John Stuart Mill’s (1806-1873) father, James Mill, was an outspoken advocate of utilitarianism and a friend of Jeremy Bentham, its founder. John Mill was born into a household steeped in utilitarian ...

In a philosophy seminar many years ago I called utilitarian ethics ‘the moral view from nowhere’. Like so many smart-ass undergrads I was riffing from a work that I knew my philosophy peers would have ...

The last time my wife and I were in London together, we had dinner at the Garrick Club with an eminent political philosopher and his wife. We’d walked out on some horrible West End play after the ...

IN THE grand scheme of things Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are normally thought of as good guys. Between them, they came up with the ethical theory known as utilitarianism. The goal of this ...

Utilitarianism is the philosophical doctrine according to which happiness is the sole intrinsic value -- the only thing that is good in itself. Although invented by 19th-century Britons, notably ...