Sympathy and its discontents: 'Greatest happiness' versus the 'general good'Sandra Peart and David M. Levy European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2004, vol. 11, issue 3, pages 453-478 Abstract: The paper explicates the utilitarian principle of sympathy in terms of the shape of what has been called the 'sympathetic gradient', which determines the allocation of goods to those close by and afar. It examines challenges to the utilitarian impartial weighting scheme that emerged in the literary community, and from evolutionary biology. As sympathy came to be seen as an impediment to evolutionary perfection, voices urged that sympathy be suppressed. Darwin's Descent of Man explicitly countenanced the suppression of sympathy in a trade-off of happiness for the perfection of the race. A post-Darwinian argument concerning a different capacity for pleasure accompanied the demise of sympathy in utilitarian economic analysis. Utilitarians then moved from the early presumption of 'everyone to count for one' to counting 'every equal increment of pleasure' equally. Keywords: Darwin; Edgeworth; Evolutionary Biology; Eugenics; Greatest Happiness Principle; Sympathy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:11:y:2004:i:3:p:453-478 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article European Journal of the History of Economic Thought is edited by José Luís Cardoso Editor-Workplace-NameL Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal, Gilbert Faccarello, Heinz D. Kurz and Antoin E. Murphy More articles in European Journal of the History of Economic Thought from Taylor and Francis Journals |
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