No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Utilitarianism, For and Against
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
Utilitarianism, For and Against contains in a single volume a slightly revised version of An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics which J. J. C. Smart published in 1961, together with a critique of it by Bernard Williams. Stuart Hampshire gives another critique in Morality and Pessimism.* After touching on Hampshire I shall outline what seems distinctive of Smart's utilitarianism then consider Williams’ objections.
If I remember rightly, Bentham wrote an ‘analysis of the effects of Christianity on the temporal happiness of mankind’. In his Leslie Stephen Lecture, Hampshire gives utilitarianism a similar examination. We all know that for its fathers, utilitarianism was not simply a moral theory. They set out to do good in the world. Hampshire acknowledges that for long utilitarianism did much good.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Authors 1975
References
* Smart, J. J. C. and Williams, Bernard Utilitarianism, For and Against (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1973), 155 pp.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cloth, $9.50; paper, $2.75. Hampshire, Stuart Morality and Pessimism (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1972), 38 pp.Google Scholar
1 Hampshire's, lecture led to an exchange of letters in The New York Review of Books, September 20, 1973.Google Scholar
2 Introduction to the Principles … , Chap. I.
3 Utilitarianism, Chap. V.
4 Ibid.
5 Principia Ethica, Chap. V.
6 Mill, op. cit., Chap. I.
7 Ibid., Chap. V.
8 Ibid., Chap. V.
9 Ethics, Chap. V.
10 D. H. Hodgson, Consequences of Utilitarianism, Chap. II; G. J. Warnock, The Object of Morality. Chap. III.
11 Mackie, J. L. “The Disutility of Act-Utilitarianism,” The Philosophical Quarterly (October 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar