List of utilitarians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an incomplete list of advocates of utilitarianism and/or consequentialism.

Deceased

Ancient & Medieval

17th century

18th century

John Brown^[5]^: 502
Cesare Beccaria^[7]
Jeremy Bentham^[8]
Thomas Cooper^[5]^{: 100–103}
Soame Jenyns^[9]
William Johnson Fox^[5]^{: 172–173}
Anthony Hammond^[5]^: 198
Claude Adrien Helvétius^[10]
Baron d'Holbach^[11]
Francis Hutcheson^[12]
Edmund Law^[13]
James Mill^[14]
John Neal^[5]^{: 367–369}
William Paley^[15]
Joseph Priestley^[16]
Jean Baptiste Say^[5]^{: 497–499}
Thomas Rutherforth^[13]
Thomas Southwood Smith^[5]^{: 525–527}
Thomas Perronet Thompson^[5]^{: 545–547}
William Thompson^[5]^{: 547–548}
Abraham Tucker^[13]

19th century

20th century

Living

References

[1]
Scarre, Geoffrey (November 1994). "Epicurus as a Forerunner of Utilitarianism". Utilitas. 6 (2): 219–231. doi:10.1017/S0953820800001606. ISSN 1741-6183. S2CID 145265333.
[2]
Mendenhall, Grace H. (2013). Mozi: the Man, the Consequentialist, and the Utilitarian (Bachelors of Arts thesis). College of William and Mary.
[3]
Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters. Brill. 2021. p. 280. ISBN 978-90-04-44481-2. Retrieved 2023-05-31.
[4]
Clegg, B. (2013). Roger Bacon: The First Scientist. Little, Brown Book Group. p. 141. ISBN 978-1-4721-1212-5. Retrieved 2023-05-31.
[5]
Crimmins, James E. (2013). The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Utilitarianism. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-0-8264-2989-6.
[6]
F. B. Kaye, "The Writings of Bernard Mandeville: a Biographical Survey,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 20, no. 4 (1921): 419–67 ("one of the most important figures in the development of eighteenth-century utilitarianism")
[7]
'Dei delitti e delle pene' (Of Crime and Punishment), Milan, 1764.
[8]
'Essay on Utilitarianism, Long Version', in Amnon Goldworth (ed.), Deontology; together with A table of the springs of action; and the Article on Utilitarianism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.
[9]
Porter, Roy (2000-12-23). "Happy hedonists". BMJ. 321 (7276): 1572–1575. doi:10.1136/bmj.321.7276.1572/a. ISSN 0959-8138. PMC 1119255. PMID 11124182. Happiness is the only thing of real value in existence
[10]
Hoesch, Matthias (September 2018). "From Theory to Practice: Bentham's Reception of Helvétius". Utilitas. 30 (3): 294–316. doi:10.1017/S0953820817000309. ISSN 0953-8208.
[11]
LeBuffe, Michael (2020), "Paul-Henri Thiry (Baron) d'Holbach", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2020-07-31
[12]
"Francis Hutcheson's early formulation of the principle of "the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers" (1726)". Online Library of Liberty. Retrieved 2020-07-31.
[13]
Heydt, Colin (2014-01-30), "Utilitarianism before Bentham", in Eggleston, Ben; Miller, Dale E. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism (1 ed.), Cambridge University Press, pp. 16–37, doi:10.1017/cco9781139096737.002, ISBN 978-1-139-09673-7, retrieved 2021-03-22
[14]
Ball, Terence (2018), "James Mill", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2020-07-31
[15]
Smith, Wilson (1954). "William Paley's Theological Utilitarianism in America". The William and Mary Quarterly. 11 (3): 402–424. doi:10.2307/1943313. ISSN 0043-5597. JSTOR 1943313.
[16]
Canovan, Margaret (1984). "The Un-Benthamite Utilitarianism of Joseph Priestley". Journal of the History of Ideas. 45 (3): 435–450. doi:10.2307/2709234. ISSN 0022-5037. JSTOR 2709234.
[17]
The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, London, 1832.
[18]
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bailey, Samuel" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 03 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 217–218.
[19]
Selected Writings on Ethics and Politics, Amsterdam 2007.
[20]
The religion of an artist, 1926 ("My standard is frankly utilitarian. As far as morality is intuitive, I think it may be reduced to an inherent impulse of kindliness towards our fellow citizens.")
[21]
Darwin, Charles (1874). The Descent of Man. pp. 393. As all men desire their own happiness, praise or blame is bestowed on actions and motives, according as they lead to this end; and as happiness is an essential part of the general good, the greatest-happinesss principle indirectly serves as a nearly safe standard of right and wrong.
[22]
Mathematical Psychics, London: Kegan Paul, 1881; New and Old Methods of Ethics, Oxford and London: James Parker, 1877, 56-57 ("‘Méchanique Sociale’ may one day take her place along with ‘Mécanique Celeste’, throned each upon the double-sided height of one maximum principle, the supreme pinnacle of moral as of physical science. As the movements of each particle, constrained or loose, in a material cosmos are continually subordinated to one maximum sum-total of accumulated energy, so the movements of each soul, whether selfishly isolated or linked sympathetically, may continually be realizing the maximum energy of pleasure, the Divine love of the universe.")
[23]
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Political Justice. 1st edition.
[24]
The Economy of Happiness, Boston, 1906.
[25]
Utilitarianism, London, 1863.
[26]
Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis, Chicago: Ward Waugh, 1899, pp. 79–80 ("Each living being of the universe, therefore, sustains to every other living being the relation of possible right and wrong, but to the insentient universe no such relation exists. Right is that relation which is conducive to happiness, or welfare, or complete living, or whatever synonym is preferred. Wrong is that which conduces to the opposite of happiness—misery, ill-fare, maladaptation.").
[27]
A Theory of the Good and the Right, Amherst: Prometheus, 1998.
[28]
'Utilitarismo', in Victoria Camps, Osvaldo Guariglia and Fernando Salmerón (eds.), Concepciones de la ética, Madrid: Trotta: 1992, pp. 269-295.
[29]
'Ethical Theory and Utilitarianism', in H. D. Lewis, Contemporary British Philosophy, Vol. 4, London: Allen and Unwin.
[30]
'Morality and the Theory of Rational Behavior', Social Research, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 623-56.
[31]
The Foundations of Morality, Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 1964.
[32]
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, London: Routledge, 2000 [London: Allen and Unwin, 1969, Vol. 1], p. 39 ("It appeared to me obvious that the happiness of mankind should be the aim of all action, and I discovered to my surprise that there were those who thought otherwise. Belief in happiness, I found, was called Utilitarianism, and was merely one among a number of ethical theories. I adhered to it after this discovery.").
[33]
'An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics', in J. J. C. Smart and B. Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
[34]
The Rational Foundations of Ethics, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988.
[35]
Fried, Barbara (2020). Facing Up to Scarcity: The Logic and Limits of Nonconsequentialist Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. xv. ISBN 978-0198847878.
[36]
Supporting the case against empathy--Jonathan Baron interviewed by Edwin Rutsch, YouTube, 6:01.
[37]
"Yves Bonnardel: l'antispéciste qui n'aimait pas la nature" [Yves Bonnardel: the anti-speciesist who did not like nature]. Usbek&Rica (in French). 2016-08-22. Retrieved 2020-07-26.
[38]
"About Us | Utilitarianism.net". utilitarianism.net. Retrieved 2025-08-18.
[39]
Stubborn Attachments ("I sometimes call myself a 'two-thirds utilitarian'").
[40]
(University of Toronto Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8020-9594-7)
[41]
Ideal Code, Real World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
[42]
Kaufmann, Eric (2010). Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-first Century. Profile Books. p. 266. ISBN 9781846681448. ("As a utilitarian, I believe that the maximisation of collective happiness is the proper end of humanity.")
[43]
Member of Facebook Utilitarians group.
[44]
Parker, Ian (August 2, 2004), "The Gift", The New Yorker, vol. 80, pp. 54–63
[45]
Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, London: Penguin, 2005, pp. 4, 112 ("[My] philosophy is that of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, as articulated by Jeremy Bentham. [...] I believe Bentham's idea was right and that we should fearlessly adopt it and apply it to our lives.").
[46]
From the point of view of the universe Archived 2018-03-21 at the Wayback Machine, 3:AM Magazine, September 6, 2015 ("Yes, together with Sidgwick, we are act-utilitarians.").
[47]
de Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna; Singer, Peter (2017). Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 110. ISBN 9780198728795.
[48]
"I'm a cosmopolitan utilitarian." Dylan Matthews, "You have $8 billion. You want to do as much good as possible. What do you do?". Vox (April 24, 2015).
[49]
'An Argument for Utilitarianism', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 11, no. 2 (1981), pp. 229-239 (with Peter Singer).
[50]
'Reasons without Demands: Rethinking Rightness', in James Dreier (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006, p. 39 ("Many utilitarians (myself included) believe [...]").
[51]
Olivier, David (1992-01-07). "En défense de l'utilitarisme" [In defense of utilitarianism]. Les Cahiers antispécistes (in French). Retrieved 2020-04-11.
[52]
The Hedonistic Imperative, §2.19 ("The utilitarian ethic championed here [...]").
[53]
Steven Pinker - Too Much Morality? | London Real, retrieved 2021-03-22
[54]
'Vegetarianism', in Tom L. Beauchamp and R. G. Frey (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press ("As a utilitarian, I...").
[55]
In the introduction to his book The Happiness Philosophers, Princeton University Press, 2017 p2, Schultz says he "offers two cheers for utilitarianism", explaining that he "offers two cheers because some of the criticisms of utilitarianism are very serious. But then, two cheers may be about the best any developed ethical and political theory can hope for ...".
[56]
'The Singer Solution to World Poverty', The New York Times Magazine, September 5, 1999, pp. 60-63 ("for a utilitarian philosopher like myself [...]").
[57]
'The wisdom of Cass Sunstein', EconLog, July 19, 2014.
[58]
Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
[59]
Hedonistic Utilitarianism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998.
[60]
The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, Vintage, 1995, p. 341 ("although utilitarianism was Darwin's and Mill's solution to the moral challenge of modern science, it isn't everyone's. Nor is this chapter intended to make it everyone's (although, I admit, it's mine).").

Ancient & Medieval

17th century

18th century

19th century

20th century

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