utilitarianism

utilitarianism is the moral philosophy which asserts that the maximization of happiness is the ultimate aim of all human conduct. Philosophers since the time of Aristotle have stressed the ethical value of happiness, but not until the 18th cent., with the work of Helvetius, Beccaria, and Hume, was there a theory which defined moral worth exclusively in terms of happiness. According to Jeremy Bentham, the systematizer of utilitarianism, an action is right if, and only if, it promotes the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Bentham presented utilitarianism as a practical guide to both individual and collective decision-making, developing a ‘felicific calculus’ to measure the net amount of happiness producible by alternative courses of action. The practical influence of utilitarianism in shaping social policy in Britain from the mid-19th cent. has been considerable. It became the ideological driving force behind the reform movement known as philosophical radicalism, which tested all institutions by the principle of utility. Many far-reaching changes in the social security system, the treatment of employees and tenants, and the regulation of public health owed their origin in large part to the spirit of utilitarian ideas. This influence remains strong today: the theory of welfare economics, the concepts of marginal utility and cost–benefit analysis, and the modern preoccupation with obtaining value for money in the public services all exemplify the utilitarian interpretation of ‘is it right?’ in terms of ‘will it work better?’

However, utilitarianism has been much criticized. It has been objected that it is impossible to reduce complex moral issues to a simple mathematical formula, however elegant, and that no rational criterion exists for balancing the great harm done to an individual by taking away his property, against the potential happiness which could be derived by 200 other persons to whom it might be distributed. Critics argue, also, that justice demands protection of basic human rights such as life and liberty irrespective of calculations of utility. On the utilitarian principle, it is possible to justify the execution or imprisonment of an innocent person in order to defuse a revolutionary situation or even to placate an angry mob. But such an act would violate justice, according to those who, like Kant and Hegel, argue that the right is prior to the good, and that it is immoral to commit wrong for the purpose of promoting utility. John Stuart Mill sought to answer this criticism by pointing out that the principle of justice promoted social utility in the long term, if not always in the immediate short term. Mill's position later became known as ‘rule-utilitarianism’ or indirect utilitarianism. Overall utility is best served by adherence to secondary rules such as justice, even though in a particular case, taken in itself, an act of injustice could have more good than evil consequences.

The critics also point out that utilitarianism is essentially an aggregative principle, and lacks a defensible distributive criterion. Whatever distribution of goods maximizes social utility is endorsed by utilitarianism irrespective of who gets what. Critics find this distributive arbitrariness unacceptable; for them justice demands that good should be distributed on the basis of some non-arbitrary criterion, such as desert, entitlement, or need.

Tim S. Gray