5 - Vindicating utilitarianism: D. G. Ritchie

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In Darwin and Hegel, D. G. Ritchie proclaimed that “in Ethics the theory of natural selection has vindicated all that has proved most permanently valuable in Utilitarianism.” For Ritchie, utilitarianism, especially Millian utilitarianism, had much to recommend it. Principally, it rescued moral reasoning from the factious and emotive jumble of intuitionism. Whereas intuitionism leaves morality chaotic, utilitarianism systematizes it. Utilitarianism, however, was not without deficiencies of its own in Ritchie's view, particularly its narrowly hedonic conception of good. Even its Millian variety, though not hedonically cramped, underappreciated the thickly textured nature of good. Good was happiness for Ritchie but it was happiness understood more expansively as self-realization. As far as Ritchie was concerned, Millian liberal utilitarianism was not so much wrongheaded as it was incomplete. Mill's conception of good was inchoate and, even more importantly, his meta-ethical reasoning insufficiently exploited the powerful resources being made available by evolutionary theorizing. In typical new liberal fashion, then, Ritchie enriched Millian utilitarianism with a more complex notion of good. And like L. T. Hobhouse after him, but unlike T. H. Green before him, Ritchie wholeheartedly embraced evolutionary theory in his bid to fashion a more compelling, thoroughly (new) liberal version of utilitarianism.

This chapter begins by examining the kind of utilitarianism Ritchie claims natural selection vindicates. With respect to the kind of utilitarianism vindicated, we shall see how he tries to fortify Millian liberal utilitarianism with new liberal concepts such as self-realization and common good.