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Utilitarianism is John Stuart Mill's classic discourse and defense of utilitarian ethics. The work has three main aims; to explain what utilitarianism is, to argue that it is the best theory for ethics, and to defend it against criticisms that Mill believed it would receive.Mill... Read Full Overview

There are few circumstances among those which make up the present condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than the little progress which... Read Full Overview

How do we decide what is "good" and what is "bad"? According to the ethical theory of Utilitarianism, to do good is to "always perform that act, of those available, that will bring the most happiness or the least unhappiness." By far the most widely read introduction to this... Read Full Overview

Mill's Utilitarianism is one of the most important, controversial, and suggestive works of moral philosophy ever written. Mill defends the view that all human action should produce the greatest happiness overall, and that happiness itself is to be understood as consisting in... Read Full Overview

Edited by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, "the acknowledged heirs of the founders of utilitarianism" (Jeff McMahan), the Norton Library edition of Utilitarianism features the complete text of the seventh (1879) edition, preceded by a thorough introduction to the work's... Read Full Overview

Mill's Utilitarianism is one of the most important, controversial, and suggestive works of moral philosophy ever written. Mill defends the view that all human action should produce the greatest happiness overall, and that happiness itself is to be understood as consisting in... Read Full Overview

Utilitarianism John Stuart MILL (1806 - 1873) John Stuart Mill's book Utilitarianism is one of the most influential and widely-read philosophical defenses of utilitarianism in ethics. The essay first appeared as a series of three articles published in Fraser's Magazine in 1861;... Read Full Overview

Utilitarianism is philosopher John Stuart Mill's defense and advocacy of utilitarian ethics. First appearing in three magazine articles, this essay was first gathered into a single book in 1863. While Mill discusses utilitarian ethical principles in some of his other writings... Read Full Overview

John Stuart Mill's book Utilitarianism is a philosophical defense of utilitarianism in ethics. The essay first appeared as a series of three articles published in Fraser's Magazine in 1861. Utilitarianism is the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its... Read Full Overview

Utilitarianism brilliantly expounds a pragmatic ethic based on one controversial proposition. Mill believed that happiness was the only thing humans do and should desire for its own sake. Since happiness is the only intrinsic good, and since more happiness is preferable to less,... Read Full Overview

Introduction to Utilitarian philosophy

Utilitarianism is a classic work of ethical theory, arguably the most persuasive and comprehensible presentation of this widely influential position. While he didn't invent utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill offered its clearest expression and strongest defense, and he expanded... Read Full Overview

Born in 1806, John Stuart Mill was a prodigy: at six he had had written a history of Rome and by eight he was reading both Plato and Sophocles in the original Greek. Open-minded and magnanimous, in early adulthood John Stuart Mills was far ahead of his time, espousing just... Read Full Overview