G. E. Moore

“ We may hold, for instance, that an act of murder, whenever it is wrong, always does produce greater unhappiness than would have followed if the agent had chosen instead some one of the other alternatives, which he could have carried out, if he had so chosen; and we may hold that this is true of all other wrong actions, actual or possible, and never of any right ones: but it seems a very different thing to hold that murder and all other wrong actions are wrong, when they are wrong, because they have this result—because they produce less than the possible maximum of pleasure. ”

“ And, if they are not identical, this assertion of equivalence amounts to the very important proposition that: An action is right, only if no action, which the agent could have done instead, would have had intrinsically better results; while an action is wrong, only if the agent could have done some other action instead whose total results would have been intrinsically better. It certainly seems as if this proposition were not a mere tautology. And, if so, then we must admit that our theory assigns a unique position to pleasure and pain in two respects, and not in one only. ”

“ For our theory most emphatically does not assert that pleasure is the only thing intrinsically good, and pain the only thing intrinsically evil. On the contrary, it asserts that any whole which contains an excess of pleasure over pain is intrinsically good, no matter how much else it may contain besides; and similarly that any whole which contains an excess of pain over pleasure is intrinsically bad. ”

“ We are, for instance, familiar with the idea that it is sometimes a good thing for people to suffer pain; and yet we should be very loth to maintain that in all such cases their suffering would be a good thing, even if nothing were gained by it—if it had no further effects. We do, in general, maintain that suffering is good, only where and because it has further good effects. ”

“ It would, for instance, maintain that it is always a good thing to act rightly, and a bad thing to act wrongly; although it would say at the same time that, since actions, strictly speaking, do not contain either pleasure or pain, but are only accompanied by or causes of them, a right action is never intrinsically good, nor a wrong one intrinsically bad. ”

“ It must not, however, be assumed that anybody who talks about “Utilitarianism” always means precisely this theory in all its details. On the contrary, many even of those who call themselves Utilitarians would object to some of its most fundamental propositions. One of the difficulties which occurs in ethical discussions is that no single name, which has ever been proposed as the name of an ethical theory, has any absolutely fixed significance. ”

“ They would say that though perhaps, in fact, actual cases never occur in which it is or would be wrong to do an action, which produces a maximum of pleasure, it is easy to imagine cases in which it would be wrong. ”

“ It may, at first sight, seem unduly bold to assert that any ethical truth can be absolutely unconditional in this sense. But many philosophers have held that some fundamental ethical principles certainly are thus unconditional. ”

“ But, of course, as a matter of fact, none of them do exist quite alone, and hence it may quite consistently allow that, as it is, many of them do have very great value. Concerning kinds of value, other than intrinsic value, it does not profess to lay down any general rules at all. ”