2. Bentham's Hedonistic Utilitarianism

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about utilitarianism as it was conceived by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), focusing in particular on his monistic conception of pleasure, i.e. the idea that pleasures (and pains) differ only in their intensity and duration, the implications of this view, and some of the potential objections we might have.

Course

In this course, Dr Iain Law (University of Birmingham) thinks about utilitarianism, one of the three major normative ethical theories alongside Kantian deontological ethics and virtue ethics. In the first module, we introduce the concept of a moral theory, before thinking about consequentialism and utilitarianism more specifically. In the second module, we think about utilitarianism as it was conceived by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), focusing in particular on his monistic conception of pleasure. After that, we consider the development of utilitarianism under John Stuart Mill (1806-73), thinking in particular about how Mill answered some of the objections levelled at Bentham, but also created problems of his own. We also think about his infamous 'proof' of utilitarianism. In the fourth module, we move on from the hedonism of Bentham and Mill to think about different theories of welfare, including desire satisfaction and objective list theory, before moving on in the fifth module to consider two more important issues associated with utilitarianism: first, whose welfare counts, and second, how do we calculate it? In the sixth module, we consider three of the most famous objections to utilitarianism, before turning in the seventh final module to consider a totally different conception of utilitarianism known as rule utilitarianism.

Lecturer

Iain Law is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Birmingham. His main interests are in meta-ethics, applied ethics and ethical theory, and he is currently working on papers in moral theory, moral psychology, the philosophy of medicine and applied ethics.