The Foundations of Morality

1. Jeremy Bentham

If we may judge by the number of references to him and his doctrines in the literature of the subject, even though most of them are critical, angry, or derisive, Bentham has been the most discussed and influential moralist of modern times. It seems profitable, therefore, to begin with an analysis of the hedonistic doctrine as he states it.

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other hand the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.

It will be noticed that in the second sentence of this paragraph Bentham draws no distinction whatever between what has since come to be known as the doctrine of psychological hedonism (the doctrine that we always do take the action which we think will give us the greatest pleasure) and the doctrine that has come to be known as ethical hedonism (the doctrine that we ought to take the action which will result in the greatest pleasure or happiness). But we may leave the disentanglement of this knotty problem to a later chapter.

Bentham goes on to explain that:

The principle of utility is the foundation of the present work. . . . By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question. . . . I say of every action whatsoever; and therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government.

2. The Charge of Sensuality

It is against the statement of his theory in the form found in his Morals and Legislation, however (and against popular misconceptions of what he believed or continued to believe), that the great storm of criticism has been directed.

As the primary purpose of these early chapters will be to lay the foundation for a positive theory of morals, I shall here discuss only a few of the respects in which that criticism was either valid or unjustified; and I shall discuss them, not so much as they apply to the specific doctrines of Bentham, but to hedonistic or eudaemonic doctrines in general.

Closely allied to this criticism, and sharing almost equal prominence with it, is the accusation that hedonism and utilitarianism preach essentially the philosophy of sensuality and self-indulgence, the philosophy of the voluptuary and the libertine.

Now while it is true that there are people who both practice and preach the philosophy of sensuality, it receives very little support from Bentham—or, for that matter, from any of the leading utilitarians.

The foregoing quotations do, I think, point to some of the real shortcomings in Bentham’s analysis. These include his failure to construct a convincing “hedonistic calculus” (though his elaborate effort to do so was itself highly instructive). They include his tendency to treat “pleasure” or “pain” as something that can be abstracted and isolated from specific pleasures or pains and treated like a physical or chemical residue, or like a homogeneous juice that can be quantitatively measured.

3. Of the Greatest Number

Bentham’s views have been misunderstood in another important respect—though this is in large part his own fault. One of the phrases he is thought to have originated—which was once most often quoted with approval by his disciples but is now the most frequent target for his critics—is “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” But first, as we have seen, this was not Bentham’s original phrase, but taken by him from Priestley (who was in turn anticipated both by Hutcheson and Beccaria); and secondly, Bentham himself later abandoned it. When he did reject it he did so with a clearer and more powerful argument (so far as it goes) than any I have seen by any critic. It is quoted by Bowring in the final pages of the first volume of the posthumous Deontology, from which I paraphrase it:

The principle of the Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number is questionable because it can be interpreted as ignoring the feelings or fate of the minority. And this questionableness becomes greater the greater we conceive the ratio to be of the minority to the majority.

Let us suppose a community of 4001 persons of which the “majority” numbers 2001 and the minority 2000. Suppose that, to begin with, each of the 4001 possesses an equal portion of happiness. If, now, we take his share of happiness from every one of the 2000 and divide it among the 2001, the result would be, not an augmentation, but a vast diminution of happiness. The feelings of the minority being, according to the “greatest number” principle, left out of account, the vacuum thus left, instead of remaining a vacuum, may be filled with the greatest unhappiness and suffering. The net result for a whole community would not be a gain in happiness but a great loss.

Or assume, again, that your 4001 persons are at the outset in a state of perfect equality with respect to the means to happiness, including power and opulence, with every one possessing not only equal wealth, but equal liberty and independence. Now take your 2000, or no matter how much smaller a minority, reduce them to a state of slavery, and divide them and their former property among the 2001. How many in the community will actually have their happiness increased? What would be the result for the happiness of the whole community? The questions answer themselves.

To make the application more specific, Bentham then went on to ask what would happen if, in Great Britain, the whole body of the Roman Catholics were made slaves and divided among the whole body of Protestants, or if, in Ireland, the whole body of Protestants were divided, in like manner, among the whole body of Roman Catholics.

So Bentham fell back on the Greatest Happiness Principle, and spoke of the goal of ethics as that of maximizing the happiness of the community as a whole.

4. “Pleasure” vs. “Happiness”

This statement of the ultimate criterion of moral rules leaves many troublesome questions unanswered. We may postpone consideration of some of these to a later point, but we can hardly escape dealing with a few of them now, if our answer is to be even provisionally satisfactory. Some of these questions are perhaps purely semantic or linguistic; others are psychological or philosophical; and in some cases it is difficult to determine whether we are in fact dealing with a verbal or a psychological or a moral problem.

It seems the part of practical wisdom, and the best way to minimize misunderstanding, to use the terms “pleasure” and “pain” very sparingly, if not to abandon them almost altogether in ethical discussion.