Utilitarianism as a Way of Life: Re-Envisioning Planetary Happiness

Utilitarianism - a commitment to ’the greatest happiness for the greatest number’ - has been the target of endless opposition. According to its critics, it ignores the separateness of persons, cannot secure the protections of basic rights, demands extreme sacrifice, can justify anything - the list goes on. It has been implicated in the horrors of settler colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism, both historically and today, as the neoliberal world order faces a profound legitimation crisis.

Bart Schultz argues that utilitarian philosophy must be decolonized and reimagined for the current moment: a time of new and looming existential threats, in a world desperate for social change. Where dominant ethical and political approaches have failed to adequately deal with the enormous challenges we face, utilitarianism - as a set of lived practices, not simply a theoretical construction - may hold out some hope of seriously addressing them. Drawing on alternatives to the well-known Eurocentric story of utilitarianism (and an extensive review and critique of that story) and incorporating the works of Peter Singer, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, Derek Parfit, Martha Nussbaum, and other major philosophers, Schultz crafts a groundbreaking new framework of utilitarianism born of struggle and resistance.

Utilitarianism as a Way of Life is an essential text for scholars and students of philosophy, political science, economics, decolonization studies, gender studies, psychology, environmental studies, and related fields.

Bart Schultz is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Chicago.