Download Free The English Utilitarians Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The English Utilitarians and write the review.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
In contrast with the tendency to regard the Utilitarians primarily as exponents of a moral theory, Stokes here focuses on their claim to have developed a practical science of society. He discusses James Mill's influence as the London head of the Indian administration, Macaulay's Benthamite reforms as Law Member, and Fitzjames Stephen's significance in the passage of utilitarianism into imperialism.
Sir Leslie Stephen, KCB (1832-1904) was an English author, critic and mountaineer, and the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. While at Cambridge, Stephen became an Anglican clergyman. In 1865, having renounced his religious beliefs, and after a visit to the United States two years earlier, he settled in London and became a journalist, eventually editing the Cornhill Magazine in 1871 where R. L. Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, W.E. Norris, Henry James and James Payn figured among his contributors. In his spare time, he participated in athletics and mountaineering. He also contributed to the Saturday Review, Fraser, Macmillan, the Fortnightly and other periodicals. During the eleven years of his editorship, in addition to three volumes of critical studies, he made two valuable contributions to philosophical history and theory: History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876) and The Science of Ethics (1882). Amongst his other works are Hours in a Library (1874), Samuel Johnson (1878), Alexander Pope (1880) and English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century (1904).
Classic from the year 2008 in the subject Philosophy - Philosophy of the 19th Century, - entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: First published in 1861. There are few circumstances among those which make up the present condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than the little progress which has been made in the decision of the controversy respecting the criterion of right and wrong. From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the summum bonum, or, what is the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem in speculative thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, and divided them into sects and schools, carrying on a vigorous warfare against one another. And after more than two thousand years the same discussions continue, philosophers are still ranged under the same contending banners, and neither thinkers nor mankind at large seem nearer to being unanimous on the subject, than when the youth Socrates listened to the old Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato's dialogue be grounded on a real conversation) the theory of utilitarianism against the popular morality of the so-called sophist. ...]
Far from recommending cruel acts, utilitarianism, understood this way, actually runs congruent to our basic moral intuitions.
"[...] INTRODUCTORY The English Utilitarians of whom I am about to give some account were a group of men who for three generations had a conspicuous influence upon English thought and political action. Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill were successively their leaders; and I shall speak of each in turn. It may be well to premise a brief indication of the method which I have adopted. I have devoted a much greater proportion of my work to biography and to consideration of political and social conditions than would be appropriate to the history of a philosophy. The reasons for such a course are very obvious in this case, inasmuch as the Utilitarian doctrines were worked [...]".