Journal of the History of Philosophy

Notes and Discussions A NOTE ABOUT BENTHAM ON EQUALITY AND ABOUT THE GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE I In discussing Bentham's "Greatest Happiness Principle" (this Journal, July 1969), Amnon Goldworth argues for the claim that Bentham endorsed the maximization of happiness and cared about its distribution only insofar as its distribution affects its maximization. This claim is associated with A. J. Ayer. It was also asserted by Leslie Stephen and, more recently, by P. Burne and by John Plamenatz. 2 But in speaking of "Bentham's prindple 'Everyone to count for one and nobody for more than one'," so distinguished a philosopher as Hastings Rashdall said, "It was put forward by Bentham... as a canon for the distribution of happiness. He saw clearly enough that his 'greatest happiness' principle . . . stands in need of this or some other supplementary canon before it can be available for practical application." And Rashdall immediately made plain the need he thought Bentham had seen: Rashdall next said, "It is obvious that in a community of a hundred persons we might produce the greatest possible happiness.., in a variety of ways. It would be quite legitimate, so far as the greatest happiness principle is concerned, to give the whole . . . to twenty-five . . . provided that by so doing we could make each of these twenty-five four times as happy as we should make each of the hundred by an equal distribution .... ,, a I believe that RashdaU erred here in his understan~ng of Bentham, and I accept Goldworth's claim. But none of the proponents of Goldworth's claim has presented the evidence that I shall offer below. Goldworth uses for evidence a fact that, as he realizes, gives only probabilistic support to his position. I shall call attention to his reasoning, because the reason his argument is not deductively 1 For their advice about this note, I am grateful to Professors J. D. Wallace, R. L. Schacht, Ms. S. Wallace, to the careful editors of this Journal, and to Professor J. H. Burns; I am also grateful to University College, London, whose Libraxian permitted me to study on microfilm, and to quote from, some of the Bentham manuscripts in the keeping of his College. 2 See Alfred J. Ayer, "The Principle of Utility," in Jeremy Bentham and the Law: A Symposium, eds. George W. Keeton and G. Schwartzenberger (London, 1948). The essay is reprinted in A. I. Ayer, Philosophical Essays (London, 1963). See also L. Stephen, The English Utilitarians (London, 1950), I, 238, 295-299, 307-309; P. Burne, "Bentham and the Utilitarian Principle," Mind, LVIII (1949), 367-368; J. Plamenatz, The English Utilitarians, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1966), p. 83. (Goldworth In. 8, pp. 316-317, at 317] and Burne are critical of the Ayer essay.) s All of these quotations from RashdaU are from H. Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil: A Treatise on Moral Philosophy (Oxford, 1907), I, 222-224. [237] 238 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY valid is a reason utilitarianism has a major virtue and a major vice. And I shall say something to explain (as Goldworth does not) the compatibility between Goldworth's claim and the fact that Bentham endorsed the principle that J. S. Mill at least once referred to as "Bentham's dictum": Everyone to count for one and nobody for more than one. 4 The first section of this note is concerned with the evidence that I offer on Goldworth's behalf. In that section, I also consider the pertinent virtue and vice of utilitarianism, as well as Bentham's dictum. In the second section, I discuss another, and very well-known, bit of confirmation for Goldworth's opinion. Goldworth is aware of its bare existence; but he fails to see its value, because he does not realize who its author was or bow it came to be written. Someone might, however, deliberately decline to rely on it for reasons that are themselves worth perusal, and they will occupy us briefly. In III, I consider a suggestion of Goldworth's, made by him in passing, that Bentham took the phrase, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," from Beccaria. This attribution to Beccaria should be associated with Sorley, but...