When Did Utilitarianism Make Its Big Comeback
John Quiggan has a cryptic post entitled Word for Wednesday: Utilitarianism (definition). Here is the part that left me gasping for air:
- In its role as a democratic public philosophy, utilitarianism lacks serious competitors. Ideas proposed as alternatives are usually jerry-built modifications of ideas about individual ethics that don’t scale up to the public sphere.
I don’t know quite what to say about this. Rawls? Nozick? What does Quiggan have in mind? Someone should introduce Quiggan to Kaplow and Shavell.