¹ I will pass over the issue of psychological hedonism, since it divides the utilitarian camp. Bentham and J. S. Mill both subscribed to it: for their best-known statements of the doctrine, see An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1970Google Scholar (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), ch. 1; and ‘Utilitarianism’, in Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1969Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, x. ch. 4Google Scholar. Sidgwick, on the other hand, rejected it: see The Methods of Ethics, 7th edition, London, 1962, Book I, ch. 4.Google Scholar

² ‘Utilitarianism’, CW, x. 210Google Scholar; cf. 214: ‘the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable … is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments’. Likewise Bentham: ‘Now, pleasure is in itself a. good: nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain is in itself an evil; and, indeed, without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure’ (IPML (CW), p. 100)Google Scholar. Bentham sometimes claimed his ethical hedonism to be true by definition; see The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. Bowring, John, 11 vols., Edinburgh, 1838–1843, iii. 214Google Scholar; vi. 257n.

³ ‘Utilitarianism’, CW, x. 234Google Scholar. Note that the passage on p. 210 also begins with a claim about the value of happiness.

⁴ Ibid., 210.

⁵ Mill nearly always prefers to speak of happiness or utility, as he does throughout Utilitarianism. However, he sometimes switches to talk of well-being; see, for instance, ‘On Liberty’, in Essays on Politics and Society, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1977Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, xviii. ch. 3Google Scholar. Sidgwick defines egoism in terms of happiness, as opposed to good or well-being, because of its relative freedom from perfectionist overtones (see Methods, Book I, ch. 7); it is clear that he is seeking a purely welfarist notion. Bentham sometimes uses well-being and happiness interchangeably (see, for instance, Deontology, together with A Table of the Springs of Action and the Article on Utilitarianism, ed. Goldworth, Amnon, Oxford, 1983Google Scholar (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), pp. 124–5Google Scholar). Where he distinguishes them (ibid., pp. 130 and 135), he treats the former as pointing to an individual's net balance of pleasure over pain, while the latter suggests a run of pleasures of an unusually high degree. See also Chrestomathia, ed. Smith, M. J. and Burston, W. H., Oxford, 1983 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), pp. 179–80n.Google Scholar

⁸ Deontology (CW), pp. 124–5Google Scholar. Cf. Bentham's definition of eudaimonics: ‘the art, which has for the object of its endeavours, to contribute in some way or other to the attainment of well-being, and the science in virtue of which, in so far as it is possessed by him, a man knows in what manner he is to conduct himself in order to exercise that art with effect’ (Chrestomathia (CW), pp. 179–80)Google Scholar. There is a striking resemblance between these passages and Mill's views on the relationship between art and science, and on the ultimate end of the ‘art of life’; see A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, ed. Robson, John M., 2 vols., Toronto, 1974Google Scholar, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, viii. 949–52.Google Scholar

⁷ Thus his dismissive treatment of rival principles in IPML (CW), chs. 1 and 2.

⁸ Methods, Book III, ch. 14.

⁹ Ibid., p. 391.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 398.

¹¹ IPML (CW), 74Google Scholar; cf. Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings, ed. Stark, W., 3 vols., London, 1952–54, iii. 308Google Scholar. The empiricist reduction of happiness to pleasure can be traced back at least as far as John Locke; see An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, Peter, Oxford, 1975, Book II, ch. 21, sec. 42.Google Scholar

¹² Deontology (CW), p. 125Google Scholar; cf. Chrestomathia (CW), pp. 179–80nGoogle Scholar. For a reduction of interest to pleasure and pain, see IPML (CW), p. 12Google Scholar; Economic Writings, i. 207.Google Scholar

¹³ See Methods, pp. 92, 95, 398ff.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, 2nd edition, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A., rev. Nidditch, Peter, Oxford, 1978, Book II, Part I, sec. 1Google Scholar; Hartley, David, Observations on Man, London, 1749, Part I, p.2.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Cf. Locke, , Essay, Book II, ch. 20, sec. 1.Google Scholar

¹⁶ For Bentham's catalogue of the various kinds of pleasures (and pains), see IPML (CW), ch. 5, and A Table of the Springs of Action in Deontology (CW).

¹⁷ Cf. Bentham, 's remark that pleasure and pain are ‘names of homogeneous real entities’ (IPML (CW), 53n).Google Scholar

¹⁸ IPML (CW), ch. 4; cf. Goldworth, Amnon, ‘Jeremy Bentham: On the Measurement of Subjective States’, Bentham Newsletter, ii (1979), 2–17.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Mill, James, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, 2nd edition, ed. Mill, John Stuart, 2 vols., London, 1869, ii. 184Google Scholar; cf. 190ff., 363ff.

²⁰ Ibid., 185n.

²¹ Methods, p. 94Google Scholar. Sidgwick draws the conclusion that all pleasures must therefore be commensurable in terms of their pleasantness, and all pains in terms of their painfulness (p. 123ff.).

²² Bentham gives occasional hints of such an account, as when he says that ‘Pains and pleasures may be called by one general word, interesting perceptions’ (IPML (CW), p. 42)Google Scholar, and when he distinguishes pleasures and pains from sensations which are ‘indifferent’ (Bowring, , Works, vi. 217).Google Scholar

²³ ‘Utilitarianism’, CW, x. 213.Google Scholar

²⁴ Methods, p. 127; cf. p. 131:Google Scholar

Let, then, pleasure be defined as feeling which the sentient individual at the time of feeling it implicitly or explicitly apprehends to be desirable;—desirable, that is, when considered merely as feeling, and not in respect of its objective conditions or consequences, or of any facts that come directly within the cognisance and judgment of others besides the sentient individual.

For the breadth of Sidgwick's notion of pleasure, see also pp. 93 and 402.

²⁶ Though a version of it is defended in Edwards, Rem B., Pleasures and Pains: A Theory of Qualitative Hedonism, Ithaca, 1979.Google Scholar

²⁶ Kerr, Frederick W. L., The Pain Book, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1981, pp. 44–5.Google Scholar

²⁷ See Kerr, chs. 9, 10, 12, 13; Melzack, Ronald and Wall, Patrick D., The Challenge of Pain, New York, 1983, chs. 2, 12–17.Google Scholar

²⁸ Kerr, , pp. 146–9Google Scholar; Melzack, and Wall, , p. 296.Google Scholar

²⁹ The cases may be open to different interpretations; see Trigg, Roger, Pain and Emotion, New York, 1970, ch. 7.Google Scholar

³⁰ Kerr, , p. 26Google Scholar; Melzack, and Wall, , pp. 69–71Google Scholar. For an extended treatment of this issue, see Trigg.

³¹ Nelkin, Norton, ‘Pains and Pain Sensations’, Journal of Philosophy, lxxxiii (1986), 129–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³² See Melzack, and Wall, , p. 56ff.Google Scholar, on the vocabulary available to us for the description of pain.

³³ The distinction is nicely illustrated in a scene in Lean, David's film LawrenceGoogle Scholar of Arabia in which T. E. Lawrence shows off his ability to extinguish a match with his fingers. When one of his collegues attempts the same feat, he exclaims that it hurts and asks Lawrence what the trick is. ‘The trick’, replies Lawrence, , ‘is not minding that it hurts.’Google Scholar

³⁴ In Ryle, 's well-known formulation, ‘a pain is a sensation of a special sort, which we ordinarily dislike having’Google Scholar (Ryle, Gilbert, The Concept of Mind, New York, 1949, p. 109)Google Scholar. Cf. Hare, B. M., ‘Pain and Evil’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume xxxviii (1964), 91–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point, Oxford, 1981, p. 93Google Scholar; Brandt, Richard B., A Theory of the Good and the Right, Oxford, 1979, pp. 131–2.Google Scholar

³⁵ See Baier, Kurt, The Moral Point of View: A Rational Basis of Ethics, Ithaca, 1958, pp. 268–75Google Scholar; also Edwards and Nelkin.

³⁶ Cassell, Eric J., ‘The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine’, New England Journal of Medicine, cccvi (1982), 639–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Recognizing Suffering’, Hastings Center Report, xxi (1991), 24–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a similar distinction see Hare, , Moral Thinking, p. 93.Google Scholar

³⁷ Cassell, , ‘The Nature of Suffering’, 642.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid., 643–4.

³⁹ Hare, , Moral Thinking, p. 93Google Scholar: ‘it would be self-contradictory to report suffering but claim that one did not mind it, and had no motive for ending or avoiding it, even ceteris paribus.’

⁴⁰ See, for instance, Ryle, , Concept of Mind, pp. 107–9Google Scholar, and Dilemmas, Cambridge, 1954, ch. 4Google Scholar; Gosling, J. C. B., Pleasure and Desire: The Case for Hedonism Reviewed, Oxford, 1969CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chs. 3 and 10; Edwards; Nozick, Robert, The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations, New York, 1989, pp. 103–4.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Griffin, James, Well-being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance, Oxford, 1986, p. 9.Google Scholar

⁴² Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York, 1974, pp. 42–5Google Scholar; The Examined Life, pp. 104–8.Google Scholar

⁴³ See Sen, Amartya, ‘Utilitarianism and Welfarism’, Journal of Philosophy, lxxvi (1979), 63–89.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ For an explanation of what these commitments amount to, see my account in The Moral Foundation of Rights, Oxford, 1987, sec. 6.1.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ For an example of a deontological welfarism, see Finnis, John, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford, 1980.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ I have undertaken a somewhat fuller defence in ‘Two Theories of the Good’, Social Philosophy and Policy, ix (1992), 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁷ For the most developed version of the desire theory, see Griffin.