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This chapter addresses the issue posed by other writers about the maximization of morality. The issue is whether there is a limit to the amount or degree of morality that we can stand. This chapter sets out to debunk the notion that individuals or societies can be “too moral.” The chapter emphasizes the belief that we ought to strive to be as morally good as we can be and to make our communities as morally good as possible and introduces the “maximization” thesis with respect to morality. The thesis must however be differentiated from the utilitarian principle which assigns specific values to its subject in order to measure what action is “as morally good as possible.” The chapter further argues that instead of construing morally excellent individuals as maximizers of values in events and actions, they should be understood rather as those who are disposed to live according to principles and ideals which they reflectively accept.

Chapter 1 begins by stressing the severity of climate change (CC) and showing how, contrary to popular belief, atomic energy is not a viable solution to CC. Many scientists and most market proponents agree that renewable energy and energy efficiencies are better options. The chapter also shows that government subsidies for oil and nuclear power are the result of flawed science, poor ethics, short-term thinking, and special-interest influence. The chapter has 7 sections, the first of which surveys four major components of the energy crisis. These are oil addiction, non-CC-related deaths from fossil-fuel pollution, nuclear-weapons proliferation, and catastrophic CC. The second section summarizes some of the powerful evidence for global CC. The third section uses historical, ahistorical, Rawlsian, and utilitarian ethical principles to show how developed nations, especially the US, are most responsible for human-caused CC. The fourth section shows why climate-change skeptics, such as “deniers” who doubt CC is real, and “delayers” who say that it should not yet be addressed, have no valid objections. Instead, they all err scientifically and ethically. The fifth section illustrates that all modern scientific methods—and scientific consensus since at least 1995—confirm the reality of global CC. Essentially all expert-scientific analyses published in refereed, scientific-professional journals confirm the reality of global CC. The sixth section of the chapter shows how fossil-fuel special interests have contributed to the continued CC debate largely by paying non-experts to deny or challenge CC. The seventh section of the chapter provides an outline of each chapter in the book, noting that this book makes use of both scientific and ethical analyses to show why nuclear proponents’ arguments err, why CC deniers are wrong, and how scientific-methodological understanding can advance sound energy policy—including conservation, renewable energy, and energy efficiencies.

This chapter provides an overview of the other chapters which are on various aspects of Bentham's political thought and jurisprudence. Bentham wrote on almost every conceivable subject to which the application of utilitarian principles can make a difference and on many subjects to which those principles might at first seem totally irrelevant. Most of this work consists of the detailed working out of the Greatest Happiness Principle in relation to law and legal institutions, but Bentham's range also includes topics as diverse as poor relief, Christianity and the Church of England, model prisons, birth control, grammar, logic, usury, and much of economics.

This chapter investigates the sociability of philosophical thinking. It argues that the singularity of perception is what brings us into connection with the inhuman, and that this is what opens the self up to difference and becoming, and criticises the utilitarian principles operating at the heart of the contemporary world. The chapter explains that the becoming-imperceptible of thought which Gilles Deleuze's philosophical project advances resists colonising life with an anthropocentric model of thought or a utilitarian focus on ends.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the notion of utilitarianism and how it turned into an affirmative, tolerant, and seemingly democratic social philosophy that appeared to take the pursuit of happiness seriously. It then considers the dark and dubious side of the utilitarian principle. This is followed by discussions of monetary utilitarianism, commodification, measuring happiness, and the shape of happiness.