Tag: Jeremy Bentham

English philosopher and social reformer (1748–1832) who founded modern utilitarianism, the doctrine that the rightness of an action is measured by the happiness it produces — "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." He proposed a "felicific calculus" to weigh pleasure against pain, an early ancestor of behavioral economics and modern thinking about wellbeing. A radical for his era, he argued for animal welfare, prison reform, and individual liberty. His intellectual heirs run from John Stuart Mill to today's effective altruists.

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