A good life is filled with positive conscious experiences like enjoyment, happiness, and contentment, whereas a bad life contains many negative conscious experiences like suffering and pain. Utilitarianism, at its most basic, states that something is moral, or good when it produces the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. In his 1776 essay, A Fragment on Government, Bentham had stated that the âfundamental axiomâ of his utilitarianism theory of distributive justice was that âit is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.â In this statement, Bentham argued that the moral quality of government action should be judged by its ⦠utilitarianism | Definition, Philosophy, Examples, Ethics, ⦠You prefer white but your neighbors want brown. Alex Barber . Classical Utilitarianism can be summarized in three propositions which is defined by Bentham and Mill. Consequentialism summarizes actions as being morally obligatory because it yields the best results. Classical utilitarianism belongs to the family of moral theories called consequentialism. A utilitarian is concerned with how well an action favours the majority and not the far-reaching consequences of that action. An example of utilitarianism that shows someone making an individual âgoodâ choice that actually benefits the entire population can be seen in Bobby's decision to buy his sister, Sally, a car. For example, negative-leaning utilitarians can set the suffering value of a very painful experience as much more negative than a more positive-leaning utilitarian would. Thanks for the reply, you've cleared some things up ⦠Classical Utilitarianism is a moral philosophy, which was developed in 19th century England by Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick. Another thing that separates classical utilitarianism from (act) consequentialism pure and simple is that classical utilitarianism says that everyone is equal and therefore that your good is as important as mine. We read Bentham and Sidgwick as early and late exponents of utilitarianism in general.