utilitarianism

[yoo-til-i-tair-ee-uh-niz-uh m]

SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR utilitarianism ON THESAURUS.COM

noun

the ethical doctrine that virtue is based on utility, and that conduct should be directed toward promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of persons.

Origin of utilitarianism

First recorded in 1820–30; utilitarian + -ism

Related formsan·ti·u·til·i·tar·i·an·ism, noun

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Related Words for utilitarianism

pragmatism, heterodoxy, advantage, advisability, benefit, convenience, effectiveness, efficiency, fitness, helpfulness, opportunism, opportunity, order, policy, practicality, propriety, prudence, suitability, usefulness, utility

Examples from the Web for utilitarianism

Contemporary Examples of utilitarianism

But here's what utilitarianism, according to Williams, leaves out of the picture: individual agency.
A Sophistic Moral Case For War
Ali Gharib
October 27, 2012

Historical Examples of utilitarianism

But the mischievousness of Utilitarianism does not stop here.
Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics
William Thomas Thornton
Utilitarianism was too much for it, and its stones fell to Macadam.
Highways & Byways in Sussex
E.V. Lucas
It is nothing but utilitarianism, pure and simple, after all.
On the Genesis of Species
St. George Mivart
This question is often ignored in expositions of Utilitarianism.
The Methods of Ethics
Henry Sidgwick
And Utilitarianism, as we saw, admits this maxim no less than other systems of Ethics.
The Methods of Ethics
Henry Sidgwick

British Dictionary definitions for utilitarianism

utilitarianism

noun ethics

the doctrine that the morally correct course of action consists in the greatest good for the greatest number, that is, in maximizing the total benefit resulting, without regard to the distribution of benefits and burdens

the theory that the criterion of virtue is utility

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for utilitarianism

1827, from utilitarian + -ism.

utilitarianism in Culture

utilitarianism

A system of ethics according to which the rightness or wrongness of an action should be judged by its consequences. The goal of utilitarian ethics is to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher, was the founder of utilitarianism; John Stuart Mill was its best-known defender.