The Foundations of Morality
Notes
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
Everything began, quietly enough, with Hume, with the English adjective useful and the English abstract noun utility, derived respectively from the Latin utilis and utilitas through the French utilité. Why not, then, simply Utilist as the adjective for the doctrine, and the noun for the writer holding the doctrine, and simply Utilism, or at most Utilitism, as the name of the doctrine? But no. Instead of beginning with the adjective, Bentham began with the longer abstract Latin noun made from the adjective. Then he added three syllables—arian—to the noun to turn it back into an adjective. Then he added another syllable—ism—to turn the inflated adjective made from an abstract noun back into another abstract noun. Now behold the eight-syllabled sesquipedalian monstrosity, Utiltarianism. Then John Stuart Mill came along and nailed the thing down by making the name the title of his famous essay. So as the name for the doctrine as it has existed historically, posterity is stuck with the word. But perhaps from now on, when we are describing doctrines not identical with historic Utilitarianism, as developed by Bentham and Mill, but involving the doctrine that duty and virtue are means to an end rather than sufficient ends in themselves, we can use the word Teleology or Teleotism or the simpler words utilic, Utilist and Utilitism. Thus we save three syllables, and escape from some confusing and outmoded associations.
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
In this second volume, even more than in the first, it is instructive to notice that Bentham shies away a little from the name Utilitarianism that he himself coined to describe his doctrine in its original form. At several points he gives reasons for regarding the term as inadequate and too vague. Though he does not suggest a substitute name (except, occasionally, “the Greatest Happiness Principle”), I think he would have finally come to call his doctrine Felicitism.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Of course the market prices of goods are “social” valuations (though constantly fluctuating in relation to each other) and do bear exact quantitative relations to each other (as expressed in money); but these valuations and relations are never exactly the same as those in the mind of any specific individual.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
This answer may have been flattering to the vanity of Marx and Engels, but it was made at the cost of consistency. For if a few rare spirits can escape from their “class” ideology, why not others?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
The reader will notice a certain overlap and duplication in the quotations in this chapter from Adam Smith and Philip Wicksteed and those from the same authors in Chap. 6, “Social Cooperation.” But I think these duplications are justified in the interests of emphasis and of saving the reader the inconvenience of turning back to that chapter to remind himself of the few sentences repeated here.
