Equal consideration of interests is the view according to which the interests of every moral patient matter equally. An early proponent of equal consideration of interests was Jeremy Bentham, who popularized the dictum, “everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one”.^[1]

The equal consideration of interests view can be contrasted with views that accord greater weight to the interests of some moral patients over others. Examples include partialism, which gives extra weight to the agent’s own interests and those of their family members or fellow nationals, and prioritarianism, which gives extra weight to the interests of the worse off.

Further reading

Guidi, Marco E. L. (2008) “Everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one”: The Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests from Bentham to Pigou, Revue d’études Benthamiennes, vol. 4.

MacAskill, William, Darius Meissner & Richard Yetter Chappell (2022) Elements and types of utilitarianism, Utilitarianism.net, section 3.

Singer, Peter (2011) Practical Ethics, 3rd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch. 2.

Related entries

prioritarianism | speciesism | utilitarianism

1. ^

   Mill, John Stuart (1861) Utilitarianism, in John B. Robson (ed.) Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 10, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969, p. 257.