USEFUL. — U., according to its very etymology, indicates that instrumental good which a subject perceives as a means of satisfying his needs or interests, or that good which is objectively a means for attaining an end. In economics, it has taken on a more specific meaning, as a synonym for gain or profit.
St. Thomas, following Aristotle (Eth. Nic., I, ch. 3), distinguishes good according to the threefold formal reason of the honourable, the pleasant, and the useful: the honourable 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, however, is not good in itself, but insofar as it is a means for attaining the honourable 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 opportune rational use of the means necessary to achieve them (ibid., 1ª-2ª, q. 16, a. 2). All particular goods can be considered as means and thus useful in relation to the ultimate end, namely happiness or beatitude; they are honourable and pleasant insofar as they in some way participate in the reason of the ultimate end and insofar as they are willed as means for attaining beatitude. Ethics can therefore be considered as the science of the right ordering of utilitarian activity in view of the attainment of happiness. While empiricism takes happiness as an expression of sensible pleasure and thus makes ethics the empirical science of the greatest pleasure and the least pain (v. UTILITARIANISM), all rationalism is agreed in giving happiness the value of the intellectual possession of good in its universal reason, and thus 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 honourable. Plato, while recognizing interested activity as the source of social life and of social organization through the division of labour (Resp., II, ch. 11), demands that reason transcend every particular interest and elevate utilitarian activity itself in favour of the polis: contempt for πράξις in favour of θεωρία. Aristotle too affirms that ethics, as the science of virtues in relation to perfect operation, directs utilitarian activity towards the organism of honesty and thus renders it an instrument of true human perfection: yet particular interest is not to be destroyed (Polit., II, 4, 1262 b), which is an expression of the natural desire for happiness, but it must be educated through the virtues so that the individual may rightly seek particular interests (monastic ethics), familial (economic ethics) and civil (political ethics), and through practical life be capable of the contemplative life.
Christianity, by placing God as the ultimate end and source of perfect beatitude, has placed moral life essentially in the interiority of personal life, as an expression of an ever more perfect love towards God; yet it has always recognized the value of practical life, as the right use of earthly goods in the service of God, for the good of oneself and one’s neighbour (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 (economic and political) activity must be given, in the light of moral philosophy and theology, by the exercise of the moral virtues. True use cannot therefore be given that is not honest, according to the Ciceronian dictum: *Mancat ergo quod turpe sit id nunquam esse utile* (De offic., III, 12). The subordination of utilitarian activity to ethics had not, however, prevented the ancients and St. Thomas from noting that the utilitarian process, whether political or economic, presents in itself natural resistances, of which the moralist, the businessman, 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 did not succeed in elevating the study of the utilitarian process to an autonomous science.
It was Machiavelli who gave to political utilitarian activity the meaning of an autonomous positive science; but he, by rejecting every subordination to ethics, fell into full moral relativism and into the total subjection of every individual or people to the calculation of political expediency. Against Machiavellianism, only apparently did the “Tacitism” of the 17th century attempt to oppose it, which under the guise of a superficial moralism sought to conceal the utilitarian principle of raison d’état (cf. G. Toffanin, *Machiavelli e il ‘tacitismo’*, Padua 1921).
Theorist of monarchical absolutism was Hobbes, who attempted to explain the subjection of particular interests proper to the egoistic state of nature to the monarchical interest proper to civil state, through the social contract, founded on fear. Even economics was removed from the subordination of ethics and from the calculation of private initiative to be subjected to the science of public use: thus mercantilism arose (v.).
Individualism, whether rationalistic or empiricist, imposed the liberation of citizens from the play of public interest: it showed how even private initiative was the source of public welfare, and how utilitarian activity was fundamentally economic. While from rationalism economics was elevated to an autonomous science according to evident natural laws discovered by reason (physiocracy), English empiricism, through the work of Smith, sought to establish economics as an autonomous science, identified with morality itself, and governed by the natural deterministic laws inherent in private initiative, 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, nor the will being able to direct it rightly.
Political science and economic science are true autonomous positive sciences of human uses; but they demand subordination to moral and political philosophy, so that the human person, in the historical contingencies of utility, may realize his absolute human values, individual and social.
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