Jeremy Bentham
Bentham’s (1748-1832) role on the development of social choice was rather indirect. Even though the paternity of utilitarianism cannot be attributed to Bentham, he did popularize it, in particular through the publication in 1789 of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.
Utilitarianism belongs to the sphere of individual, not social, ethics. However, from the utilitarian basic principles, in David Wiggins’s words (2006), “the new moral philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and James’s son, John Stuart, came to be linked with a stupendous programme of social and political reform” (Wiggins 2006: 144). The search for the “greatest happiness of the greatest number” is the utilitarian motto, generally attributed to Bentham - but Hutcheson used this phrase before. It is unclear whether this means that Bentham had in mind some kind of utilitarian social welfare function. However, one can read, at the very beginning of his book: “The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest of the community then is, what? - the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it” (Bentham 1789 [1970]: 12, original emphases).We can take this as a somewhat vague definition of a utilitarian social welfare function and Bentham can then be viewed as an ancestor of Bergson and Samuelson. Arrow’s contribution was obviously prompted by Bergson’s paper (Arrow 1951 [1963]: 22) and Arrow also alludes to Bentham.