POL 4 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Cyrenaics, Newnham College, Cambridge, Scottish Enlightenment
7 Mar 2018
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Utilitarianism"s goal is easy to state: the greatest happiness of the greatest. The quote is from francis hutcheson, a scottish enlightenment figure (inquiry into number (a. k. a. Greatest happiness principle or ghp) the original of our ideas of beauty and virtue, 1725). Many people think of it in different ways. Relationship between how crowded the earth is, and how much happiness there is. I will proceed by listing the great utilitarians, past and present, discussing the theories of bentham & sidgwick (the so-called classical utilitarians ), and offering a taxonomy of utilitarian theories. Most contemporary utilitarians are average utilitarians not ultimate utilitarians. Aristippus of cyrene - 5th/4th c. bc greek; cyrenaics; hedonist. Epicurus - 4th/3rd c. bc greek; epicureans; ascetic pain-minimizer. Lucretius - 1st c. bc roman; poet and disciple of epicurus. Modern world (also: hutcheson himself, francis edgeworth, etc. ) Claude helvetius - 18th c. french; major influence on bentham and mill. James mill (1773-1836) british; disciple of bentham.
