Utilitarianism is the “Spreadsheet of Morality.” It is a consequentialist philosophy, which means it doesn’t care about your intentions, your prayers, or your “good heart.” It only cares about the results.

If the world is a better place after you act than it was before, you did a “good” thing. If you tried to save a puppy but accidentally burned down a hospital, the Utilitarian would—mathematically speaking—be forced to call you a villain. It is a philosophy of cold, hard efficiency designed to maximize happiness and minimize suffering.

The Hedonic Calculus

The movement was launched by Jeremy Bentham, an eccentric Englishman who was so dedicated to his ideas that he requested his body be preserved and put on display in a glass case (you can still visit his “auto-icon” at University College London).

Bentham believed that all human behavior is governed by two masters: Pain and Pleasure. He proposed the Hedonic Calculus, a literal formula to measure the moral value of an action.

To Bentham, you had to weigh an action based on seven variables:

• Intensity: How strong is the pleasure?
• Duration: How long does it last?
• Certainty: How likely is it to happen?
• Propinquity: How soon will it occur?
• Fecundity: Will it lead to even more pleasure later?
• Purity: How much pain is mixed in with it?
• Extent: How many people are affected?

The Quality Control (Mill’s Pivot)

It suggested that a pig eating slop was as “moral” as a human reading poetry, provided the pig was really, really enjoying the slop.

John Stuart Mill stepped in to argue that not all pleasures are created equal. He introduced Qualitative Utilitarianism, arguing that intellectual and moral pleasures are “higher” than mere physical ones. This saved the philosophy from being a manual for mindless hedonism, but it added a layer of elitist judgment that philosophers have been arguing about ever since.

Act vs. Rule: The Strategy

The philosophy eventually split into two main tactical camps:

1. Act Utilitarianism: You calculate the utility for every single individual action. (Should I steal this loaf of bread right now to feed this specific hungry person?)
2. Rule Utilitarianism: You follow rules that, if everyone followed them, would lead to the greatest good. (Even if stealing this bread helps one person, a rule of “No Stealing” makes society better overall, so I won’t do it.)

The Trolley Problem and the Sacrifice

The most famous critique of Utilitarianism is the Trolley Problem.

In the classic scenario, a runaway trolley is headed toward five people. You can pull a lever to switch it to a track where it will hit only one person. The Utilitarian answer is easy: 1 < 5. You pull the lever.

However, the logic gets darker. If a surgeon has five patients who need organ transplants to live, and one healthy person walks in for a check-up, pure Utilitarianism suggests the surgeon should harvest the healthy person’s organs to save the five. This is the “Tyranny of the Majority”—the idea that the rights of the individual can be entirely liquidated if it helps the group.

The Modern Engine

Ultimately, Utilitarianism is the invisible hand behind modern life. It is the logic used by public health officials during a pandemic (triage), by urban planners designing roads, and by economists calculating the “social cost of carbon.”

It is a demanding, often ruthless way to live because it suggests that “doing your best” isn’t enough—you have to do the most good possible. It’s the philosophy that keeps us up at night wondering if the money we spent on a latte should have gone to a malaria net instead.