Week 11

1. What Really Caused the Great Depression? Please explore all the information in this lesson, including all the pages found via the menu on the left side of the screen.

2. Great Depression Myths

Week 11

Overview: 

Fascism is an authoritarian political philosophy rooted in social-Darwinism and theories of racial hierarchy. Fascists seek to elevate their nation or race group by creating a totalitarian state that seeks the mass mobilization of a nation or race through mass discipline, indoctrination, physical training, and eugenics. Fascism seeks to eradicate foreign influences that are seen as harmful to the nation, often by means of violence. Fascism emerged out of the ruins of World War I; it combines left-wing and right-wing political views. To achieve the goal of national or racial dominance, fascism seeks to purge any ideas, races, and systems which they believe are causing decadence and/or degeneration. Fascism promotes political violence and war to promote national rejuvenation. Fascists commonly use paramilitary organizations to use violence as a core aspect of their political method.

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Nazism was not only a political philosophy; it was a theory of history. Where Communism sees history as a being rooted in economic conditions and the relationship between classes, Nazism sees history through the lens of racial history. As such, Nazi History was obsessed with the idea of tracing the history of the “Aryan race” to its point of origin in modern-day Asia. One famous incident was a trip sponsored by the Nazi Party, to visit Tibet where scientists studied the local population in hopes of discovering the origins of the Nazi’s imaginary racial history.

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Adolf Hitler: SPEECH OF APRIL 12, 1922

AFTER the War production had begun again and it was thought that better times were coming, Frederick the Great after the Seven Years War had, as the result of superhuman efforts, left Prussia without a penny of debt: at the end of the World War Germany was burdened with her own debt of some 7 or 8 milliards of marks and beyond that was faced with the debts of 'the rest of the world' - the so-called 'reparations.' The product of Germany's work thus belonged not to the nation, but to her foreign creditors: 'it was carried endlessly in trains for territories beyond our frontiers. Every worker had to support another worker, the product of whose labor was commandeered by the foreigner. 'The German people after twenty-five or thirty years, in consequence of the fact that it will never be able to pay all that is demanded of it, will have so gigantic a sum still owing that practically it will be forced to produce more than it does today.' What will the end be? and the answer to that question is 'Pledging of our land, enslavement of our labor-strength. Therefore, in the economic sphere, November 1918 was in truth no achievement, but it was the beginning of our collapse.' And in the political sphere we lost first our military prerogatives, and with that loss went the real sovereignty of our State, and then our financial independence, for there remained always the Reparations Commission so that 'practically we have no longer a politically independent German Reich, we are already a colony of the outside world. We have contributed to this because so far as possible we humiliated ourselves morally, we positively destroyed our own honor and helped to befoul, to besmirch, and to deny everything which we previously held as sacred.' If it be objected that the Revolution has won for us gains in social life: they must be extraordinarily secret, these social gains - so secret that one never sees them in practical life - they must just run like a fluid through our German atmosphere. Someone may say 'Well, there is the eight-hour day!' And was a collapse necessary to gain that? And will the eight-hour day be rendered any more secure through our becoming practically the bailiff and the drudge of the other peoples? One of these days France will say: You cannot meet your obligations, you must work more. So this achievement of the Revolution is put in question first of all by the Revolution.

Then someone has said: 'Since the Revolution the people has gained Rights. The people govern!' Strange! The people have now been ruling three years and no one has in practice once asked its opinion. Treaties were signed which will hold us down for centuries: and who has signed the treaties? The people? No! Governments which one fine day presented themselves as Governments. And at their election the people had nothing to do save to consider the question: there they are already, whether I elect them or not. If we elect them, then they are there through our election. But since we are a self-governing people, we must elect the folk in order that they may be elected to govern us.

Then it was said, 'Freedom has come to us through the Revolution.' Another of those things that one cannot see very easily! It is of course true that one can walk down the street, the individual can go into his workshop and he can go out again: here and there he can go to a meeting. In a word, the individual has liberties. But in general, if he is wise, he will keep his mouth shut. For if in former times extraordinary care was taken that no one should let slip anything which could be treated as lèse-majesté, now a man must take much greater care that he doesn't say anything which might represent an insult to the majesty of a Member of Parliament.

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 After reading the speech, please answer the following questions on the blog, (250-750 words) be prepared to discuss your post in class.

  A.     Why does Hitler reference Frederick the Great?

  B.     What was Hitler’s opinion of parliaments? Why?

  C.     Knowing what Hitler eventually did, can you trace any of his later atrocities to elements in this speech?

Senior Interim Project Guidelines

Senior Interim Project: World War II Documentary

Please post any questions, concerns, and requests in the comments section. 

Research and recount an event that occurred during World War II. Your story should examine the particular event or series of events from a variety of perspectives. These perspectives should include voices from powerful individuals and everyday people, it should include events that occur in the warzone as well as on the home front, and it should include the experiences of individuals from both sides of the conflict. Try to keep your focus small, examining an overlooked event or an often unseen aspect of something that people might think they know well.

1. 1-4 Students [Group projects will include a participation element in the individual grades].

2. ~15 minutes [up to 5 minutes over is okay; filler will not be counted towards this time].

3. You must use primary sources including letters, interviews, newspapers, newsreels, and diaries. [10 primary sources] 

4. Music and sound effects should be fully integrated into the storytelling throughout the documentary.

5. Your documentary should follow the pacing and style of the posted Radiolab episode.

6. Your documentary must be historically accurate, no information may be invented, and all individuals discussed must be real [you may use real primary sources in a dramatic fashion]  

7. Sound quality and editing should evidence careful, attentive work.

8. Work should evidence familiarity with the secondary literature [5 secondary sources]

9. Sources should be submitted or indicated in the credits.

10. Final version should be posted on Youtube and the link emailed to me.  

Interim Project Example

Interim Project Example

Week 10

THE JAZZ AGE

The 1920s were an age of dramatic social and political change. For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms. The nation’s total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, and this economic growth swept many Americans into an affluent but unfamiliar “consumer society.” People from coast to coast bought the same goods (thanks to nationwide advertising and the spread of chain stores), listened to the same music, did the same dances and even used the same slang! Many Americans were uncomfortable with this new, urban, sometimes racy “mass culture”; in fact, for many–even most–people in the United States, the 1920s brought more conflict than celebration. However, for a small handful of young people in the nation’s big cities, the 1920s were roaring indeed.

THE “NEW WOMAN”

The most familiar symbol of the “Roaring Twenties” is probably the flapper: a young woman with bobbed hair and short skirts who drank, smoked and said what might be termed “unladylike” things, in addition to being more “free” than previous generations. In reality, most young women in the 1920s did none of these things (though many did adopt a fashionable flapper wardrobe), but even those women who were not flappers gained some unprecedented freedoms. They could vote at last: The 19th Amendment to the Constitution had guaranteed that right in 1920. Millions of women worked in white-collar jobs (as stenographers, for example) and could afford to participate in the burgeoning consumer economy. And new machines and technologies like the washing machine and the vacuum cleaner eliminated some of the drudgery of household work.

THE BIRTH OF MASS CULTURE

During the 1920s, many Americans had extra money to spend, and they spent it on consumer goods such as ready-to-wear clothes and home appliances like electric refrigerators. In particular, they bought radios. The first commercial radio station in the U.S., Pittsburgh’s KDKA, hit the airwaves in 1920; three years later there were more than 500 stations in the nation. By the end of the 1920s, there were radios in more than 12 million households. People also went to the movies: Historians estimate that, by the end of the decades, three-quarters of the American population visited a movie theater every week.

But the most important consumer product of the 1920s was the automobile. Low prices (the Ford Model T cost just $260 in 1924) and generous credit made cars affordable luxuries at the beginning of the decade; by the end, they were practically necessities. In 1929 there was one car on the road for every five Americans. Meanwhile, an economy of automobiles was born: Businesses like service stations and motels sprang up to meet drivers’ needs.

THE JAZZ AGE

Cars also gave young people the freedom to go where they pleased and do what they wanted.What many young people wanted to do was dance: the Charleston, the cake walk, and the flea hop. Jazz bands played at dance halls like the Savoy in New York City and the Aragon in Chicago; radio stations and phonograph records (100 million of which were sold in 1927 alone) carried their tunes to listeners across the nation. Some people objected to jazz music’s “vulgarity” and “depravity” (and the “moral disasters” it supposedly inspired), but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor.

PROHIBITION

During the 1920s, some freedoms were expanded while others were curtailed. The 18th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1919, had banned the manufacture and sale of “intoxicating liquors,” and at 12 A.M. on January 16, 1920, the federal Volstead Act closed every tavern, bar and saloon in the United States. From then on, it was illegal to sell any “intoxication beverages” with more than 0.5% alcohol. This drove the liquor trade underground–now, people simply went to nominally illegal speakeasies instead of ordinary bars–where it was controlled by bootleggers, racketeers and other organized-crime figures such as Chicago gangster Al Capone. (Capone reportedly had 1,000 gunmen and half of Chicago’s police force on his payroll.)

To many middle-class Americans, Prohibition was a way to assert some control over the unruly immigrant masses who crowded the nation’s cities. For instance, to the so-called “Drys,” beer was known as “Kaiser brew.” Drinking was a symbol of all they disliked about the modern city, and eliminating alcohol would, they believed, turn back the clock to an earlier and more comfortable time.

Week 10

Week 10

Week 9

History Overview  

In June 1914, Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot by Serbian nationalists in Sarajevo. As a result of the escalation of threats and mobilization orders following the assassination, in mid-August of that same year World War I began. A war which pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) against Great Britain, France, Russia, and Italy (the Allied Powers). The Allies were joined in 1917 by the United States of America. The Great War brought about unprecedented levels of carnage, due to its use of trench warfare and modern weaponry such as machine guns, tanks and mustard gas. By the time World War I ground to a halt in November 1918, approximately nine million soldiers had been killed and 21 million more wounded. The Treaty of Versailles, signed the following year, set post-war borders from Europe to the Middle East, established the League of Nations as an international peace organization, and forced Germany to pay for the war via reparations and the loss of territory.

PREPARE: Read the following excerpt from Woodrow Wilson’s speech (1), given on April 2, 1917, before Congress and the German government’s appeal to America not to enter the war on the Allied side (2): 

1.      We are now about to accept…battle with [Germany] and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

2.      We [Germans] are a nation that wishes to lead a quiet and industrious life.  This need hardly be stated to you Americans.  You, of all others, know the temper of the German who lives within your gates. Our love of peace is so strong that it is not regarded by us in the light of a virtue; we simply know it to be an inborn and integral portion of ourselves.  Since the foundation of the German Empire in the year 1871, we, living in the center of Europe, have given an example of tranquility and peace, never once seeking to profit by any momentary difficulties of our neighbors. Everyone is aware that we have produced great philosophers and poets; we have preached the gospel of humanity with impassioned zeal.  America fully appreciates Goethe and Kant, looks upon them as corner-stones of elevated culture.  Do you really believe that we have changed our natures, that our souls can be satisfied with military drill and servile obedience? We and all our soldiers have remained, however, the same lovers of music and lovers of exalted thought.  We have retained our old devotion to peace. Firmly believing in the justice of our cause, all parties, the conservatives and Christians; liberals and the socialists, have joined hands. All disputes are forgotten, one duty exists for all, the duty of defending our country. The war has severed us from the rest of the world; all our cable communications are destroyed.  But the winds will carry the mighty voice of justice even across the ocean.  We trust in God, and have confidence in the judgment of right-minded men. 

Week 9

Week 9

Dada Manifesto

Week 8

After the Ball, published in 1892 became the first song to sell over a million copies and began an era in which popular music increasingly came to be differentiated from the classical art music tradition.

Week 8

                                                                Jeremy Bentham, in his office.


What is Utilitarianism?

In normative ethics, a tradition stemming from the late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill that an action is right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it tends to produce the reverse of happiness—not just the happiness of the performer of the action but also that of everyone affected by it. Such a theory is in opposition to egoism, the view that a person should pursue his own self-interest, even at the expense of others, and to any ethical theory that regards some acts or types of acts as right or wrong independently of their consequences. Utilitarianism also differs from ethical theories that make the rightness or wrongness of an act dependent upon the motive of the agent; for, according to the Utilitarian, it is possible for the right thing to be done from a bad motive.

The nature of Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an effort to provide an answer to the practical question “What ought a man to do?” Its answer is that he ought to act so as to produce the best consequences possible.

Basic concepts

In the notion of consequences the Utilitarian includes all of the good and bad produced by the act, whether arising after the act has been performed or during its performance. If the difference in the consequences of alternative acts is not great, some Utilitarians do not regard the choice between them as a moral issue. According to Mill, acts should be classified as morally right or wrong only if the consequences are of such significance that a person would wish to see the agent compelled, not merely persuaded and exhorted, to act in the preferred manner.

In assessing the consequences of actions, Utilitarianism relies upon some theory of intrinsic value: something is held to be good in itself, apart from further consequences, and all other values are believed to derive their worth from their relation to this intrinsic good as a means to an end. Bentham and Mill were hedonists; i.e., they analyzed happiness as a balance of pleasure over pain and believed that these feelings alone are of intrinsic value and disvalue. Utilitarians also assume that it is possible to compare the intrinsic values produced by two alternative actions and to estimate which would have better consequences. Bentham believed that a hedonic calculus is theoretically possible. A moralist, he maintained, could sum up the units of pleasure and the units of pain for everyone likely to be affected, immediately and in the future, and could take the balance as a measure of the overall good or evil tendency of an action. Such precise measurement as Bentham envisioned is perhaps not essential, but it is nonetheless necessary for the Utilitarian to make some interpersonal comparisons of the values of the effects of alternative courses of action.

Methodologies

As a normative system providing a standard by which an individual ought to act and by which the existing practices of society, including its moral code, ought to be evaluated and improved, Utilitarianism cannot be verified or confirmed in the way in which a descriptive theory can; but it is not regarded by its exponents as simply arbitrary. Bentham believed that only in terms of a Utilitarian interpretation do words such as “ought,” “right,” and “wrong” have meaning and that whenever anyone attempts to combat the principle of utility, he does so with reasons drawn from the principle itself. Bentham and Mill both believed that human actions are motivated entirely by pleasure and pain; and Mill saw that motivation as a basis for the argument that, since happiness is the sole end of human action, the promotion of happiness is the test by which to judge all human conduct.

One of the leading Utilitarians of the late 19th century, a Cambridge philosopher, Henry Sidgwick, rejected their theories of motivation as well as Bentham's theory of the meaning of moral terms and sought to support Utilitarianism by showing that it follows from systematic reflection on the morality of “common sense.” Most of the requirements of commonsense morality, he argued, could be based upon Utilitarian considerations. In addition, he reasoned that Utilitarianism could solve the difficulties and perplexities that arise from the vagueness and inconsistencies of commonsense doctrines.

Most opponents of Utilitarianism have held that it has implications contrary to their moral intuitions—that considerations of utility, for example, might sometimes sanction the breaking of a promise. Much of the defense of Utilitarian ethics has consisted in answering these objections, either by showing that Utilitarianism does not have the implications that they claim it has or by arguing against the moral intuitions of its opponents. Some Utilitarians, however, have sought to modify the Utilitarian theory to account for the objections.

Criticisms

One such criticism is that, although the widespread practice of lying and stealing would have bad consequences, resulting in a loss of trustworthiness and security, it is not certain that an occasional lie to avoid embarrassment or an occasional theft from a rich man would not have good consequences, and thus be permissible or even required by Utilitarianism. But the Utilitarian readily answers that the widespread practice of such acts would result in a loss of trustworthiness and security. To meet the objection to not permitting an occasional lie or theft, some philosophers have defended a modification labelled “rule” Utilitarianism. It permits a particular act on a particular occasion to be adjudged right or wrong according to whether it is in accordance with or in violation of a useful rule; and a rule is judged useful or not by the consequences of its general practice. Mill has sometimes been interpreted as a “rule” Utilitarian, whereas Bentham and Sidgwick were “act” Utilitarians.

Another objection, often posed against the hedonistic value theory held by Bentham, holds that the value of life is more than a balance of pleasure over pain. Mill, in contrast to Bentham, discerned differences in the quality of pleasures that made some intrinsically preferable to others independently of intensity and duration (the quantitative dimensions recognized by Bentham). Some philosophers in the Utilitarian tradition have recognized certain wholly nonhedonistic values without losing their Utilitarian credentials. A British philosopher, G.E. Moore, a pioneer of 20th-century Analysis, regarded many kinds of consciousness—including love, knowledge, and the experience of beauty—as intrinsically valuable independently of pleasure, a position labelled “ideal” Utilitarianism. Even in limiting the recognition of intrinsic value and disvalue to happiness and unhappiness, some philosophers have argued that those feelings cannot adequately be further broken down into terms of pleasure and pain and have thus preferred to defend the theory in terms of maximizing happiness and minimizing unhappiness. It is important to note, however, that even for the hedonistic Utilitarians, pleasure and pain are not thought of in purely sensual terms; pleasure and pain for them can be components of experiences of all sorts. Their claim is that, if an experience is neither pleasurable nor painful, then it is a matter of indifference and has no intrinsic value.

Another objection to Utilitarianism is that the prevention or elimination of suffering should take precedence over any alternative act that would only increase the happiness of someone already happy. Some recent Utilitarians have modified their theory to require this focus or even to limit moral obligation to the prevention or elimination of suffering—a view labelled “negative” Utilitarianism.

Historical survey

The ingredients of Utilitarianism are found in the history of thought long before Bentham.

Antecedents of Utilitarianism among the ancients

A hedonistic theory of the value of life is found in the early 5th century BC in the ethics of Aristippus of Cyrene, founder of the Cyrenaic school, and 100 years later in that of Epicurus, founder of an ethic of retirement, and their followers in ancient Greece. The seeds of ethical universalism are found in the doctrines of the rival ethical school of Stoicism and in Christianity.

Growth of classical English Utilitarianism

In the history of English philosophy, some historians have identified Bishop Richard Cumberland, a 17th-century moral philosopher, as the first to have a Utilitarian philosophy. A generation later, however, Francis Hutcheson, a British “moral sense” theorist, more clearly held a Utilitarian view. He not only analyzed that action as best that “procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers” but proposed a form of “moral arithmetic” for calculating the best consequences. The Skeptic David Hume, Scotland's foremost philosopher and historian, attempted to analyze the origin of the virtues in terms of their contribution to utility. Bentham himself said that he discovered the principle of utility in the 18th-century writings of various thinkers: of Joseph Priestley, a dissenting clergyman famous for his discovery of oxygen; of the Frenchman Claude-Adrien Helvétius, author of a philosophy of mere sensation; of Cesare Beccaria, an Italian legal theorist; and of Hume. Helvétius probably drew from Hume, and Beccaria from Helvétius.

Another strand of Utilitarian thought took the form of a theological ethics. John Gay, a biblical scholar and philosopher, held the will of God to be the criterion of virtue; but from God's goodness he inferred that God willed that men promote human happiness.

Bentham, who apparently believed that an individual in governing his own actions would always seek to maximize his own pleasure and minimize his own pain, found in pleasure and pain both the cause of human action and the basis for a normative criterion of action. The art of governing one's own actions Bentham called “private ethics.” The happiness of the agent is the determining factor; the happiness of others governs only to the extent that the agent is motivated by sympathy, benevolence, or interest in the good will and good opinion of others. For Bentham, the greatest happiness of the greatest number would play a role primarily in the art of legislation, in which the legislator would seek to maximize the happiness of the entire community by creating an identity of interests between each individual and his fellows. By laying down penalties for mischievous acts, the legislator would make it unprofitable for a man to harm his neighbour. Bentham's major philosophical work, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), was designed as an introduction to a plan of a penal code.

With Bentham, Utilitarianism became the ideological foundation of a reform movement, later known as “philosophical radicalism,” that would test all institutions and policies by the principle of utility. Bentham attracted as his disciples a number of younger (earlier 19th-century) men. They included David Ricardo, who gave classical form to the science of economics; John Stuart Mill's father, James Mill; and John Austin, a legal theorist. James Mill argued for representative government and universal male suffrage on Utilitarian grounds; he and other followers of Bentham were advocates of parliamentary reform in England in the early 19th century. John Stuart Mill was a spokesman for women's suffrage, state-supported education for all, and other proposals that were considered radical in their day. He argued on Utilitarian grounds for freedom of speech and expression and for the noninterference of government or society in individual behaviour that did not harm anyone else. Mill's essay “Utilitarianism,” published in Fraser's Magazine (1861), is an elegant defense of the general Utilitarian doctrine and perhaps remains the best introduction to the subject. In it Utilitarianism is viewed as an ethics for ordinary individual behaviour as well as for legislation.

Late 19th- and 20th-century Utilitarianism

By the time Sidgwick wrote, Utilitarianism had become one of the foremost ethical theories of the day. His Methods of Ethics (1874), a comparative examination of egoism, the ethics of common sense, and Utilitarianism, contains the most careful discussion to be found of the implications of Utilitarianism as a principle of individual moral action.

The 20th century has seen the development of various modifications and complications of the Utilitarian theory. G.E. Moore argued for a set of ideals extending beyond hedonism by proposing that one imaginatively compare universes in which there are equal quantities of pleasure but different amounts of knowledge and other such combinations. He felt that he could not be indifferent toward such differences. The recognition of “act” Utilitarianism and “rule” Utilitarianism as explicit alternatives was stimulated by the analysis of moral reasoning in “rule” Utilitarian terms by Stephen Toulmin, a British philosopher of science and moralist, and by Patrick Nowell-Smith, a moralist of the Oxford linguistic school; by the interpretation of Mill as a “rule” Utilitarian by another Oxford Analyst, J.O. Urmson; and by the analysis by John Rawls, a Harvard moral philosopher, of the significance for Utilitarianism of two different conceptions of moral rules. “Act” Utilitarianism, on the other hand, has been defended by J.J.C. Smart, a British-Australian philosopher.

Effects of Utilitarianism in other fields

The influence of Utilitarianism has been widespread, permeating the intellectual life of the last two centuries. Its significance in law, politics, and economics is especially notable.

The Utilitarian theory of the justification of punishment stands in opposition to the “retributive” theory, according to which punishment is intended to make the criminal “pay” for his crime. According to the Utilitarian, the rationale of punishment is entirely to prevent further crime by either reforming the criminal or protecting society from him and to deter others from crime through fear of punishment.

In its political philosophy Utilitarianism bases the authority of government and the sanctity of individual rights upon their utility, thus providing an alternative to theories of natural law, natural rights, or social contract. What kind of government is best thus becomes a question of what kind of government has the best consequences—an assessment that requires factual premises regarding human nature and behaviour.

Generally, Utilitarians have supported democracy as a way of making the interest of government coincide with the general interest; they have argued for the greatest individual liberty compatible with an equal liberty for others on the ground that each individual is generally the best judge of his own welfare; and they have believed in the possibility and the desirability of progressive social change through peaceful political processes.

With different factual assumptions, however, Utilitarian arguments can lead to different conclusions. If the inquirer assumes that a strong government is required to check man's basically selfish interests and that any change may threaten the stability of the political order, he may be led by Utilitarian arguments to an authoritarian or conservative position. On the other hand, William Godwin, an early 19th-century political philosopher, assumed the basic goodness of human nature and argued that the greatest happiness would follow from a radical alteration of society in the direction of anarchistic Communism.

Classical economics received some of its most important statements from Utilitarian writers, especially Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. Ironically, its theory of economic value was framed primarily in terms of the cost of labour in production rather than in terms of the use value, or utility, of commodities. Later developments more clearly reflected the Utilitarian philosophy. William Jevons, one of the founders of the marginal utility school of analysis, derived many of his ideas from Bentham; and “welfare economics,” while substituting comparative preferences for comparative utilities, reflected the basic spirit of the Utilitarian philosophy. In economic policy, the early Utilitarians had tended to oppose governmental interference in trade and industry on the assumption that the economy would regulate itself for the greatest welfare if left alone; later Utilitarians, however, lost confidence in the social efficiency of private enterprise and were willing to see governmental power and administration used to correct its abuses.

As a movement for the reform of social institutions, 19th-century Utilitarianism was remarkably successful in the long run. Most of their recommendations have since been implemented unless abandoned by the reformers themselves; and, equally important, Utilitarian arguments are now commonly employed to advocate institutional or policy changes.

Summary and evaluation

As an abstract ethical doctrine, Utilitarianism has established itself as one of the small number of live options that must be taken into account and either refuted or accepted by any philosopher taking a position in normative ethics. In contemporary discussion it has been divorced from adventitious involvements with the analysis of ethical language and with the psychological theory with which it was presented by Bentham. Utilitarianism now appears in various modified and complicated formulations. Bentham's ideal of a hedonic calculus is usually considered a practical if not a theoretical impossibility. Present-day philosophers have noticed further problems in the Utilitarian procedures. One of them, for example, is with the process of identifying the consequences of an act—a process that raises conceptual as well as practical problems as to what are to be counted as consequences, even without precisely quantifying the value of those consequences. The question may arise whether the outcome of an election is a consequence of each and every vote cast for the winning candidate if he receives more than the number necessary for election; and in estimating the value of the consequences, one may ask whether the entire value or only a part of the value of the outcome of the election is to be assigned to each vote. There is also difficulty in the procedure of comparing alternative acts. If one act requires a longer period of time for its performance than another, one may ask whether they can be considered alternatives. Even what is to count as an act is not a matter of philosophical consensus.

These problems, however, are common to almost all normative ethical theories since most of them recognize the consequences—including the hedonic—of an act as being relevant ethical considerations. The central insight of Utilitarianism, that one ought to promote happiness and prevent unhappiness whenever possible, seems undeniable. The critical question, however, is whether the whole of normative ethics can be analyzed in terms of this simple formula.