Early and Classical Utilitarianism
The proto-history of utilitarianism goes back to the British moralists of the seventeenth century, including Richard Cumberland and John Gay, who defended the link between individual morality and the general good.
The early utilitarians were influenced by the materialist Helvetius, who claimed that interest dictates judgements, and stressed the importance of education in the formation of human souls; as well as by Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, who held that a kind of common-sense morality is generally compatible with public utility. (For more details on the precursors of utilitarianism, see, for example, Rosen 2003; Driver 2009). Our aim in this section is to present the historical stages of classical utilitarianism, defined as follows: “The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other thing being only desirable as means to that end” (Mill 1861 [1987]: 307).