Timeline of utilitarianism

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This is a timeline of utilitarianism.

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18th century Utilitarianism emerges as a distinct ethical position.

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Year 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]
1730 "in 1730, however, there appearea at the ead of a new edition of a philoso�phical work, A Dissertation concerning the Principle and Criterion of Virtue and the Origin of the Passions,3 whose author, Gay, who, . moreover, claimed to be a disciple of Locke, can be conSIaered as the true founder of the new philosophy, the Utilitarian mo@!ity and the psychology of association."[2]
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.[3]
1749 "The recognised founder of the doctrine of association was David Hartley, whose Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations first appeared in 1749. In certain ways, perhaps, he did not definitely prepare the way for the Utilitarian doctrine in so far as it was destined to make possible the formation of autonomous moral sciences, he wished to found a 'psychology' (a word which does not, I believe, occur in the writings of any of his English predecessors), a theory of human and animal intelligence, a branch of 'natural philosophy', a science which, when once the 'general laws' which govern ' phenomena ' have been discovered by means of ' analysis',. will be of a deductive or ' synthetic' character.l In this way Hartley openly introduced Newton's method and termin�ology into psychology."[2]
1751 David Hume publishes An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.
1751 ". Since the principle of sympathy can thus be regarded as a specIal form of the principle of utility, the eighteenth-century moralists who are responsible for the' moral sense' theory may in many cases be already considered 'Utilitarians '-a view of them which is confirmed by an examination of their works. }This is the meaning of the observations of John Brown in his essay, published in 1751, in which he discussed Lord Shaftesbury's treatise. According to Brown's judicious observations, Shaftesbury, by a curious linguistic survival, continued to employ an idealistic language to express ideas of utility which the Platonists had not foreseen. "[2]:13
1776 "When Gay, in his dissertation, proposed to extend the principle of association so as to explain all psychological phenomena, it was in order to form a moral philosophy based on what he might even then have called the principle of utility. In fact, however, this name occurs !for the first time in Hume; and it was to Bume that Bentham, in ' 'his first work, .The Fragment on Government, ;-vhich appeared in !1776, gave credIt for the discovery of the principle. Now Hume can justly be considered a forerunner of the Utilitarian morality, Ibut he must not be held to be the fuunder of doctrinal Utilitarianism more than of doctrinal Associationism."[2]:11
1776 "It was in 1776, in his Wealth of Nations, that Adam Smith tried to solve the economic problem by taking his stand on the principle of utility."[2]
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."[4] "Paley, who may likewise have borrowed from Priestley the main idea of his book, applied in the year 1785 in his Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy the principle of utility to the problems of morals and of theology. Happiness he defined as a sum of pleasures, which l differ only in their duration and intensity, or, more exactly, as the excess of a sum of pleasures over a sum of pains.s He htdd that moral actions differ from immoral actions by their' tendency, and that' the criterium of law is utility."[2]
1787 "In 1787, in his first attempt at political economy, Bentham adopted the fundamental ideas of Adam Smith."[2]:88
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.[5][6] 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.[7]
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.[8]
1958 The term "negative utilitarianism" was introduced by R. Ninian Smart in his reply to Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies. Smart also presents the most famous argument against negative utilitarianism:[9] that negative utilitarianism would entail that a ruler who is able to instantly and painlessly destroy the human race would have a duty to do so. Furthermore, every human being would have a moral responsibility to commit suicide, thereby preventing future suffering.[10]
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.[11]
1971 John Rawls publishes his antiutilitarian book A Theory of Justice, which rejects utilitarianism as an acceptable foundation for principles of justice.[12]
1972 English philosopher Stuart Hampshire laments that utilitarianism is no longer the bold, innovative, and even subversive doctrine that it has once been.[13]
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."[14] 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."[14]
1973 Addressing utilitarianism, Bernard Williams writes "the day cannot be too far off when we hear no more of it".[15]
1974 Robert Nozick publishes Anarchy, State and Utopia, which claims that utilitarianism ignores the basic fact of human life – namely, our 'separate existences'.[12]
1976 Motive utilitarianism is first proposed by Robert Merrihew Adams.[16]
1977 The concept of preference utilitarianism is first proposed by John Harsanyi in Morality and the Theory of Rational Behaviour,[17][18] however the concept is more commonly associated with R. M. Hare,[19] Peter Singer,[20] and Richard Brandt.[21]
1981 Literature 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."[22]

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Base literature

  • Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction, by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer.[13]

The initial version of the timeline was written by Sebastian.

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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. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Halévy, Élie (1972). The growth of philosophic radicalism. Clifton, N.J.: A.M. Kelley. ISBN 0678080054. 
  3. ↑ Ashcraft, Richard (1991) John Locke: Critical Assessments (Critical assessments of leading political philosophers), Routledge, p. 691
  4. ↑ Schneewind, J. B. (1977). Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy. Oxford University Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-19-824552-0. 
  5. ↑ Hinman, Lawrence (2012). Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory. Wadsworth. ISBN 978-1-133-05001-8. 
  6. ↑ Mill, John Stuart (2010) [1863]. Utilitarianism - Ed. Heydt (Broadview Editions). Broadview Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-1-55111-501-6. Retrieved 2019-07-28. 
  7. ↑ Mill, John Stuart. 1861. Utilitarianism. n1.
  8. ↑ 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. 
  9. ↑ Arrhenius & Bykvist 1995, p. 31.
  10. ↑ Smart 1958, p. 542.
  11. ↑ Rawls, John (2005). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-674-01772-6. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Brooke, David (2 June 2009). Q&A Jurisprudence 2009-2010. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-24201-5. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna de; Singer, Peter (2017). Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-872879-5. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 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. 
  15. ↑ Barrow, Robin (3 June 2015). Utilitarianism: A Contemporary Statement. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-40654-9. 
  16. ↑ Robert Merrihew Adams, Motive Utilitarianism, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 73, No. 14, On Motives and Morals (12 August 1976), pp. 467–81
  17. ↑ Harsanyi, John C. 1977. "Morality and the theory of rational behavior." Social Research 44 (4):623–56.
  18. ↑ 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.
  19. ↑ Hare, R.M. (1981). Moral thinking: its levels, method, and point. Oxford New York: Clarendon Press Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-824660-2. 
  20. ↑ 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. 
  21. ↑ Brandt, Richard B. (1979). A Theory of the Good and the Right. Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-824550-6. 
  22. ↑ Rosen, Frederick. 2003. Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill. Routledge. p. 32.
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