In his 1861 work "Utilitarianism," initially published in Frazer's Magazine and presented in four additional editions during his lifetime, John Stuart Mill defends the principle of utility as the fundamental criterion for assessing the morality of all actions, whether they are the free actions of individuals or the restrictions of that freedom imposed by rules set by society and the state. His main concern is to protect utilitarianism from the objection that it prioritizes hedonistic self-interest over the ethical maxim of a fair distribution of goods. He believes that from the principle of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," he can derive a model of distributive justice that establishes the principle of utility as the primary principle of morality. This work, presented here in a new German translation, is regarded as the main work of classical utilitarianism.