Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the reforming
utilitarian school of moral philosophy, incorporated
the essential basis of moral equality into his system
of ethics by means of the formula: "Each to count
for one and none for more than one." In other
words, the interests of' every heing affected hy an
action are to be taken into account and given the
same weight as the like interests of any other being.
A later utilitarian, Henry Sidgwick, put the point in
this way: "The good of anyone individual is of no
more importance, from the point of view (if I may
392 PART TWO • ETHICAL ISSUES
say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other."
More recently the leading figures in contemporary
moral philosophy have shown a great deal of agreement
in specifying as a fundamental pre-supposition
of their moral theories some similar requirement
that works to give everyone's interests equal consideration-although
these writers generally cannot
agree on how this requirement is best formulated