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Utilitarianism is a family of ethical theories that hold that the best action is the one that maximizes utility, which is often defined as the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This means that the morality of an action is determined by its consequences. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism.

There are different variations of utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism suggests that in any given situation, the morally right act is the one that produces the most utility. Rule utilitarianism, on the other hand, proposes that the morally right act is the one that conforms to a rule, the general observance of which would produce the most utility. Another distinction is between hedonistic utilitarianism, which defines utility as pleasure, and eudaimonistic utilitarianism, which defines utility as happiness or flourishing.

Key figures in the development of utilitarianism include Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Bentham, an early proponent, focused on the quantity of pleasure and pain, developing a "hedonic calculus" to measure them. Mill refined utilitarianism by introducing qualitative distinctions between pleasures, arguing that some pleasures are intrinsically more valuable than others.

Critics of utilitarianism raise concerns about its potential to justify actions that seem intuitively wrong, such as sacrificing the rights of a minority for the benefit of the majority. Questions also arise about the difficulty of predicting all consequences of an action and the practical challenges of measuring and comparing different kinds of utility. Despite these challenges, utilitarianism remains a significant and influential ethical framework in philosophy and public policy.