ABSTRACT
Thomas Robert Malthus was believed by several historians of economic thought to have been a utilitarian. The alternative between Malthus the Utilitarian and Malthus the Christian Moral Thinker has emerged again in a dispute between Samuel Hollander and Donald Winch. James Bonar’s claim, uncritically followed by others, that Malthus had been basically a ‘utilitarian’ is accordingly either irreparably vacuous or blatantly false. Malthus was a Utilitarian on principle, even a more consequent Utilitarian than Bentham, but he adopted different views on such individual issues as moral motivation and the definition of virtue. Winch has defended in several contributions an approach to the history of economic thought as well as an overall view of Malthus that are almost opposite to Hollander’s. Hollander, in an article of 1989 and then in his monumental monograph of 1997, seems in his final outcome to coagulate the results of almost two centuries cross-purpose by adding the catalyst of the logical-empiricist dichotomy between science and ethics.
