USEFUL. - Utility, according to its very etymology, indicates that instrumental good which a subject perceives as a means of satisfying its needs or interests, or that good which is objectively a means to the attainment of an end. In economics it has taken on a more particular meaning, as a synonym for gain or profit.
St. Thomas, following Aristotle (Eth. Nic., I, c. 3), distinguishes good according to the threefold formal aspect of the honest, the pleasant, and the useful: the honest is good in itself and for itself, it is the objective end perfecting man; the pleasant is good in itself, insofar as it represents the repose of subjective desire with the attainment of the end; the useful, on the other hand, is not a good in itself, but insofar as it is a means to the attainment of the honest and the pleasant (Sum. Theol., 1ᵃ, q. 5, a. 6). The pursuit of the useful is proper to man, who cannot attain his ends except through the most fitting rational use of the means necessary to attain them (ibid., 1ᵃ-2ᵃ, q. 16, a. 2). All particular goods can be considered means and therefore useful in relation to the absolutely ultimate end, that is, to happiness or beatitude; they are honest and pleasant insofar as they in themselves in some way participate in the aspect of the ultimate end and insofar as they are willed as a means to the attainment of beatitude. Ethics can therefore be considered as the science of the right ordering of utilitarian activity in relation to the attainment of happiness. While empiricism takes happiness as an expression of sensible pleasure and therefore makes ethics the empirical science of maximum pleasure and minimum pain (v. UTILITARIANISM), all rationalism is agreed in giving happiness the value of intellectual possession of the good in all its universal aspect, and therefore in giving ethics the meaning of a philosophy which, in the light of rational principles, places utilitarian activity on the plane of the absoluteness of the honest. Plato, while recognizing interested activity as the source of associated life and of social organization through the division of labor (Resp., II, ch. 11), demands that reason overcome every particular interest and moderate even utilitarian activity itself in favor of the polis: contempt for πρᾶξις in favor of θεωρία. Aristotle too affirms that ethics, as the science of the virtues ordered to perfect operation, directs utilitarian activity onto the plane of objective honesty and therefore makes it an instrument of true human perfection: yet particular interest is not to be destroyed (Polit., II, 4, 1262 b), for it is an expression of the natural desire for happiness, but is to be educated through the virtues so that the individual may rightly pursue particular interests (monastic ethics), familial interests (economic ethics), and civil interests (political ethics), and through the practical life may be capable of the contemplative life.
Christianity, by positing God as the ultimate end and source of perfect beatitude, has placed the moral life essentially in the interiority of personal life, as the expression of an ever more perfect love toward God; nevertheless it has always recognized the value of the practical life, as the right use of earthly goods in the service of God, for one's own good and that of one's fellow men (St. Augustine, De vera religione, chs. 19-20, 46, 47). Some men may be called to the voluntary renunciation of material goods, but ordinarily men must sanctify themselves in the exercise of earthly utilitarian life (St. Thomas, Contra Gentes, III, chs. 131-35). The formal and objective goodness of this practical activity (economic and political) must be given, in the light of moral philosophy and theology, by the exercise of the moral virtues. Therefore there can be no true utility that is not honest, according to the Ciceronian saying
« Maneat ergo quod turpe sit id nunquam esse utile » (De offic., III, 12). The subordination of utilitarian activity to ethics had nevertheless not prevented the ancients and St. Thomas from observing that the utilitarian process, whether political or economic, presents in itself natural resistances, of which the moralist, the man of affairs, and the politician cannot fail to take account. This observation is already present in Plato (cf. L. Robin, Platon et la science sociale, in La pensée hellénique des origines à Epicure, Paris 1922, p. 229), but even more so in Aristotle and St. Thomas: yet they were unable to elevate the investigation of the utilitarian process to an autonomous science.
It was Machiavelli who gave political utilitarian activity the meaning of an autonomous positive science; but he, by rejecting all its subordination to ethics, fell into full moral relativism and into the total subjection of every individual or people to the calculation of the political game. Against Machiavellianism the "Tacitism" of the 17th century only apparently sought to oppose itself, for under the guise of a specious moralism it sought to cover the utilitarian principle of reason of state (cf. G. Toffanin, Machiavelli e il 'tacitismo', Padua 1921).
The theorist of monarchical absolutism was Hobbes, who attempted to explain the subjection of the particular interests proper to the egoistic state of nature to the monarchical interest, proper to the civil state, by means of the social contract, founded on fear. Economics too was removed from the subordination of ethics and from the calculation of private initiative in order to be subjected to the science of public utility: thus mercantilism arose (v.).
Individualism, whether rationalistic or empiricist, imposed the liberation of citizens from the play of public interest: it showed how private initiative itself was a source of public well-being, and how utilitarian activity was fundamentally economic. While by rationalism economics was elevated to an autonomous science according to evident natural laws discovered by reason (physiocracy), English empiricism through Smith sought to establish economics as an autonomous science, identified with morality itself, and governed by natural deterministic laws inherent in private initiative itself, reconciling in itself egoism and altruism, thus giving rise to liberal economics. In contemporary philosophy, historicism, vitalism, and pragmatism (v.) have made utilitarian activity an expression of individual or social spontaneity, without human reason being able to become its norm and without the will being able to direct it rightly.
Political science and economic science are true autonomous positive sciences of human utilities; but they demand subordination to moral and political philosophy, so that the human person, in the historical contingencies of utilities, may realize its absolute human values, individual and social.