Greatest happiness of the greatest number
idea · 2 works · 3 mentions · 5 anchored passages
the greatest happiness of the greatest number · greatest happiness of the greatest number · happiness · the greatest number
in the texts
Lectures on the Early History of Institutions
The utilitarian test of legislation and morals, named as a product of the rise of legislative authority.
and, in all probability, that famous test of the value of legislation, which its author turned into a test of the soundness of morals, would never have been devised—the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Assume a numerous and tolerably homogeneous community—assume a Sovereign whose commands take a legislative shape—assume great energy, actual or potential, in this legislature—the only possible, the only conceivable, principle which can guide legislation on a great scale is the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England
The utilitarian formula that a good law is one productive of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, central to and contested throughout the passage.
a legislator therefore gains no real guidance from the dogma that laws should aim at promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
he either had not grasped, or did not care to work out, the idea that the laws of England might be systematically remodelled so as to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number of Englishmen.
When it is said, in accordance with Benthamite phraseology, that a good law is a law productive of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, what is meant is not that a law really makes men happy, but that it favours the existence of the conditions under which it is likely that the persons subject to it may prosper, and obtain the happiness open to human beings.