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John Gay and the Birth of Utilitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2017

GETTY L. LUSTILA
GETTY L. LUSTILA*
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Boston [email protected]
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Abstract

This article concerns John Gay's 1731 essay ‘Preliminary Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality’. Gay undertakes two tasks here, the first of which is to supply a criterion of virtue. I argue that he is the first modern philosopher to claim that universal happiness is the aim of moral action. In other words: Gay is the first utilitarian. His second task is to explain the source of moral motivation. He draws upon the principles of association to argue (a) that we develop benevolent motives by associating the idea of our happiness with that of others and (b) that we come to approve of benevolence by recognizing that our happiness is inextricably connected with the general happiness. While some scholars have taken an interest in Gay's essay, a sustained treatment of its contents does not exist, despite its acknowledged influence on Hume, Hartley, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 86 - 106
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 Albee, Ernest, A History of English Utilitarianism (London, 1901), p. 83 Google Scholar.

2 Harris, Jonathan, ‘Gay, John (1699–1745)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, <www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/view/article/10474> (2004)Google Scholar. According to William Paley, Edmund Law said about Gay that ‘no man knew the Bible or the works of Locke better’ (Paley, William, ‘A Short Memoir of the Life of Edmund Law’, The Works of William Paley, D.D., vol. 5, ed. Stephenson, Rev. Mr. (Cambridge, 1830), pp. 339–44, at 339)Google Scholar.

3 Gay, John, ‘Preliminary Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality’, An Essay on the Origin of Evil, King, William, ed. and trans. Edmund Law, 3rd edn. (London, 1731), pp. xi–xxxiii Google Scholar.

4 Although Gay's essay is often recognized as a seminal text in the history of ethics, it is often treated in a cursory manner. See: Crimmins, J. E., Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford, 1990), pp. 68–72 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Halévy, Elie, The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism, trans. Morris, Mary (London, 1928), p. 7 Google Scholar, 11, 22-3; Heydt, Colin, ‘Utilitarianism before Bentham’, Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism, ed. Eggleston, Ben and Miller, Dale E. (New York, 2014), pp. 16–37 Google Scholar, at 25–30; Irwin, Terence, The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study. Volume II: From Suarez to Rousseau (New York, 2008), p. 870–1Google Scholar; Maurer, Christian, ‘Self-Interest and Sociability’, The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Harris, James A. (New York, 2013), pp. 291–314 Google Scholar, at 304–5. Schneewind, Jerome, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (New York, 1998), pp. 405–10Google Scholar; Taylor, Jacqueline, Reflecting Subjects: Passion, Sympathy, and Society in Hume's Philosophy (New York, 2015), pp. 63–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A notable exception is Albee, A History, pp. 69–83.

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11 Locke, Essay, pp. 549–53.

12 Bentham, Jeremy, ‘Essay on Language’, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 8, ed. Bowring, John (Edinburgh, 1843), pp. 295–337 Google Scholar; Bentham, Jeremy, An Introduction to the Principles of Legislation and Morals, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A. (New York, 1996), pp. 26–9Google Scholar, 95 n. 1, 97, 111, 207, 212.

13 A related term is ‘interested obligation’. The language of interested obligation comes from Hutcheson, Francis, An Inquiry Concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Virtue or Moral Good, ed. Leidhold, Wolfgang (Indianapolis, 2008), pp. 177–8Google Scholar. One may find it suspicious that Gay draws on the concept of interested obligation to defend his view that happiness is the criterion of virtue. After all, appealing to happiness to prove that happiness is the basic moral concept seems to beg the question. I do not deny that there may be something question-begging in Gay's argument, though discussing it here would take us too far afield. Two things can be said in Gay's favour. First, his position on the nature of obligation is fairly traditional. The idea that there is a distinctly ‘moral’ species of obligation is (to a large extent) a later development in the history of moral philosophy. Second, Gay's general strategy at this point of the argument is to provide a framework to arbitrate the disputes between the other moralists. By drawing on the concept of interested obligation – as opposed to something more metaphysically loaded – he can more easily get everyone on the same page, so to speak.

14 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xviii.

15 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xviii.

16 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxi.

17 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xix.

18 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xix. While Gay's assumption that God wills the happiness of his creation seems sensible, it is theologically controversial for his time. For example, Gay is out of step with certain dominant forms of Protestantism of which he was no doubt aware (Presbyterianism and the Reformed tradition, generally). In this way, Gay's presentation of utilitarianism as a minimalist, theologically based ethics may be more revisionary than he suggests. I thank one of the anonymous referees for this point.

19 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xix.

20 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, pp. xix–xx.

21 Berkeley, George, ‘Passive Obedience; or, the Christian Doctrine of Not Resisting the Supreme Power, Proved and Vindicated, Upon the Principles of the Law of Nature, in a Discourse Delivered at the College-Chapel’, The Works of George Berkeley, D.D. Bishop of Cloyne, vol. 2, ed. Priestly, Richard (London, 1820), pp. 251–92Google Scholar; Carmichael, Gershom, Natural Rights on the Threshold of the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Moore, James and Silverthorne, Michael (Indianapolis, 2002)Google Scholar; Cumberland, Richard, A Treatise on the Law of Nature, ed. Parkin, Jon (Indianapolis, 2005)Google Scholar; Grotius, Hugo, The Rights of War and Peace, vols. I–III, ed. Tuck, Richard (Indianapolis, 2005)Google Scholar; Pufendorf, Samuel, The Whole Duty of Man, According to the Law of Nature, ed. Hunter, Ian and Saunders, David (Indianapolis, 2002)Google Scholar.

22 Cumberland, A Treatise.

23 Carmichael, Natural Rights; Cumberland, A Treatise; Pufendorf, Whole Duty of Man.

24 Carmichael, Natural Rights, pp. 10--11. For more on the history of natural law theory, see: Haakonssen, Knud, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment (New York, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schneewind, , The Invention of Autonomy; Richard Tuck, Natural Right Theories: Their Origin and Development (New York, 1982)Google Scholar.

25 Cumberland, A Treatise, pp. 513–14.

26 Berkeley, ‘Passive Obedience’, pp. 259–60.

27 Berkeley, ‘Passive Obedience’, p. 260.

28 Berkeley, ‘Passive Obedience’, pp. 263–4.

29 Berkeley, ‘Passive Obedience’, p. 260.

30 Berkeley, ‘Passive Obedience’, pp. 260–1.

31 Berkeley, ‘Passive Obedience’, p. 262.

32 Berkeley, ‘Passive Obedience’, p. 262.

33 George Berkeley, ‘Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher: In Seven Dialogues’, The Works, pp. 1–250, at 10–11, 21–3.

34 Berkeley argues that there is a connection between the moral sense theory and the ‘free-thinkers’, whom he despises. On the free-thinkers, see Berkeley, ‘Alciphron’, pp. 242–9.

35 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xiii.

36 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xvii.

37 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xiv.

38 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xiv.

39 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, pp. xix–xx.

40 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xx.

41 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xx.

42 Butler, Joseph, ‘Dissertation on the Nature of Virtue’, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (London, 1740), pp. 451–67Google Scholar, at 465. Butler does not specify who the ‘careless readers of Hutcheson’ are. It is certainly possible that he read Gay's ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, which was published nine years earlier. Regardless, Butler's objection is directed at the position Gay defends – one that he thinks naturally flows from a mistaken reading of Hutcheson's Inquiry. For more on this possibility, see Aaron Garrett, ‘The History of the History of Philosophy and Emblematic Passages’, Natural Law and Politics: Essays in Honor of Knud Haakonssen, ed. Richard Whatmore (Cambridge, forthcoming).

43 Butler, ‘Dissertation’, p. 465.

44 Butler, ‘Dissertation’, p. 465.

45 Butler, ‘Dissertation’, p. 466.

46 Butler, ‘Dissertation’, p. 466.

47 Butler, ‘Dissertation’, p. 466.

48 Butler, ‘Dissertation’, p. 466.

49 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xx. Contemporary act-utilitarians recognize that there is a place for rules in moral decision-making. After all, we do not often have the luxury to engage in steady, prolonged deliberation about which actions to take. Rules can help guide our decisions, but an action's conformity with a rule does not determine its rightness. For the act-utilitarian, the criterion of rightness remains the general happiness.

50 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xiii.

51 Locke, Essay, pp. 394–401.

52 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxix.

53 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xiii.

54 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xiv.

55 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xiv.

56 Locke, Essay, pp. 394–401; Berkeley, George, ‘An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision’, Philosophical Writings, ed. Clarke, Desmond M. (New York, 2008), pp. 1–66 Google Scholar, at 11–12; Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Norton, David Fate and Norton, Mary J. (New York, 2011), p. 416 Google Scholar; Hume, David, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning Principles of Morals, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. and Nidditch, P. H. (New York, 1975), p. 20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 The worry about psychological association is that through this process we can come to possess ideas about things we have not yet experienced. As a result, we can be tricked into thinking we know things about the world that we, as a matter of fact, do not know. This concern about the association of ideas is especially prevalent in Locke and Hume, though, for Hume, knowledge by association (or habit) is meant to replace much of traditional epistemology while still leaving room for a ‘mitigated’ form of scepticism. See Hume, Enquires, sect. XII.

58 Hume would follow in Gay's footsteps eight years later, with the publication of A Treatise of Human Nature.

59 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xiii.

60 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxii. Gay adopts this idea from Hobbes and Locke. See Hobbes, Thomas, Man and Citizen, ed. Gert, Bernard (Indianapolis, 1991), pp. 47–50 Google Scholar; Locke, Essay, pp. 229–33.

61 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxiii.

62 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxiii.

63 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxiii.

64 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xiv.

65 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, pp. xxiii–xiv.

66 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, pp. xxx–xxxi.

67 The example Gay gives of how this process works is envy (‘Preliminary Dissertation’, pp. xxxii–xxxiii). Importantly, he does not think there is anything moral about the process of psychological association. What makes association a friend of morality is the fact that we are dependent on others for our happiness. It is this dependence that creates the initial links between people which are afterwards reinforced through association.

68 John Stuart Mill uses this same argument in illustrating his ‘proof’ of the principle of utility. See Mill, John Stuart, ‘Utilitarianism’, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume X: Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, J. M. (Indianapolis, 2006), pp. 203–60Google Scholar, at 235–9.

69 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxxi.

70 Gay, Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxxi.

71 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxxi.

72 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxx. Gay's discussion of ‘resting places’ is important. We naturally construct principles of conduct based on prior experience, and these principles direct us to objects conducive to our happiness. We use these principles as ‘resting places’ in our deliberations so that we can make decisions quickly, without having to consider each variable that goes into acting in a particular way. That said, Gay notes that this ‘habitual knowledge’ is a form of prejudice that is rarely examined and is difficult to root out (‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxx). He also thinks that the prejudicial aspect of habitual knowledge leads philosophers like Hutcheson to believe in a moral sense (‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxx).

73 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxviii.

74 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxiv. An equally (if not more) important aspect of our dependence on others is our desire to be esteemed or loved (‘Preliminary Dissertation’, pp. xxv, xxvii–xxviii).

75 Towards the end of the essay, Gay mentions our propensity to imitate others (‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxxiii). Our imitative capacity helps explain social cohesion.

76 ‘We first perceive or imagine some real Good, i.e. fitness to promote our happiness in those things which we love and approve of. Hence . . . we annex pleasure to those things. Hence those things and pleasure are so tied together and associated in our minds, that one cannot present itself but the other will also occur’ (Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, pp. xxx–xxxi).

77 Acting on behalf of others becomes an ‘acquired’ principle of action (Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxx).

78 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxx.

79 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxxi. The other aspect of Gay's view about how associations develop motivational force is the love we naturally feel for agents who are conducive to our happiness. Love naturally gives rise to desire for the happiness of the beloved. This desire leads us to approve of the beloved and to act on their behalf (‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xxiv).

80 Gay stresses that these associations appear as ‘instincts’ to the person who possesses them (‘Preliminary Dissertation’, pp. xiv, xxx, xxxiii).

81 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xiv.

82 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xiii.

83 Gay, ‘Preliminary Dissertation’, p. xiii.

84 Hartley, David, Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations, vols. I–II (London, 1834)Google Scholar; Mill, James, An Analysis of the Human Mind, vols. I–II, ed. Mill, John Stuart (London, 1878)Google Scholar; Mill, J. S., The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume VIII: A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation (Books IV–VI and Appendices), ed. Robson, J. M. (London, 1974)Google Scholar; Tucker, Abraham, The Light of Nature Pursued, vols. I–VII (London, 1777)Google Scholar.

85 Aaron Garrett, ‘A Lockean Revolution in Morals’ (Unpublished Lecture, 2015).

86 Crimmins, Secular Utilitarianism, pp. 68–72; Heydt, ‘Utilitarianism before Bentham’, pp. 25–30; Irwin, The Development of Ethics, pp. 870–1; Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy, pp. 405–10.

87 Halévy labels Joseph Priestley a ‘disciple’ of Gay (Philosophical Radicalism, p. 8). Here, Halévy also mentions that Bentham read Priestley (Philosophical Radicalism, p. 8). See also Hartley, Observations on Man, p. iii.

88 Regarding the structure of the two essays, Brown begins as Gay does: with an attempt to show that the dominant moral theories of the time unwittingly assume the principle of utility as their criterion of virtue. Brown, John, ‘On the Motives to Virtue, and the Necessity of the Religious Principle’, Essays on the Characteristics, 4th edn. (London, 1755), pp. 109–240 Google Scholar, at 111–36.

89 Albee, A History, p. 85.

90 Sidgwick, Henry, Outlines of the History of Ethics (Indianapolis, 1988), p. 237 Google Scholar. See note 2 for Paley's reference to Gay.

91 Albee, A History, p. 83.

92 Locke, Essay, pp. 394–401.

93 Locke, Essay, pp. 398–9.

94 Locke, Essay, p. 400.

95 Hume, A Treatise, p. 416. Importantly, Hume did not claim to have invented the principles of association, so much as the use to which Gay, and later figures like Hartley and James Mill, put them. He also develops the principles of association in far more detail than Gay did in the ‘Preliminary Dissertation’. In this way, Hume's claim that he is the first philosopher to ‘enumerate or class all the principles of association’ is probably true (Enquires, p. 20).

96 Mossner, E. C., ‘Hume's Early Memoranda, 1729–1740: The Complete Text’, Journal of the History of Ideas 9.4 (1948), pp. 492–519 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 496.

97 Mossner, ‘Hume's Early Memoranda’, p. 496.

98 Mossner, E. C., The Life of David Hume (New York, 2001), p. 80 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Albee, A History; Garrett, ‘A Lockean Revolution in Morals’; Garrett, ‘The History of the History of Philosophy’; Halévy, Philosophical Radicalism; Taylor, Reflecting Subjects.

100 Hartley, Observations on Man, p. iii.

101 Mill, An Analysis, pp. x–xi.

102 Mill, An Analysis, p. xi. See also Sidgwick, Outlines, p. 219.

103 Mill, ‘Utilitarianism’, pp. 235–9.

104 Mill, ‘Utilitarianism’, p. 236.

105 Halévy, Philosophical Radicalism, p. 7.

106 I would like to thank Dale E. Miller and the two anonymous reviewers at Utilitas for their invaluable comments on this article. A version of the article was delivered at the 2017 meeting of the Southwest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy at the University of Nevada, Reno. I would like to thank Jason Fisette and Mary Domski for organizing the meeting, and also all those who attended, for a valuable discussion. I would also like to thank Aaron Garrett, for his comments on an early draft of the article and for teaching the course from which the idea to write this article was derived. Special thanks go to Rebeccah Leiby and Aino Lahdenranta, for reading multiple drafts of the article at every stage of the process. Lastly, I would like to thank Eric E. Wilson, who sparked my interest in studying eighteenth-century British moral philosophy. Without him, this article would surely not exist.