Taught by Jonathan Price
This seminar (which will be taught in English) involves one of the most powerful and persuasive approaches to normative ethics in the history of philosophy, namely, utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is the view that the morally right action is the action that produces the most good. Right action is understood entirely in terms of consequences produced rather than also including other considerations such as intentions or legality.*
The Classical Utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, identified the good with pleasure. Just as Epicurus, they were hedonists about value. The amount of pleasure that is possible is called the utility of an action or thing. They also held that we ought to maximize the good, i.e. bring about “the greatest amount of good for the greatest number”. When one maximizes the good, it is the good impartially considered: my good counts for no more than anyone else’s good. Naturally, this approach to moral evaluation and decision-making has proven controversial.
The Classical Utilitarians were concerned with legal and social reform. They desired to see useless, corrupt laws and social practices changed. Accomplishing this goal, they believed, required a normative ethical theory employed as a critical tool. What makes an action or a policy morally good? The conviction that, for example, some laws are bad required an analysis of why they were bad. And, for Jeremy Bentham, what made them bad was their lack of utility, their tendency to lead to unhappiness and misery without any compensating happiness: if a law or an action doesn’t do any good, then it isn’t any good.
The influence of utilitarianism has been profound (and profoundly criticized), not only within moral philosophy but also politics and social policy. Bentham’s question, “What use is it?”, has since become a cornerstone of policy formation. It is a completely secular, ‘progressive’ question (again not without its critics). The articulation and systematic development of this approach to policy formation is owed to the Classical Utilitarians.
Nevertheless, perhaps we ought to promote the good, but believe that the good includes far more than what could be reduced to pleasure, or utility. This would make one a pluralist, rather than monist, regarding intrinsic value. ‘Beauty’, for example, could be another intrinsic good. A beautiful object may have value independent of any pleasure it might generate in a viewer. Why utility or pleasure as a standard of what is good? Why not necessity? Or divine will? Or what accords with the natural order? Or merely what is not forbidden? Or one of many other possible choices?
These questions come up in the literature of the critics, especially those of Mill’s theories. And it is these that we will consider during this masterclass alongside Mill’s book, Utilitarianism.
*This description has made use of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Utilitarianism (http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/utilitarianism-history/)
Meetings
There will be five meetings: two per month between February and the end of April. The meetings will take place in Leiden. Their locations will be announced as the first meeting approaches.
Applying
Jonathan Price studied at the universities of Leiden and Oxford after completing a bachelor of philosophy at Dickinson (‘liberal arts college’ in the US). He is currently PhD Fellow in legal philosophy at the Leiden University Law School and assistant librarian at Blackfriars, Oxford, where he teaches in the Dominican Studium programme.
