Utility and Functionings

Abstract

Utilitarian economists use the term ‘utility’ carefully, but as was mentioned above there are two distinct views of it: the ‘satisfaction/happiness’ view and the ‘desire-fulfilment’ view. The happiness approach goes back to Bentham and has been used extensively by Marshall (1890), Pigou (1920) and others. The desire-based approach was pioneered by Sidgwick and developed by Ramsey (1926), Harsanyi (1976), Hare (1981), Mirrlees (1982) and others:

A plausible case can be made for taking either happiness, or desire-fulfilment … as guides to a person’s well-being. It would be odd to claim that a person broken down by pain and misery is doing very well, and no less peculiar to think of a person whose desires are systematically violated as achieving a high level of well-being. The issue is not whether either of these views have some plausibility — they both clearly do. The real question is whether either happiness or desire-fulfilment provides an adequate approach to well-being in general, and not just in rather special cases.

(Sen, 1985a: 17–18)