Sacramentum Mundi Online

1. Concept. Utilitarianism, from the Latin utile, expedient, is the name, given to the theory of ethics which judges the moral value of an action by its contribution to “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”. Its opposite is the ethics which regards an action as good because it belongs to a definite class of actions, i.e., as valuable in itself and not only by reason of its consequences. Insofar as utilitarianism maintains that the only self-justifying value which man can strive for is pleasu…

1. The notion, a) The term "Utopia" comes from the title of St. Thomas More's novel of the ideal State (1516; Greek, οὑ τόπος, Noplace)/ and designates the partly satirical and partly programmatical sketches of, State and society which form a fairly common literary genre. There are “positive” Utopias which build on existing conditions to open up the widest possible perspectives on the ideals which have been planned or longed for. Others are deliberately negative, displaying the possible abuses of …