Timeline of utilitarianism

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18th century Utilitarianism emerges as a distinct ethical position.

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Year Month and date Event type Details
1725 Francis Hutcheson first introduces a key utilitarian phrase in An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue: "when choosing the most moral action, the amount of virtue in a particular action is proportionate to the number of people such brings happiness to".[1]
1731 John Gay publishes In Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality. Some would claim that he developed the first systematic theory of utilitarian ethics.[2]
1751 David Hume publishes An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.
1785 William Paley publishes The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. Schneewind (1977) would write that "utilitarianism first became widely known in England through the work of William Paley."[3]
1789 Jeremy Bentham publishes An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.
1861 John Stuart Mill's book Utilitarianism first appears as a series of three articles published in Fraser's Magazine. It would be reprinted as a single book in 1863.[4][5] Stuart Mill acknowledges in a footnote that, though Jeremy Bentham believed "himself to be the first person who brought the word 'utilitarian' into use, he did not invent it. Rather, he adopted it from a passing expression" in John Galt's 1821 novel Annals of the Parish.[6]
1907 Hastings Rashdall publishes The Theory of Good and Evil. The description of ideal utilitarianism is first used in this book.
1912 G. E. Moore publishes Ethics.
1953 Urmson publishes an influential article arguing that Mill justified rules on utilitarian principles.[7]
1971 The objection that "utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons" comes to prominence with the publication of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice.[8]
1973 In Principles, R. M. Hare accepts that rule utilitarianism collapses into act utilitarianism but claims that this is a result of allowing the rules to be "as specific and un-general as we please."[9] He argues that one of the main reasons for introducing rule utilitarianism was to do justice to the general rules that people need for moral education and character development and he proposes that "a difference between act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism can be introduced by limiting the specificity of the rules, i.e., by increasing their generality."[9]
1976 Motive utilitarianism is first proposed by Robert Merrihew Adams.[10]
1977 The concept of preference utilitarianism is first proposed by John Harsanyi in Morality and the Theory of Rational Behaviour,[11][12] however the concept is more commonly associated with R. M. Hare,[13] Peter Singer,[14] and Richard Brandt.[15]
1981 R.M. Hare publishes Moral Thinking.
1981 Organization Mouvement Anti-Utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales
1994 Necip Fikri Alican publishes Mill's Principle of Utility: A Defense of John Stuart Mill's Notorious Proof.
2003 Frederick Rosen warns that descriptions of utilitarianism can bear "little resemblance historically to utilitarians like Bentham and J. S. Mill" and can be more "a crude version of act utilitarianism conceived in the twentieth century as a straw man to be attacked and rejected."[16]

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References

  1. ↑ Hutcheson, Francis (2002) [1725]. "The Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue". In Schneewind, J. B. Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant. Cambridge University Press. p. 515. ISBN 978-0-521-00304-9. 
  2. ↑ Ashcraft, Richard (1991) John Locke: Critical Assessments (Critical assessments of leading political philosophers), Routledge, p. 691
  3. ↑ Schneewind, J. B. (1977). Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy. Oxford University Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-19-824552-0. 
  4. ↑ Hinman, Lawrence (2012). Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory. Wadsworth. ISBN 978-1-133-05001-8. 
  5. ↑ Mill, John Stuart (2010) [1863]. Utilitarianism - Ed. Heydt (Broadview Editions). Broadview Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-1-55111-501-6. Retrieved 2019-07-28. 
  6. ↑ Mill, John Stuart. 1861. Utilitarianism. n1.
  7. ↑ Urmson, J. O. (1953). "The Interpretation of the Moral Philosophy of J. S. Mill". Philosophical Quarterly. 3 (10): 33–39. JSTOR 2216697. doi:10.2307/2216697. 
  8. ↑ Rawls, John (2005). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-674-01772-6. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Hare, R. M. (1972–1973). "The Presidential Address: Principles". Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. New Series. 73: 1–18. JSTOR 4544830. doi:10.1093/aristotelian/73.1.1. 
  10. ↑ Robert Merrihew Adams, Motive Utilitarianism, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 73, No. 14, On Motives and Morals (12 August 1976), pp. 467–81
  11. ↑ Harsanyi, John C. 1977. "Morality and the theory of rational behavior." Social Research 44 (4):623–56. Template:JSTOR.
  12. ↑ Harsanyi, John C. [1977] 1982. "Morality and the theory of rational behaviour." Pp. 39–62 in Utilitarianism and Beyond, edited by A. Sen and B. Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Template:ISBN.
  13. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Hare_1981_b
  14. ↑ Singer, Peter (1979). Practical ethics (1st ed.). Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-29720-2. :Singer, Peter (1993). Practical ethics (2nd ed.). Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-43971-8. 
  15. ↑ Brandt, Richard B. (1979). A Theory of the Good and the Right. Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-824550-6. 
  16. ↑ Rosen, Frederick. 2003. Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill. Routledge. p. 32.
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