![]() From this, Bentham devised the principle of utility:Īn action is good if it leads to the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people It is the nature of the human animal to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so that’s all there is for morality to be about. We can say that we value something other than pleasure, but Bentham claims we would just be pretending. This means that it is human nature to find pleasure good and pain bad, which Bentham goes on claim suggests that it is pleasure and pain which determine what we ought to do as well as what we will do. “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure’” – Bentham. Such an understanding involved no longer considering ourselves as a special part of creation, but as just a part of nature. He was one of the first atheist philosophers and wanted to devise a morality that would reflect an atheistic understanding of what it meant to be human. Jeremy Bentham invented the first form of Utilitarianism – Act utilitarianism. Ethics This page: full notes A* summary notes C/B summary notes Bentham’s Act utilitarianism ![]()
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