Abstract

Classical Utilitarianism was an ethic based on experience: this is particularly true for the theories of J. Bentham and J.S. Mill. In contemporary Utilitarianism the theoretical discussion between different views considers as decisive criterion the reference to the common moral experience. The article offers some reasons - extracted from experience - for an Utilitarianism as virtue ethics: a metaethical conception of the responsibility not exclusively in terms of actions, but extended to the feelings and emotions of the agents; a philosophical psychology of the moral character not reduced to mental states as motives or intentions; a normative pluralism with the avowal of the historicity and changeableness of the virtues.