What Is Utilitarianism?

In the book “Philosophical Problems in the Law” by David Adams he discusses the ethcial theory of utilitarianism. In his book, Adams describes utilitarianism as the idea that, “the morally right act is that which will produce the best consequences for all affected” (Adams, page 8), in other words; the best thing for a person to do to be considered a moral person is to do what is best for the greater good. This theory has many supporters, but one famous supporter, who we talked about in class, was John Stuart Mill. Mill and other philosophers believed that utilitarianism was sort of the ultimate view for people, especially people in power, to have and that it was the best view to have when trying to reform a social or legal issue. Mill felt so strongly about his views on utilitarianism that he even wrote a book about it that was published in 1863, in this book one could read about his thoughts and ideas on what utilitarianism is and why it is one of the best outlooks to have. But the founder of utilitarianism, who is widely believed to be Jeremy Bentham, had a slightly different view of what utilitarianism is. The first definition of what it ment was that the best action is the one that maximizes utility, and he described “utility” as, “the sum of all pleasure that resutls from an action, minus the suffering of anyone involved in the action. “ (Wikipedia, …show more content…
While I felt it was nessecary to include what the believed founder of utilitarianism believed this theory to be, I will be speaking for the most part about the kind of utilitarianism that John Stuart Mill believed in about the