Decolonizing Utilitarianism

The "classical utilitarianism" of Jeremy Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick, which in the 18th and 19th centuries famously promoted "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," continues to have a profound impact on Anglo-American ethical and political philosophy, with such celebrated philosophers as Peter Singer and the late Derek Parfit calling attention to the significance of Sidgwick's work. In particular, it shaped their views on justice for future generations, the nature of objective normative reasons, and the possibilities for philosophical hedonism. Such philosophical reconstructions of classical utilitarianism, however, have all too often proceeded without benefit of a critical, decolonizing process of "unlearning" the stock Enlightenment narratives of progress and development that erase the complicity of the classical utilitarians in the expansion of the British Empire and the forms of racism at work in its "civilizing mission."  This discussion will highlight how some of the current reconstructions of classical utilitarianism risk replicating the insidious complicities of utilitarians in the age of empire.