Abstract

What does a Utilitarian mean by happiness when he says that it is the good? Specifically, pleasure. But how many different kinds of experiences are included under this term? It appears that as the word was used by Bentham, and indeed by almost all other hedonists, it had so wide an extension that it included all experiences not properly termed "unhappiness." Partly, however, because of the identification of happiness with pleasure and the absence of pain, and partly because of a failure to emphasize by frequent explanation the difference between the meanings of terms as used by hedonists and the same terms in common usage, there has existed at all times a disposition to assume that hedonists intended a narrower meaning than they actually did. Even in hedonistic writings there has been a tendency to make a distinction between the usages accorded "pleasure" and "happiness," the former as used more frequently to refer to pleasures of the moment, and the latter to a long continued state of felicific feeling; or a distinction is made between "pleasure" as used when referring to happiness which has an immediately obvious physiological origin and "happiness" to felicific feeling of all types. Nevertheless, the terms are not used consistently in this way, and on the whole it would be better to think of "pleasure" and "happiness" as interchangeable in the writings of Jeremy Bentham and many others.