Richard Booker Brandt (17 October 1910 – 10 September 1997)[1] was an American philosopher working in the utilitarian tradition in moral philosophy.
Brandt was originally educated at Denison University, a Baptist institution he was shepherded to by his minister father, and graduated in 1930 with majors in philosophy and classical studies.
[6] The expressivist moral philosopher Allan Gibbard has mentioned his great intellectual debt to Brandt.
[7] Brandt gave the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University in 1974-75, material that later appeared in A Theory of the Good and the Right (1979).
He argued also that the morality such rational persons would accept would be a form of utilitarianism.