Happiness and Utility brings together experts on utilitarianism to explore the concept of happiness within the utilitarian tradition, situating it in earlier eighteenth-century thinkers and working through some of its developments at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Drawing on a range of philosophical and historical approaches to the study of the central idea of utilitarianism, the chapters provide a rich set of insights into a founding component of ethics and modern political and economic thought, as well as political and economic practice. In doing so, the chapters examine the multiple dimensions of utilitarianism and the contested interpretations of this standard for judgement in morality and public policy.

1. Introduction: Happiness, Utility and the Republic of LettersMark Philp and Georgios Varouxakis2. Happiness and Interests in Politics: A Late-Enlightenment DebateEmmanuelle de Champs3. Jeremy Bentham and the Spanish Constitution of 1812Philip Schofield4. Scepticism and Epicureanism: From David Hume to J. S. MillJames Moore5. Bentham on 'Hume's Virtues'José L. Tasset6. Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Mill on Pleasure and VirtueRoger Crisp7. 'The First Article to Look to is Power': Bentham, Happiness and the Capability ApproachMichael Quinn, Bentham Project UCL8. Jeremy Bentham and President Roosevelt's Four FreedomsManuel Escamilla-Castillo 9. James Mill on HappinessAntis Loizides10. Bentham, Mill, Stoicism and Higher PleasuresJonathan Riley11. Individualist and Totalizing Ethical Thinking in Mill's UtilitarianismJohn Charvet12. Mill and Democracy: Taking William Buckley SeriouslyAlan Ryan13. John Stuart Mill and the Jewish Question: Broadening the Utilitarian MaximandSamuel Hollander14. The Failure of Planned Happiness: The Rise and Fall of British Home ColoniesBarbara Arneil15. Making Better Sense of Ideal UtilitarianismDavid WeinsteinIndex