{"agent_id":"bentham","agent_name":"Jeremy Bentham","slug":"utility-and-psychological-hedonism","label":"Utility and psychological hedonism: is pleasure and pain the whole of human motivation and the only measure of right?","topic":"Utility and psychological hedonism","question":"Is pleasure and pain the whole of human motivation and the only measure of right?","position":"Pleasure and pain are the two sovereign masters under whose governance nature has placed mankind. They alone point out what we ought to do and determine what we shall do. Good is pleasure or exemption from pain; evil is pain or the loss of pleasure; and these terms, examined, will yield no other meaning. Psychological hedonism is not a dogma but a fact of human nature: there is nothing by which a man can ultimately be moved but the prospect of pleasure or of pain. Motives I divide into the self-regarding, the sympathetic, and the dissocial or antipathetic; sympathy is real, but the benevolent man feels another's relief as his own pleasure, and that it passes through his own sensibility does not make it counterfeit. The standard of right is the greatest happiness of the greatest number.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Pleasure and pain are the two sovereign masters under whose governance nature has placed mankind.","n":[]},{"t":"They alone point out what we ought to do and determine what we shall do.","n":[]},{"t":"Good is pleasure or exemption from pain; evil is pain or the loss of pleasure; and these terms, examined, will yield no other meaning.","n":[]},{"t":"Psychological hedonism is not a dogma but a fact of human nature: there is nothing by which a man can ultimately be moved but the prospect of pleasure or of pain.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Motives I divide into the self-regarding, the sympathetic, and the dissocial or antipathetic; sympathy is real, but the benevolent man feels another's relief as his own pleasure, and that it passes through his own sensibility does not make it counterfeit.","n":[]},{"t":"The standard of right is the greatest happiness of the greatest number.","n":[1,2,3,4]}]],"texts":"An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), Chapters I-V; A Table of the Springs of Action (1817); Deontology (the posthumous manuscripts edited by Bowring, now Goldworth). Reception: J.S. Mill's 'Bentham' (1838) and Utilitarianism (1863) on higher and lower pleasures; the egoism charge in its standard form; John Finnis's Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980) on the irreducible 'basic goods'; Robert Nozick's experience machine in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974); Bernard Williams on integrity and the demands of utilitarianism.","works":["An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), Chapters I-V","A Table of the Springs of Action (1817)","Deontology (the posthumous manuscripts edited by Bowring, now Goldworth)"],"reception":"J.S. Mill's 'Bentham' (1838) and Utilitarianism (1863) on higher and lower pleasures; the egoism charge in its standard form; John Finnis's Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980) on the irreducible 'basic goods'; Robert Nozick's experience machine in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974); Bernard Williams on integrity and the demands of utilitarianism.","status":"The founding doctrine of modern utilitarianism. Mill softened it with the partition of higher and lower pleasures; the egoism charge is perennial; Nozick's experience machine and Finnis's basic goods are the standing contemporary objections. The preference-utilitarian tradition (Hare, Singer) keeps the ethical doctrine while detaching it from Bentham's psychology.","era":"1748-1832","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation","page":"p. 59","canonical":"","quote":"They grow among thorns; and are not to be plucked, like daisies, by infants as they run. Labour, the inevitable lot of humanity, is in no track more inevitable than here. In vain would an Alexander bespeak a peculiar road for royal vanity, or a Ptolemy, a smoother one, for royal indolence. There is no King's Road, no Stadtholder's Gate, to legislative, any more than to mathematic science.","label":"An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, p. 59"},{"n":2,"work":"First Principles Preparatory to Constitutional Code","page":"pp. 280–281","canonical":"","quote":"First principles enumerated Say in other words, the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In speaking of this end of government, call it the right and proper end of government. In general terms the proof of this position may be referred to particular experience, as brought to view by the history of all nations.","label":"First Principles Preparatory to Constitutional Code, pp. 280–281"},{"n":3,"work":"An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation","page":"pp. 80–82","canonical":"","quote":"Other principles in abundance, that is, other motives, may be the reasons why such and such an act has been done: that is, the reasons or what is our own pleasure, and pronouncing it to be his.","label":"An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, pp. 80–82"},{"n":4,"work":"First Principles Preparatory to Constitutional Code","page":"pp. 292–293","canonical":"","quote":"Unless some end in view considered in the character of a standard of reference be taken into account, the epithets good and bad will be designative of nothing but the state of human affections in relation to the subject matter to which these qualities are respectively attributed: namely of the affections of him by whom these same epithets are employed.","label":"First Principles Preparatory to Constitutional Code, pp. 292–293"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-felicific-calculus-and-the-minority","label":"The felicific calculus and the minority: can pleasures be measured and aggregated without sacrificing the few to the many?"},{"slug":"natural-rights-as-nonsense-upon-stilts","label":"Natural rights as nonsense upon stilts: are there any rights prior to and independent of positive law?"},{"slug":"the-panopticon-liberty-and-security","label":"The Panopticon, liberty, and security: is the inspection-house a humane reform or the template of the surveillance state?"},{"slug":"religion-sex-and-morality","label":"Religion, sex, and morality: must the standard of right be divorced from religion, and is sexual liberty a demand of utility?"}]}