That which is Desired, which Pleases, and which Satisfies: Utility According to Alfred Marshall

Rozenn Martinoia

Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2003, vol. 25, issue 3, 349-364

Abstract: In the period of the marginal revolution in England, utility was traditionally defined in reference to either desire or pleasure. William Stanley Jevons, for example, referred to pleasure. According to Jevons, utility was actually identical with the addition made to a person's happiness, that is to say to the sum of the pleasure created and the pain prevented (1871, pp. 5354). Henry Sidgwick, Alfred Marshall's spiritual father and mother, criticized this Benthamist perspective (Sidgwick 1883, p. 63) and introduced another definition at Cambridge. By utility of material things, Sidgwick stated, we mean their capacity tosatisfy men's needs and desires (1883, p. 84, emphasis added). Marshall, for his part, repeatedly moved from one meaning to another. In the first edition of his Principles of Economics, the term utility alternatively designated desire or pleasure. Few commentators have noted this double meaning of utility (Homan 1933, p. 224; Stigler 1950, p. 384; Guillebaud 1961, pp. 23637; Aldrich 1996, p. 211). Only Arthur Cecil Pigou (1903) and Jacob Viner (1925, p. 64749) have actually brought out its theoretical implications. No explanation as to the prevalence of this duality or its status in Marshall's welfare economics seems to have been proposed. Such is the intention of this article.

Date: 2003
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