Hedonic Utilitarianism
Essay from the book Lucifer’s Question . Hedonic utilitarianism is the tacit moral theory of the modern West. It is rarely stated explicitly, but it is implicit in most moral discourse. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill proposed hedonic utilitarianism as a philosophical theory of value. See Classical Utilitarianism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Hedonic utilitarianism has two core assumptions: Hedonism: Pain is intrinsically bad for the experiencer, pleasure is intrinsically good for the experiencer, and nothing else is intrinsically bad or good. Altruism: We have a moral obligation to act for the good of others, not just for our own good. Altruism depends on the definition of a moral circle: the others to whom we should be altruistic. The moral circle could be all human beings or all sentient beings. In this essay, I will assume the latter. Given the hedonism assumption, it is the least arbitrary choice. The hedonic utilitarian believes that