Perspectives on the Meaning of Life: Utilitarianism

This is a follow up to PotMoL: Hedonism

Utilitarianism is an ethical system posited as: the good is whatever brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all people, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome. Utility, the good to be maximized, has been defined by various thinkers as happiness or pleasure (versus suffering or pain) thus incorporating a simliar measure as hedonism.

Utilitarianism's connection with hedonism was not lost on its founder, Jeremy Bentham. Bentham, an ethical hedonist, believed the moral rightness or wrongness of an action to be a function of the amount of pleasure or pain that it produced. The calculus could, in principle at least, determine the moral status of any considered act. The algorithm is also known as the hedonistic calculus and the hedonic calculus.

Utilitarianism is an ethical system, and therefore posits man lives for something outside himself. It can be seen as expanding hedonism's values to a community. Whereas hedonism only considers one person's pleasure, Utilitarnism considers the aggregate. Although there are many different ethical systems that people adhere to, almost all incorporate some degree of utilitarian principles.