Utilitarianism

(Lat. utilis, useful) is a modern form of the Hedonistic ethical 
theory which teaches that the end of human conduct is happiness, 
and that consequently the discriminating norm which distinguishes 
conduct into right and wrong is pleasure and pain. In the words of 
one of its most distinguished advocates, John Stuart Mill, 

the creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility or 
the greatest happiness principle, holds that actions are right in 
proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend 
to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended 
pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the 
privation of pleasure (Utilitarianism, ii, 1863). 

Although the term Utilitarianism did not come into vogue until it 
had been adopted by Bentham, and until the essential tenets of the 
system had already been advocated by many English philosophers, it 
may be said that, with the important exception of Helvetius (De 
l'esprit, 1758), from whom Bentham seems to have borrowed, all the 
champions of this system have been English. The favour which it 
has enjoyed in English speculation may be ascribed in a great 
measure to the dominance of Locke's teaching, that all our ideas 
are derived exclusively from sense experience. This 
epistemological doctrine, hostile to all shades of intentionalism, 
finds its ethical complement in the theory that our moral ideas of 
right and wrong, our moral judgments, and conscience itself are 
derived originally from the experienced results of actions. 

Tracing the stream of Utilitarian thought from its sources, we may 
start with Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651), whose fundamental ethical 
axiom is that right conduct is that which promotes our own 
welfare; and the social code of morals depends for its 
justification on whether or not it serves the wellbeing of those 
who observe it. A Protestant divine, Richard Cumberland (De