[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Utilitarianism
What is utilitarianism?
This sounds like an easy question. "The greatest good of the greatest number". Simple. Or is it? In any real situation, there are many people involved; they will all be affected in different ways; there is no reason why the "greatest number" should receive the "greatest good". What is usually meant in practice by that slogan is something like the following procedure for choosing between two or more actions (McCollough, 66).
- Look at the state of the world after each action. Look in particular at the level of happiness of each person in the various situations.
- Add up, somehow, those levels of happiness in each case.
- Compare the results. The one which leads to the maximum total happiness is the (morally) right one.
The thing to notice about this is that it actually involves a lot of quite separate principles. I think it is fair to say that they are all part of the idea of utilitarianism; a system of ethics is utilitarian in so far as it accepts some or more of these principles. Someone who accepts some of them but not others may reasonably be called a utilitarian, even if the procedure above would be seen by them as a coarse caricature. I shall refer to different versions of utilitarianism as stronger or weaker according as they accept more or fewer of the principles above. "Strong utilitarianism", simpliciter, will mean the complete system above in all its glory. Most utilitarians are not in this sense strong utilitarians.
Why utilitarianism is plausible
Utilitarianism has the awkward property of seeming entirely obvious to its proponents, and clearly wrong to its opponents. This can make for discussions with much more heat than light. If it already seems obvious to you that utilitarianism is right, by all means skip this section (Mill, 25)...............
