Sergio Cremaschi´s main area of research is the history of British liberalism and the links between ethics, politics and economics. He is an Associate Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Eastern Piedmont at Vercelli. He also teaches bioethics at the Faculty of Medicine.

Sergio Cremaschi is a Visiting Professor at the Research Unit on Political, Ethical and Religious Formation, Department of Education, Aarhus University, in the spring 2012.

Abstract

The paper aims at finding a way out of deadlocks in Malthus scholarship concerning his relationship to utilitarianism. The main claim is that Malthus viewed his own population theory and political economy as Hifsdisziplinen to moral and political philosophy, that is, empirical enquiries required in order to be able to pronounce justified value judgments on such matters as the Poor Laws. A converso, Malthus’s population theory and political economy were no value-free science, his policy advice – far from being ‘utilitarian’ – resulted from his overall system of ideas and was explicitly based on a set of familiar moral assumptions.

One point discussed is the function of the test of Utility as a way of discovering the will of God, and accordingly the laws of nature, which he has imposed on this Creation, in their positive contents; thus our principal duties turn out to be (a) strict attention to the consequences carried by the satisfaction of our passions, (b) regulation of our conduct conformably to such consequences.  It is worth stressing that the test of utility is a test for detecting whether a maxim is a law of nature, not a standard for establishing what is right and wrong or, in other words, that it is a clue for detecting the will of God (who has established in his full right – being omnipotent – but not arbitrarily – being benevolent and omniscient – what is right and what is wrong).

Another is Malthus’s treatment of two related issues in ‘applied ethics’, namely sexual morality and
poverty. The reconstruction shows how, through subsequent approximations and under pressure of critics, Malthus yields finally a kind of Institutionalist approach to poverty, making room for generalized basic education and other policies aiming at bringing about “circumstances which tend to elevate the character of the lower classes of society, which make them approach the nearest to beings who ‘look before and after’, and who consequently cannot acquiesce patiently in the thought of depriving themselves and their children of the means of being respectable, virtuous and happy”.

Contact

Sergio Cremaschi, Università Amedeo Avogadro (Alessandria, Novara, Vercelli),
sergio.cremaschi@lett.unipmn.it

Asger Sørensen, Department of Education, Aarhus University, aso@dpu.dk