ABSTRACT

Jeremy Bentham defended the ‘principle of utility’, or ‘greatest happiness principle’, ‘that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question’. Or again, ‘that principle which states the greatest happiness of all those whose interest is in question, as being the right and proper . . . end of human action’.