Average utilitarianism
The view that the morally best action maximises average well-being per person.
What it commits you to
Average utilitarianism maximises well-being divided by population rather than the sum, which makes it indifferent between a large population at moderate welfare and a small one at high welfare. That feature is an advantage on some population ethics problems and a serious defect elsewhere, since it treats the death of one person in a large population as almost nothing.
Which realms lean on this
Ethics is where the realms argue about what counts: the parties, the pleasures, the duties, the care.
ethics · 9 realms — The Benthamite Foundry, The Care Weft, The Contractual Court, The Kantian Citadel, The Longview Foundry, The Middle Kingdom, The Stoic Ramparts, The Ubuntu Weave, The Virtue Garden.
Canon that discusses this
primary · 1863
Utilitarianism
Mill defends the intuitions Bentham's calculus was meant to replace: higher and lower pleasures, the justice principle that each person counts as one, and the liberty principle against the tyranny of the majority. Published the year after the Origin of Species, and much of the argument is a reply to the comparison.
modern · 1971
A Theory of Justice
Rawls reconstructs distributive justice as a hypothetical contract made behind a veil of ignorance, and derives two principles — equal basic liberties first, then fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle. Published in 1971 and revised in 1979, it displaced utilitarianism as the default starting point for two decades. The excerpt below paraphrases the passage in section 3 rather than quoting a translation.