Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill

Actions are right in proportion as they promote happiness, and Mill defends this against the charge that pleasure is too base a standard by distinguishing higher from lower pleasures.

Assumes no prior ethics — Mill is defending a position he expects you to find crude, in plain prose

The Methods of Ethics

Henry Sidgwick

Surveys egoism, intuitionism and utilitarianism side by side as competing methods for answering what one ought to do, and argues utilitarianism survives the comparison best even though none of the three is fully self-sufficient.