WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Bentham’s fundamental axiom, which underlies utilitarianism, was that all social morals and government legislation should aim for producing the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Detailed explanation-2: -Utilitarianism is a theory of morality that advocates actions that foster happiness and oppose actions that cause unhappiness. Utilitarianism promotes “the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people."

Detailed explanation-3: -Mill’s Greatest Happiness Principle (Principle of Utility) establishes that happiness is the ultimate criterion to establish what is moral and what is not, i.e., the ideal moral society is the one where everybody is happy and everybody is free of pain.

Detailed explanation-4: -Happiness, according to the utilitarian, is experiencing pleasure and not experiencing pain, while unhappiness is experiencing pain and not pleasure. (Note that producing happiness need not be producing it right now, it might be happiness in the long run.)

Detailed explanation-5: -The ‘greatest happiness’ part is a maximising principle: it enjoins people to act so as to maximise human happiness produced. But the ‘of the greatest number’ part is a principle of distribution: it enjoins people to act so as to spread happiness around as equally as possible.