition. It was initially counter-intuitive in that what had appeared to be an absolute idea like justice with universal application, particularly in the form of natural justice, was placed on what seemed to be a less firm foundation of utility, which had been regarded as subject to change according to circumstances and over time. That utility could play this foundational role in morals and legislation and, furthermore, that human happiness, based on pleasure and the absence of pain, could underpin such a notion, was the doctrine on which classical utilitarianism is based. My objects in this book are both to show how this extraordinary doctrine became a philosophical commonplace and to examine its distinctive features in a series of writers, such as Hume, Smith, Helvétius, Paley, Bentham, and J.S. Mill.

The most important argument running throughout the book concerns the connection between justice and liberty. Once freed from its traditional philosophical foundations, justice in the modern Epicurean tradition gave way to liberty, first to ideas of civil liberty and free markets, and then to the rejection of paternalism and the cultivation of individuality, culminating in Mill’s On Liberty. The task of justice ceased to be one that ordered and directed the other virtues in private and public life and became a system of rules in which liberty could flourish and happiness could be realized.

In setting forth this theme, concerned with the connections between utility, justice, and liberty, a number of related themes have been developed. Some of these are mainly historical and others are philosophical. The historical themes are focused on the establishment of an eighteenth-century context for classical utilitarianism, and this task proved to be more difficult than I anticipated. Most Hume and Smith scholars have denied that any significant link exists between the use of the idea of utility in Hume and Smith on the one hand and what became ‘utilitarianism’ in Bentham and Mill on the other. A good deal of attention has been given in the early chapters to challenge this widespread, though mistaken, view. In the process I have tried to liberate Hume and Smith from their fairly recent historical imprisonment within the so-called ‘Scottish Enlightenment’. Furthermore, few writers on Hume and Smith see much continuity even between the two philosophers regarding their adoption of the idea of utility. To establish a view of classical utilitarianism connecting eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophers, it was also necessary to establish a common interest in and account of utility in Hume and Smith.

The importance of utility was not, however, a discovery of the eighteenth century, but emerged out of an earlier Epicurean tradition which developed in antiquity but flourished in a peculiarly modern form in philosophical and scientific circles in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Early modern Epicureanism is briefly discussed in the next chapter, where I attempt to show the distinctive role given to utility by Gassendi and numerous British followers. This material is important for showing how utility entered modern philosophical thought and, additionally, for providing an explanation of how substantial variations within the classical utilitarian tradition emerged in the eighteenth century. That Hume, Smith, Helvétius, and Paley could use utility to develop different arguments is explained in terms of their drawing on this older Epicurean tradition in different ways.

The hitherto missing link in this account of classical utilitarianism is provided here by giving a new interpretation of Bentham’s utilitarianism. It differs substantially from the caricature of classical utilitarianism found in contemporary moral and political philosophy, that is to say, a philistine act utilitarianism that allows for punishing the innocent, the sacrifice of some for the happiness of others, and leads to the tyranny of the majority. My interpretation also enables one to see clear links with Hume and Smith regarding utility, justice and liberty on the one hand and great continuity between Bentham and Mill regarding similar themes on the other. The commonplace view that Mill superseded Bentham’s highly limited doctrine is challenged and shown to be false in two substantial chapters on Mill. The view that Bentham did not share with Hume and Smith a common eighteenth-century context regarding pleasure and pain and utility is also rejected.

Throughout this book reference is often made to the ‘Enlightenment’, which forms another context for the writers considered here. This is particularly the case in the chapter on Helvétius, where an emphasis is placed on the French Enlightenment, and in those chapters on Hume and Smith where commentators evoke the Scottish Enlightenment. I have no strong objection to the use of this context to interpret the writers discussed in this volume, as in practice a reference to the Enlightenment is a reference to eighteenth-century European thought. It becomes unhelpful when it refers to some exclusive linguistic or cultural markers, as if there could be an Enlightenment that is either wholly or solely French or Scottish. On the contrary, I have been struck by the speed and tenacity which writers have exhibited in making contact with their counterparts in other countries and in developing and communicating new ideas. In this sense there is no French or Scottish Enlightenment. Another point worth noting is that while many scholars stress the ‘rationalist’ character of the Enlightenment, the writers in the Epicurean tradition considered here stress the primacy of feeling, particularly feelings of pleasure and pain, as the basis of morality and politics, and place an equal emphasis on the passions as the basis of motivation and action. The idea of an enlightenment based wholly or mainly on reason is foreign to these writers.

There are numerous thinkers within the utilitarian tradition who have been omitted from this book, mainly because space and time did not allow me to go further. The Epicurean tradition in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries is covered in a highly compressed manner with numerous writers, like Gassendi, Bayle, Hobbes, Locke, and others, receiving very brief attention or none at all. The so-called theological utilitarians, except for Paley, are merely mentioned, and numerous important writers, such as Hartley, Hutcheson, Priestley, Godwin, and James Mill, are virtually ignored. In addition, different disciplines tend to place their emphases on different writers and themes. Those scholars within the discipline of English literature are perhaps more concerned with the on-going tension between Stoicism and Epicureanism than other scholars. Moral philosophers tend to emphasize Hume and Mill rather than Smith, and historians of economic thought are concerned with Smith rather than Hume. Jurists consider Blackstone, Bentham, and Austin, but seldom Hume or Mill. In moving from one discipline to another one encounters different disputes about ideas, relevant texts, and particularly about contexts. I have tried to draw on as many of these disciplines as possible, as they represent the most important and vibrant approaches to the modern Epicurean and utilitarian tradition. Historians of economic thought will find most to interest them in the chapters on Smith and Bentham; moral philosophers might find most in the two chapters on Mill, while intellectual historians might be most interested in the material on Hume and Smith. Nevertheless, the book as a whole has a single theme in connecting utility, justice, and liberty, and this theme is developed in all of the chapters.

Some notes for moral philosophers

Among the major obstacles to understanding classical utilitarianism are a number of misleading assumptions common in contemporary discussions. These assumptions are not necessarily false in their own contexts, but they serve to prevent one from grasping important features of the classical doctrine. We shall examine some of them here, without any intention to criticize the ideas, but to point out how much classical utilitarianism differs from its more recent offspring.

(1) A recent preoccupation among moral philosophers (less so now than thirty to fifty years ago) has been concern with the extent to which the ultimate principles of a given system are amenable to some sort of proof. So strong was this concern that the subject of ethics developed a separate branch, called ‘metaethics’, where these questions were discussed. The importance of these concerns, however quaint some of them may seem nowadays, cannot be denied. If ethics is not amenable to proof, how does one prefer one system to another. If all that remains is subjective intuition, philosophical argument in ethics must be severely constrained and reduced to the more limited task of the analysis of language and argument and to the consideration of theories in some sort of ideological context (e.g. liberal theory, rights theory, Marxism, republicanism, etc.).

Classical utilitarianism was among the earliest modern doctrines that insisted that ultimate principles (in this case the principle of utility) could not be subject to proof (see, for example, Bentham 1996: 13). In developing this position it was argued that those ethical systems that relied on divine revelation, natural law, the state of nature, reason, understanding, etc., as forms of proof, were mistaken and were simply different ways of referring to the ultimate preferences of the various authors who employed such terminology. Nevertheless, the classical utilitarians did not abandon the principles of ethics and politics to gut reaction, rhetoric, and prejudice, as they insisted on the objectivity of their theories as opposed to the subjectivity they ascribed to their opponents. Such an insistence is at the heart of the empiricism and the analytical rigour that is often found in utilitarian philosophy.

In the concern with proof in meta-ethics the issue of objectivity has tended to be overlooked. The starting point in classical utilitarianism is that everyone (arguably all sentient creatures) experiences pleasure and pain, and while this experience is inevitably a subjective one, it forms the basis of the empirical orientation of the theory. There is no need to look to nature or to God to determine whether of not an action or law is right or wrong. The reference should be to the feelings of those people who are affected by the action or law, and these feelings can be determined by asking those who are affected to express their feelings via the electoral system or through public opinion. The empirical side of ethics thus has its foundation in responses to pleasure and pain, and not, as is often assumed today, particularly among rational choice and social contract theorists, in a presumed common rationality that few in fact share. Utility enters into the equation primarily by its association with pleasure and pain, and it enables members of a community to assess the practical value of objects, practices, laws, institutions, theories, etc., to their lives in an objective fashion. Is it useful? Does it make us happy, or, at least, less unhappy? These questions may be answered with greater or lesser precision.

What is important is that they can be discussed by everyone and discussed in a way that allows for argument and empirical investigation. Debate does not end, as it would with the invocation of God’s will or natural law. Answers to questions may well change over time, and, indeed, so might the questions. The answers to most moral and political questions are highly complex. For example, is death the appropriate punishment for murder? For most classical utilitarians this question was an important one to which different answers were given by different authors and by the same authors at different times in their lives. But the answers were presented in an objective fashion with due concern for a wide variety of factors. The definition of offences, such as murder, and the consideration of distinctions between it and other offences, the consideration of alternative punishments or the possibility of reform and rehabilitation, the widespread popularity of the death penalty, the question of deterrence, and numerous other issues can be raised. But the discussion has an objective character in terms of an assessment of its utility in relation to human happiness. In what sense does the death penalty bring happiness to a particular community by adding to its pleasures or by reducing its pains? Although the ultimate principles may not be amenable to proof, the question of the utility of a law or practice is subject to objective discussion and resolution. The capacity for objectivity is different from a capacity for rationality and may be ascribed to most people without regard to intelligence and philosophical skill.

(2) A second misleading assumption is concerned with the distinction between hedonistic and non-hedonistic utilitarianism often employed to distinguish between the ethical theories of Bentham and G.E. Moore with J.S. Mill reckoned to occupy some intermediate position between the two. This distinction is foreign to the classical utilitarians, all of whom were hedonists who would consider the links between utility, pleasure and pain as providing the coherent foundations to their systems. Although problems within hedonism have been recognized since Cicero’s critique of Epicureanism in de Finibus, if not earlier in various Platonic dialogues and in Aristotle’s writings (e.g. the comparability between the reduction of pain as a pleasurable experience and the positive enhancement of pleasure, or the distinction between good and bad pleasures), the doctrine has by no means been discredited. But in admitting non-hedonistic utilitarianism as a category, one inevitably shifts the focus away from hedonism. What has replaced hedonism in the process is consequentialism, and a commonplace among utilitarians is the assertion that the rightness of acts is to be judged mainly by their consequences.

A concern for the consequences of actions, of course, plays a role in all approaches to ethics, including that of the classical utilitarians. The latter emphasize consequences, because the consequences of rules and actions are often open to objective assessment as to their usefulness. But classical utilitarians have never confined themselves to assessing consequences and take numerous other aspects of the human condition into consideration, such as motives, intentions, dispositions, virtues, circumstances, the will, passions, feelings, and habits. To focus on consequences alone, as the essence of utilitarianism, not only deprives the doctrine of its most important elements, but also seems to raise more questions than can be resolved, particularly if one is involved in assessing consequences for all mankind, sentient creatures, future generations, the universe, and imagined universes running in parallel with our own, tracing out all possible consequences of each action. Not only is much discussion at this level pointless, but it also represents an unwarranted and unsubstantiated shift of focus away from hedonism.

(3) Much of the debate over hedonism within contemporary utilitarianism is usually based on a distinction between qualities and quantities of pleasure. This distinction is derived from a mistaken view (see chapter 10 below) of the utilitarianism of Mill and Bentham respectively. The distinction has been considered so important that it has led to the development of different kinds of utilitarianism (qualitative versus quantitative). Among opponents of utilitarianism generally the distinction has been used to discredit Bentham (for philistinism), Mill (for inconsistency), and hedonism generally. But pleasure and pain are at the heart of classical utilitarianism. The use of both quantitative and qualitative distinctions in the estimation of pleasures and pains has also been part of the Epicurean tradition since antiquity. The only difference between various advocates of utility as the foundation of morals is the extent to which they acknowledge a liberty in individuals to evaluate and estimate their own experiences of pleasure and pain. Hume, Smith, Bentham, and Mill are the strongest advocates of this liberty. By incorporating liberty into their hedonism, many of the problems developed within contemporary utilitarianism regarding quantities and qualities of pleasure simply disappear. So long as each person counts for no more than any other, it is up to each to choose which pleasures to value most and which pains to avoid. Such personal evaluations of pleasure and pain may be studied empirically by those concerned and by others.

Some recent writers on utilitarianism have expressed fears over the possible use of machines to deliver electronically based sensual pleasure to the brain on demand that would reduce humans to utter passivity and in the process maximize pleasure and happiness. It has been feared that even the human race might die out, leading ultimately to a great reduction in happiness (see Smart 1973: 19ff). Alternatively, one can distinguish between the mere contentment felt by a creature of few capacities and a great creative genius whose pleasures are obtained at great personal cost and through considerable pain (see Crisp 1997: 23–5). These examples are believed to pose serious problems for a hedonistic approach to ethics.

None of this is particularly relevant to classical utilitarianism. In arguing that each adult person should be free to experience and evaluate pain and pleasure for him- or herself, the classical utilitarians placed great emphasis on individual liberty in numerous spheres from freedom of thought and expression to freedom of action (so long as one did not cause pain to others). Once accustomed to live without paternalism, this emphasis on individual liberty itself becomes a great source of pleasure. Despite the concern of contemporary utilitarians, one suspects that individuals would soon become bored with electronic pleasure machines. Far more important are the pleasures associated with being treated as an adult individual and possessing the freedom to choose one’s own pleasures and pains. Classical utilitarianism culminates in Mill’s On Liberty, and one important object of this book is to explain why this is so. Recent writers on utilitarianism often miss the point either by their concern with different kinds of pleasure and satisfaction or by assuming that there is some sort of inevitable conflict between liberty and hedonism within a utilitarian system.

(4) Another misleading assumption is based on the distinction between act and rule utilitarianism and their treatment as contrasting doctrines. Some argue that rule utilitarianism ultimately collapses into act utilitarianism or leads to rule worship, while others see rule utilitarianism as providing a reprieve for an otherwise incoherent utilitarianism. In classical utilitarianism, however, no such contrast is emphasized and utility may be applied to acts, rules, conventions, laws, customs, etc. without discrimination. The importance of utility within the Epicurean tradition emerges first, however, as will be spelled out in chapter 2, in connection with rules of justice. Despite their production of pain to some, we learn to accept the rules of justice, because they create great happiness in society. Criminals are punished, property is secure, rights to life and liberty are respected — equally — throughout society. To speak of justice in this context requires one to deal with acts as well as rules. We consider the act of taking money from a miser, without consent, and giving it to an entrepreneur who will use it for the greater benefit of mankind, though of some utility, ultimately of less utility than maintaining the rules of justice that secure property to its owners. The confiscation of property generates an enormous amount of pain so that few benefits would arise in society to compensate one for its confiscation following a violation of the rules of justice. To dwell on the distinction between act and rule utilitarianism simply obscures the important connection between utility and justice established by the classical utilitarians.

(5) Much writing by moral philosophers in recent decades has been focused on a perceived conflict between the utilitarian goal of increasing or maximizing happiness and issues of distribution and, particularly, distributive justice. It is often assumed that utilitarianism (in advocating the maximization of total happiness) lacks a distributive principle. But often overlooked is the fact that classical utilitarianism emerged in the seventeenth century precisely to provide a distributive principle within Epicureanism. To refer to utility did not reflect the total amount of happiness in society, but how that happiness was distributed throughout society. The answer provided in classi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Bibliography
• Index