APA Newsletters
Spring 2000
Volume 99, Number 2

Reviewed by Dale E. Miller, Old Dominion University

As the end of the Fall semester of 1998 neared, I found myself in an uncomfortable position. I was scheduled to teach a course on ethical theory for advanced undergraduates in the Spring, and I planned to spend a considerable amount of time discussing utilitarianism. My problem was that I could not find a suitable text. I wanted to spend at least as much time on contemporary developments in consequentialist thought as on the history of the tradition, and thus Geoffrey Scarre’s Utilitarianism (Routledge, 1996) was not really what I was looking for. While there are some excellent anthologies devoted to utilitarianism, none seemed entirely appropriate as a classroom text; the one possible exception, Jonathan Glover’s Utilitarianism and Its Critics (MacMillan, 1990), is unfortunately out of print. Searching Amazon.com one last time, I saw that a new textbook entitled Contemporary Ethics: Taking Account of Utilitarianism, by William Shaw, was to be published in December. With the book order deadline fast approaching it was too late to ask for page proofs, so I took a chance and ordered the book sight unseen. It proved to be a happy choice.

Simply put, each chapter of Taking Account of Utilitarianism contains a wealth of information about and insight into a different facet of utilitarianism, presented in a remarkably lucid and accessible manner. The book has eight chapters, and the best way to indicate the range of subjects discussed therein may be simply to list their titles: Introducing Utilitarianism; Welfare, Happiness, and the Good; Arguing for Utilitarianism; Refining Utilitarianism (this chapter deals with the more sophisticated forms of utilitarianism which have been developed in response to the objections of critics; rule-utilitarianism falls under this heading, as do forms of act-utilitarianism in which the "principle of utility" figures as a criterion of rightness but not a decision procedure for agents); Rights, Liberty, and Punishment; Justice, Welfare, and Economic Distribution; and Virtue, Personal Life, and the Demands of Morality.

In every chapter Shaw demonstrates his extensive knowledge of both the history of utilitarian thought and contemporary work in the area. The second chapter, for example, which is concerned with theories of the good, begins with a discussion of Bentham’s relatively simplistic hedonism and of Mill’s more complex "qualitative" hedonism; after considering desire-satisfaction and objectivist accounts of welfare Shaw concludes by outlining the "hybrid" views of David Haslett, Richard Brandt, and L. W. Sumner. The arguments for utilitarianism examined in Chapter 3 include not only Mill’s notorious "proof" but also, inter alia, Sidgwick’s assertion that the principle of rational benevolence can be inferred from self-evident axioms and R. M. Hare’s deduction of utilitarianism from his analysis of moral language. Much of this material is complex, but—to emphasize a point already made above—Shaw’s presentation of it is wonderfully clear. The book is suitable for undergraduate courses beyond the introductory level, and one might even consider it for use in a graduate course. It will also make valuable background reading for instructors who plan to assign some other utilitarian texts to their students, such as Mill’s Utilitarianism or J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams’s Utilitarianism: For and Against. And although the volume is primarily meant as a teaching tool, it is really essential reading for scholars with an interest in consequentialist approaches to moral philosophy.

Shaw is sympathetic to many of the individual utilitarian theorists he discusses and to the tradition as a whole, and he aims to show that utilitarians can give plausible answers to most of the objections that have been lodged against their view, but his discussion is careful and balanced. It is also, for the most part, very accurate, although of course there is always room to quibble over certain points, such as the interpretation of historical figures. For example, Shaw’s criticism of Sidgwick over the latter’s ambition to show that the dictates of morality and egoism coincide seems a bit unfair. Shaw says that Sidgwick seems to have "overlooked" the "commonplace" that "Any egoistic system will sometimes clash with self-interest," and then adds:

One might say that while it may be a commonplace that morality and egoism clash in this world, Sidgwick was a spiritualist strongly interested in the possibility of an afterlife in which those who lived virtuously in this life would be rewarded. But even if we do believe that the dictates of morality and egoism clash, even in the very long run, we can still understand why Sidgwick was desirous of showing that they coincide. Even if we can establish that a particular system of morality gives the best account of right and wrong, we are still left with the question of why we should be moral, of why moral reasons trump self-interested ones. If the dictates of self-interest and morality coincide then the question of whether one has most reason to do what morality demands essentially disappears. Sidgwick may have been on a fool’s errand, trying to demonstrate a conclusion that is, as Shaw says, impossible to demonstrate, but he was entirely right to think that if he could demonstrate it the result would be an important one.

Shaw rarely misses the mark, however, and never by far. Furthermore, he gets some subtle points right over which commentators frequently stumble. For example, in his discussion of Bentham’s "felicific calculus," Shaw makes clear something that Bentham does not, namely that while the intensity, duration, probability, and propinquity of a pleasure or pain are directly relevant to the value of that particular sensation, its "fecundity" and "purity" (the likelihood that it will be followed by more sensations of the same kind, and of the opposite kind) is relevant not to the assessment of the value of the initial sensation itself, but rather to the assessment of the rightness of the action that produces it (p. 38). Failure to recognize this can lead to distant pleasures and pains being counted twice during the assessment of actions.

One will, of course, want to supplement Taking Account of Utilitarianism with additional readings from primary texts. Shaw does not append lists of suggested readings to each chapter, but instructors should have no problem deciding what supplementary material to assign. (I do not know whether this would fit Blackwell’s conception of the Contemporary Philosophy series, of which this book is a part, but a companion volume that collects appropriate readings would be helpful for those teaching Taking Account of Utilitarianism and would also have value in its own right. There is a real need for a first-rate anthology of the most important writings by utilitarians and their critics, one more comprehensive than Glover’s.)

Obviously there can be no mystery about the question of whether I would use Taking Account of Utilitarianism again. In fact, I plan to do so next Spring. I strongly recommend it to anyone who plans to teach utilitarianism, or who has a desire to learn more about it.