Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

This is the first publication of these ideas in book form. 'It is a rare treat--important, original philosophy that is also a pleasure to read.

This volume makes available one of the central texts in the development of utilitarian tradition, in the authoritative 1977 edition prepared by Professors Burns and Hart as part of Bentham's Collected Works. Certain that history was on his side, Bentham sought to rid the world of the hideous mess wrought by legal obfuscation and confusion, and to transform politics into a rational, scientific activity, premised on the fundamental axiom that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is (...) the measure of right and wrong.". (shrink)

Bentham's best-known book stands as a classic of both philosophy and jurisprudence. The 1789 work articulates an important statement of the foundations of utilitarian philosophy — it also represents a pioneering study of crime and punishment. Bentham's reasoning remains central to contemporary debates in moral and political philosophy, economics, and legal theory.

Normative theories of obligation, moral and nonmoral value, and meta-ethical issues and theories are considered.

UTILITARIAN GENERALIZATION Sometimes an act is criticized just because the results of everyone's acting similarly would be bad. The generalization test ...

THE P R E F A C E, Giving fome ACCOUNT of the LIFE, WRITINGS, and CHARACTER of the AUTHOR. T"\R. FRANCIS HUTCHESON was born on the 8th of ...

Hardin demonstrates that many of these structural issues can and should be distinguished from the thornier problems of utilitarian value theory, and he is able ...

Ethics deals with two basic problems. One is what to do to have a good life from our own personal point of view, which I shall call the problem of personal wellbeing The other is what to do to have a good life from a moral point of view, which I shall call the problem of morality.

Scarce public resources require trade-offs between competing programs indifferent sectors, and the careful allocation of fixed resources within a single sector. This paper argues that a general quality of life instrument encompassing health-related and non-health-related components is suitable for determining the best trade-offs between sectors. Further, this paper suggests that subjective well-being shows the properties crucial to a general quality of life measure and has additional advantages that makes it particularly useful for the allocation of public and health care resources. (...) The paper argues that Western societies are in an unusually prosperous situation today which allows to concentrate efforts not only on reducing harm but also on improving positive states of health. Further, subjective well-being can be evaluated from the patient's perspective and incorporates a valuation of life expectancy. Criteria required for an appropriate questionnaire that measures subjective well-being are presented. (shrink)

Introduction to one of the most important, controversial, and suggestive works of moral philosophy ever written.

This volume collects a wealth of articles covering a range of topics of practical concern in the field of ethics, including active and passive euthanasia, abortion, organ transplants, capital punishment, the consequences of human actions, slavery, overpopulation, the separate spheres of men and women, animal rights, and game theory and the nuclear arms race. The contributors are Thomas Nagel, David Hume, James Rachels, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Michael Tooley, John Harris, John Stuart Mill, Louis Pascal, Jonathan Glover, Derek Parfit, R.M. Hare, (...) Janet Radcliffe Richards, Peter Singer, and Nicholas Measor. (shrink)

Two essays on utilitarianism, written from opposite points of view, by J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams. In the first part of the book Professor Smart advocates a modern and sophisticated version of classical utilitarianism; he tries to formulate a consistent and persuasive elaboration of the doctrine that the rightness and wrongness of actions is determined solely by their consequences, and in particular their consequences for the sum total of human happiness. In Part II Bernard Williams offers a sustained (...) and vigorous critique of utilitarian assumptions, arguments and ideals. He finds inadequate the theory of action implied by utilitarianism, and he argues that utilitarianism fails to engage at a serious level with the real problems of moral and political philosophy, and fails to make sense of notions such as integrity, or even human happiness itself. This book should be of interest to welfare economists, political scientists and decision-theorists. (shrink)

Chapter One Moral Issues and Moral Theory The Subject Matter of This Inquiry Until about thirty years ago, courses in ethics were devoted almost exclusively ...