The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Utilitarianism Also Available from Bloomsbury

The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Utilitarianism Also available from Bloomsbury Biographical Encyclopedia of British Idealism, edited by William Sweet Dictionary of Early American Philosophers, edited by John R. Shook Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers, edited by Heiner F. Klemme & Manfred Kuehn Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, edited by John R. Shook Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers, edited by John W. Yolton, John Valdimir Price & John Stephens Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Philosophers, edited by Wiep van Bunge, Henri Krop, Bart Leeuwenburgh, Han van Ruler, Paul Schuurman, & Michiel Wielema Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century French Philosophers, edited by Luc Foisneau The Biographical Encyclopedia of Islamic Philosophy, edited by Oliver Leaman The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers in America, edited by John R. Shook The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment, edited by Mark G. Spencer The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Utilitarianism, edited by James E. Crimmins Utilitarians and their Critics in America 1789-1914, edited by James E. Crimmins & Mark G. Spencer THE BLOOMSBURY ENCYCLOPEDIA of UTILITARIANISM EDITED BY James E. Crimmins Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LONDON • OXFORD • NEW YORK • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in paperback 2017 © James E. Crimmins and Contributors, 2013, 2017 James E. Crimmins has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Editor of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-0-8264-2989-6 PB: 978-1-3500-2166-2 ePDF: 978-1-3500-2168-6 ePub: 978-1-3500-2169-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Cover design: Catherine Wood Cover image © Private Collection. www.davidligare.com Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India CONTENTS Editorial Committee ��vii Preface �� ix Entries and Contributors . xiii Entries A–Z . 1 Name Index �� 577 v vi EDITORIAL COMMITTEE EDITOR James E. Crimmins EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Douglas G. Long, The University of Western Ontario Terence Ball, Arizona State University Samantha Brennan, The University of Western Ontario Brad Hooker, University of Reading David Lieberman, University of California, Berkeley Philip Schofield, University College London Anthony Skelton, The University of Western Ontario L. Wayne Sumner, University of Toronto PROJECT ADMINISTRATOR Isaac Quinn DuPont vii viii PREFACE Jeremy Bentham coined the term “utilitarian” in 1781, but the idea of “utility” as a value, goal or principle in moral, political, and economic life has a long and rich history. That history may be said to begin with the reflections of ancient philosophers on the place of the “utile” in human life. Thereafter, the noun “utilitas” passed through pagan, theological and secularized stages of usage, and divergent understandings of the meaning of “utility” emerged. When it came to be adapted for use in a variety of professionalized legal, philosophical, political, and economic contexts, utilitarians—most notably Bentham and his followers—insisted on the intrinsic unity of theory and practice in a utilitarian “praxis.” In each of these fields, different problems and issues of interpretation and application were thrown up, and different intellectual casts of characters joined battle to validate or disqualify the utilitarian approach to their subject or to the sphere of human activities in which they were interested. This encyclopedia is an attempt to capture the complex history and the multifaceted char- acter of utilitarianism in its various contexts and forms more completely than any previous source. Studies of utilitarianism hitherto have been notably compartmentalized, focusing on ethics, the sociopolitical utilitarianism epitomized in Benthamism, the genesis of Austinian jurisprudence, Millian revisionism, and more recent adaptations, applications, and debates. The present volume has a far broader mandate. Here, the reader will find entries on the authors and texts that contributed to the development of the tradition of utilitarian thinking from antiquity to the present, as well as on the issues and critics that have arisen at every stage in the history of that tradition. The reader will discover, too, ample evidence of the capacity of the theory to generate new ideas, issues, and approaches, and to foster dialogue across an expansive and eclectic intellectual spectrum, embracing the history of ideas, moral, legal, analytic, and political philosophy, economics, religion, psychology, and other fields of study. The statistically inclined might wish to quantify the level of interest in these domains and across periods of time. However, for those more disposed to visual depiction, we might imag- ine the utilitarian tradition as an ancient but still living tree. From its roots in antiquity, it has grown over the centuries, cross-fertilized with other ideational traditions drawn from natural philosophy, humanism, and the sciences, and formed a dense and unyielding trunk from which new branches continue to sprout and foliage blooms. From time to time, the organism has been buffeted by the contending winds of competing theories, and there have been occasional attempts to take an axe to the entire extraordinary structure. But, like one of Tasmania’s arched and pendulous Huon pines, utilitarianism has withstood the test of time, and there is good reason to expect that it will continue to flourish long into the future, putting the lie to Bernard Williams’ imprudent prediction in 1973 that “the day cannot be too far off in which we hear no more of it.” ix Preface There are over 220 entries in the encyclopedia, authored by some 120 scholars from all parts of the globe. Many more entries might have been included, and undoubtedly the critic will find reason to quibble with the final list of contents: such and such a topic surely war- ranted inclusion and how could the editor omit this philosopher or that. All I can say is that settling the final lineup of entries was no easy matter. The aim was to be as comprehensive and relevant as possible, while giving important subjects enough room for authors to do them justice. Necessarily, the limitations of space have determined that certain topics, historical figures and contemporary scholars did not make the editorial cut. I wish it could have been otherwise. It would be presumptuous to attempt to summarize the multifarious contents of this volume. However, a cursory overview will provide the reader with a suggestive guide. Naturally, many historical figures occupy these pages, from Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Confucius, and later progenitors of the theory like Richard Cumberland, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Joseph Butler, John Gay, David Hartley, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Claude Adrien Helvétius, Cesare Beccaria, Joseph Priestley, William Godwin, and William Paley, to the classical utilitarians, Bentham, the Mills and Sidgwick, and more recent contributors to the utilitarian tradition like J. J. C. Smart, John Harsanyi, James Griffin, Shelly Kagan, Peter Singer, and Brad Hooker. Among the political economists, the reader will find Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Jean-Baptiste Say, the Physiocrats, F. Y. Edgeworth, William Stanley Jevons, Alfred Marshall, Arthur Cecil Pigou, and Lionel Robbins. Legal scholars and jurists include John Austin, H. L. A. Hart, and the Americans David Hoffman, John Codman Hurd, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Major critics are also featured, such as Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Babington Macaulay, William Whewell, the Idealists, Friedrich Hayek, Bernard Williams, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, David Gauthier, and Derek Parfit. Among the lesser lights in the utilitarian orbit, the reader will find the Cambridge utilitarians George and John Grote, John Fawcett, Joseph B. Mayor, and John Rickards Mozley, and Americans like Thomas Cooper, Richard Livingston, John Neal, Richard Hildreth, and John L. O’Sullivan. A number of historians and commentators on the utilitarian tradition have been included, notably Leslie Stephen and Elie Halévy. Related schools of thought and theories are represented, including Evolutionary Theory, Game Theory, Public Choice Theory, Pragmatism, Preferentialism, and Welfarism, as are important aspects

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