Bentham and Mill Build the Case for Utilitarianism
The right action is the one that produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and not everyone's pleasure counts the same way
Quick facts
- Bentham's dates
- 1748-1832
- Mill's dates
- 1806-1873
- Key texts
- Introduction to Morals and Legislation (1789); Utilitarianism (1861); On Liberty (1859)
- Mill's revision
- Higher vs. lower quality pleasures
What happened
Jeremy Bentham, born in 1748, set out classical utilitarian theory in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, printed in 1780 and published with additions in 1789, arguing that the principle of utility approves or disapproves of every action according to whether it tends to increase or decrease the happiness of those affected, a standard he summarized as the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Bentham proposed a felicific calculus for measuring pleasure and pain by dimensions including intensity, duration, and certainty. John Stuart Mill, born in 1806, revised and defended the theory in his 1861 essay Utilitarianism, arguing against Bentham's purely quantitative approach that pleasures differ in quality as well as amount, famously concluding that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, since intellectual and moral pleasures rank higher than merely bodily ones. In On Liberty, published in 1859, Mill separately argued for the harm principle, that the only justification for restricting a person's liberty is to prevent harm to others, not to protect the person from themselves.
Why it matters
Utilitarianism became one of the most influential ethical theories in the modern world, providing the philosophical basis for cost-benefit reasoning in law and public policy, while Mill's revision opened a durable internal debate over whether pleasure can really be ranked by quality and not just quantity, a question utilitarian philosophers still argue over today.
How we know
Both Bentham's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation and Mill's Utilitarianism and On Liberty survive in their original 18th and 19th century printings and have been in continuous print and scholarly use since publication.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Jeremy Bentham · Reputable sourceplato.stanford.edu · The domain "plato.stanford.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Mill, John Stuart: Ethics · Reputable sourceiep.utm.edu · The domain "iep.utm.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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