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: There is a moral obligation to be altruistic. You should help others, even at some cost to yourself. The first assumption defines personal value. The second assumption defines moral value. The altruism assumption requires the definition of a moral circle : the others to whom you should be altruistic. The moral circle could be all human beings or all sentient beings. In this es...