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The Utilitarians Revisited

For generations sociologists have attacked utilitarian social theory as inadequate theoretically. At the same time, their presentist orientation toward sociology's past has prevented a direct examination of the utilitarians in their own right. This paper rejects that orientation and investigates the social theory of the major utilitarians. David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill. No alleged characteristic of utilitarianism-from the atomistic, rationalistic model of social action to the failure to solve the problem of order-adduced in the traditional attack upon it is actually found in the work of the utilitarians. The paper then outlines the historical process whereby the prevailing mythology concerning utilitarianism developed. The hallmark of that process is not the cumulative development of social theories but the displacement, in changing cultural and social circumstances, of the concerns of utilitarian social theory-a displacement succesively evident in the work of Spencer, early American social scintists, and Park and climaxing in Parson's The Structure of Social Action. The paper concludes by offering a sociological interpretation of Parson's selective account of utilitarian social theory and by identifying the constricting, but still pervasive, theoretical implications of that account.