Happiness, Democracy, and the Cooperative Movement: The Radical Utilitarianism of William Thompson

Examines the political significance of ideas about happiness through the work of utilitarian philosophers William Thompson and Jeremy Bentham.

Happiness is political. The way we think about happiness affects what we do, how we relate to other people and the world around us, our moral principles, and even our ideas about how society should be organized. Utilitarianism, a political theory based on hedonistic and individualistic ideas of happiness, has been dominated for more than two-hundred y...