UTILITARIANISM BEGAN AS A COMPASSIONATE THEORY.

UTILITARIANISM BEGAN AS A COMPASSIONATE THEORY. Utilitarianism now often figures in public discussions as a heartless way of thinking. And Dickens portrayed utilitarianism as heartless in HARD TIMES, only a generation after Jeremy Bentham, its originator, died. Yet it has always seemed to me that Bentham changed thinking about policies irrevocably for the better by making the “happiness of the greatest number” important. I do not see the happiness of subjects as being of much interest to rulers before Bentham.