Pleasure and pain: The philosophy of Jeremy B...

Are we entering an era when robots will finally liberate people, and particularly women, from the drudgery of housework? There is certainly a buzz around domestic robots right now and every month seems to bring us a new autonomous machine that can fold your clothes or stack your ...  Show more

One of the first recorded examples of a marriage ceremony is dated more than 4000 years ago in Mesopotamia. And it seems that through the ages, weddings have never lost their appeal. The global wedding industry is today worth billions of dollars, and it is one that keeps on growi ...  Show more

He was the creator of utilitarianism, a philosophical framework for how societies should be structured, based on the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Learn about the fascinating life of this interesting character, how thi ...

Is it better to be a happy pig or a sad Socrates? John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism is the topic of this episode of Philosophy: The Classics. 

How should we live? John Stuart Mill, one of the great thinkers of the nineteenth century thought that we should maximise happiness. Here Roger Crisp, author of an acclaimed book on Mill, explains Mill's utilitarian ethical theory. 

A moral theory that emphasises ends over means, Utilitarianism holds that a good act is one that increases pleasure in the world and decreases pain. The tradition flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and has antecedents i ...  Show more