What is the principle of utility?

Jeremy Bentham, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Jeremy Bentham answers

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure, and it is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.¹ Every effort to throw off that subjection serves only to demonstrate and confirm it; in words a man may pretend to abjure their empire, but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while.¹

The principle of utility recognises this subjection and assumes it for the foundation of that system whose object is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law.² It approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever according to the tendency which that action appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question — and I say of every action whatsoever, not only of a private individual, but of every measure of government.³

By utility I mean that property in any object whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness — all of which, in the present case, come to the same thing — or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness.⁴ Quantity is the sole measure of value where pleasure is concerned: shape and source are, considered in themselves, matters of indifference, save where from a pleasure in one shape pain is produced that would not have been produced from a pleasure taken in another shape — in which case what claims consideration is not the shape itself but the purity or impurity of the pleasure.⁵

A pleasure is impure in so far as the act producing it produces pain alongside it; fruitful in so far as further pleasure follows at a subsequent time. Asceticism — any doctrine by which men are engaged to forego pleasure for any cause other than the procurement of still greater pleasure or the avoidance of a more than equivalent pain — is the exact contrary of this principle.⁵

Systems that attempt to question the governance of pain and pleasure deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.⁶²

Sources

1. Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.

   An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, p. 59

2. The principle of utility recognises this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.

   An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, p. 59

3. By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question... I say of every action whatsoever; and therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government.

   An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, pp. 59–60

4. By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, (all this in the present case comes to the same thing) or (what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.

   An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, pp. 59–60

5. quantity is the sole measure of value... if, from pleasure in a certain shape or from a certain source, pain be produced which, by pleasure of the same sort reaped in some other shape or from some other source, would not be produced, thus far indeed and in this respect shape and source have a claim to consideration: but still in this case it is not the shape or the source which in itself possesses the claim to consideration—it is the purity or impurity of the pleasure.

   Not Paul, But Jesus Vol III, Doctrine, pp. 18–19

6. By asceticism I understand any system or article of doctrine in and by which endeavours are used to engage men to forego pleasure in any shape for any other cause than the procurement of still greater pleasure in the same or some other shape, or the avoidance of pain to an amount more than equivalent.

   Not Paul, But Jesus Vol III, Doctrine, p. 11