===================== HES POSTING ==================== 
 
No one brought up Bentham?  That's really funny.   
 
I didn't bring up Bentham because I couldn't read all the posts 
and I imagined someone else had.  So nobody did?  It is the rather  
obvious answer!  (That "utility" came into economists vocabulary via  
"utilitarianism"!) 
 
One might simply note that the term "utility" did have a definition 
in the eighteenth century -- what we would call "usefulness", 
perhaps.  Out of curiosity, have you gone the Oxford Dictionary 
route -- what does it say there for the origins of the term? 
 
Off-hand, I have to say it is not a term that pops up in the 
new American literature of the 18th century.   
 
Also, this is out of my area so I don't know what Bentham was 
himself into, but presumably he was well-acquainted with 
the Physiocrats.  Farming was the most noble of occupations, 
because it was .... useful?  Right? 
 
I hadn't really reflected on it before (though I am sure 
that many already have) , but it is kind of ironic that we  
connected utilitarianism with a form of hedonism, whereas  
the "problem" (for some) of the day was the role of "frills"  
in society -- whether the excesses of the Bourbons in the  
face of a starving populace, or the choice of a housewife  
to buy a mirror.  In both New England and Virginia, the  
purchase of "frills" was considered immoral by the very  
religious -- the Congrationalists in New England (descendents  
of the Puritans); the Baptists in Virginia (antagonists of  
the landed ruling class in the Tidewater).  But other places,  
the middle Atlantic, the backcountry, the cities -- while  
distribution of wealth and income might be an issue, what one  
chose to buy with one's income was not a moral issue at all.   
(And the silver tea set that was the epitome of "consumptionism"  
by some standards could also be seen as a type of investment 
that passes on through the female line ...)  
 
So was it "utility" in the austere sense?  Or are we right 
to read it as hedonism of a form?  If so, I sense a real shift 
in the meaning of the term. 
 
I guess then, that's where my questions would lie -- not what 
are the "origins" in a strict linear sense, but what were the 
"contexts" -- who was his audience; what were they wondering 
about; what could they have just taken for granted in his work, 
and what was new?   
 
And if you want to look for the "meaning" of the term, I would 
also suggest taking a few days and reading contemporary newspapers 
or pamphlets to see if the word pops up. 
 
(While we're on this subject -- when does "capitalism" become 
a phrase in common use?  It's just not used in America in 
the 18th century; shows up suddenly EVERYWHERE about the 
second decade of the 1800s.) 
 
Mary Schweitzer, Assoc. Prof., Dept. of History, Villanova University 
(on indefinite medical leave since January 1995) 
mailto:[log in to unmask] 
http://pw1.netcom.com/~schweit2/history.html 
 
============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]