Citation:
Kaminitz, Shiri Cohen . 2019. “Contemporary Procedural Utility and Hume’s Early Idea of Utility.”. Journal of Happiness Studies: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Subjective Well-Being 20(1): 269. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edssjs&AN=edssjs.CAD48BC8&authtype=shib&site=eds-live&scope=site&custid=s5122861&authtype=shib.
Abstract:
An appealing concept developed by economists in contemporary happiness studies is that of procedural utility: people’s tendency to value the processes that lead to outcomes in addition to the outcomes themselves. This paper identifies David Hume as an early forerunner of a very similar idea. Moreover, it demonstrates just how Hume used this idea to justify the very idea of commerce. The significance of this is twofold: demonstrating just how Hume is a forerunner of the later concept on the individual level (micro-level), but also pointing to a different approach to the concept of utility on the social level.