Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T14:18:10.818Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Utilitarianism, God, and Moral Obligation from Locke to Sidgwick

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 August 2019

Warren Breckman
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Peter E. Gordon
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

The standard account of the origin of utilitarianism is derived from Leslie Stephen, who argued that the doctrine developed from the rejection by John Locke (1632–1704) of innate ideas and his identification of good and evil with pleasure and pain, respectively. Stephen identified two strands of utilitarianism. One strand was ‘theological utilitarianism,’ propounded by a ‘school’ of moral philosophers, most famously represented by William Paley (1743–1805), which held that what was useful or expedient, and hence virtuous, was what accorded with God’s will, and thereby attached a religious sanction to utilitarian moral behavior. If men were virtuous, that is, promoted the happiness of the community and hence did God’s will, they would be rewarded in an afterlife with the pleasures of heaven, but if they were vicious, they would suffer the pains of hell. The other strand was developed by David Hume (1711–1776) and borrowed in essentials by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), and aimed to formulate a ‘scientific’ system of morality. The foundation of ethics was laid in an objective human psychology, which was common to all men and would motivate them in the same way, all other circumstances being equal. Taking Bentham and Paley as the representative thinkers of the two strands, Stephen remarked that “The relation … of Bentham’s ethical doctrines to Paley’s may be expressed by saying that Bentham is Paley minus a belief in hell-fire.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×