Preface

Summary

These papers discuss utilitarianism, criticisms of it, and possible alternatives to it, and so raise issues which concern not only moral and political philosophy, but also economics and the theory of social choice. Some contributors to this collection are primarily philosophers, while others are primarily economists, and we hope that comparison of their various outlooks and argumentative styles will itself contribute to understanding of these issues.

The papers, with two exceptions, have been specially written for this volume and appear here for the first time. The exceptions are the papers of Hare and Harsanyi, which we have included because we thought it useful to offer, as a background to a collection which is largely, but not exclusively, critical of utilitarianism, two well-known and distinguished modern statements which offer arguments for the utilitarian outlook. We are grateful to these authors for permission to reprint, and to all our contributors for their papers.

Our own contribution takes the form of an Introduction, in which we do not try to summarise the papers, but rather to argue for our own opinions. A good deal of our discussion is explicitly directed to points raised in the papers, but we have also chosen to pursue one or two considerations which seem to us interesting but which happen not to be discussed elsewhere in the volume.

References to the literature which are given in the course of the Introduction and the papers are presented in the standard abbreviated form of an author's name and a date: full details will be found in the consolidated bibliography at the end of the book. We are grateful to Mark Sacks for assistance in preparing it.