FREE ESSAY ON UTILITARIANISM

UTILITARIANISM

Utlitarianism
What is Utilitarianism? Utilitarianism is a philosophical concept that holds an action to
be held right if it tends to promote happiness for the greatest number of people.
Utilitarians define the morally right actions as those actions that maximize some
non-moral good or happiness and minimize some non-moral evil. Pleasure is an example of a
non-moral good and pain is an example of a non- moral evil. A utilitarian will fous on
the consequences of an act rather than on the intristic nature of the act or the motives
of the agent. In short, utilitarians focus on ends rather than actions. An example would
be a person that litters, a utilitarian will argue that the act of littering is not
intrinsicly bad but the litter that is caused will eventually cause harm and therefore it
is bad. Utilitarianism is all about making the right choices that will consequently
promote the greatest amount of happiness. The following four stories will explain
utilitarianism in depth.
Kai Nielsen wrote "A Defense for Utilitarianism" in which he describes his strong
arguments that favor utilitarianism. He beliefs in maximizing the greatest good for the
greatest amount of people. Nielsen strongly supports consequentalism. Consequentialism
describes that an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more
favorable than unfavorable to everyone. There are two examples that Nielsesn uses to
reinforce his arguments. The first story (Fat Man Story) deals with a fat man that needs
to be killed in order to save the lives of the people stuck in the cave. A utilitarian
will favor the decision of killing the fat man because the action will produce the
greatest amont of happiness for the greatest amount of people. In order for the
utilitarian to take this approach he would weigh the happiness of the fat man with the
happiness of all the people in the cave and obviously the hapiness of the people stuck in
the cave outweighs the happiness of the single fat man. The second story deals with a
megistrate that is pressured by the mob to condemn an innocent person in order to prevent
the mob of murdering innocent people. The megistrate acts as a utilitarian by condeming
an innocent person to save the lives of the many innocent people. The megistrate acts as
a utilitarian but was his decision the right decision? Is utilitarinism always the right
action to take? In the next passage I will describe oppositions made towards
utilitarianism.
Bernard Williams is the author of " A Case against Utilitarianism". In this passage
Williams is against utilitarianism because he beliefs that the actions that a person
takes matter because decisions are reflected by integrity, responsibility, and morals.
His argument states that utilitarianism is only concerned with the best outcome, and that
utilitarianism does not consider and evaluate the actions that a person must take to
achieve the outcome. Williams's beliefs that a person must do what is morally correct.
For example, in Nielsen's mob story, Williams could argue that the megistrate did wrong
in killing the innocent man because he is always going to be held responsible for the
murder futhermore he has probably violated his values, integrity, and morals. Williams
would argue that the megistrate should do what he thinks is morally right because he is
the only one held responsible for his own actions. In his story he includes the story of
Jim. Jim is confronted with a hard situation; he must kill one Indian in order to save
the whole tribe to be killed by another individual. In this situation a utilitarian would
kill the Indian in order to save the whole tribe, but Jim decides not tro kill the
Indian. Jim does not want to be held responsible for the murder, he want to maintain his
integrity and moral beliefs. 
Ursula Le Guinn, the author of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", describes a utopic
society whose happiness is based on the misery of a single individual. This individual
(child) from birth is locked away in a basement, fed poorly, and completely neglected. In
this case if utilitarian theory were correct, then this would be a morally conceivable
act. If the pleasure of the people from Omelas is experienced by taking advantage of a
child exceeded the pain felt by the child, then the exploitation of the child would be a
morally good thing to do. In this scenario utilitarianism did not work because the people
of Omelas that saw the child suffering did not want to live there. The people left the
town because they had integrity and because they conceived the act as being morally
incorrect. Furthermore the people did not want to feel responsible for the acts that were
commited towards the child. The seclution of the child can eventually cause greater harm
because the people of Omelas will feel unhappiness through guiltness for the act commited
to the child. This story proves utilitarianism to be incorrect because people have
integrity, values, and moral believes that are very hard to ingnore when making
decisions.
"The Survival Lottery" by John Harris describes a society in which one individual is
randomly choosen to die by donating organs in order to save two persons. What is worse?
Killing a human being in order to save two, or letting two human beings die and not
killing an innocent man. It is very difficult to weigh the greatest happiness in this
case. If you agree with Williams you will be totally against this case because killing an
innocent man is wrong, but if you agree with Nielsen you can agree because you are
bringing more happiness (two human beings) by killing only one person. Harris mentions
that if people were choosen randomly then people would not live totally happy because
they would live with fear and unsecurity. Furthermore, the doctors should not interfere
with the will of God. But what if two people can be saved by the elimination of one?
(Utilitarian view)
In conclusion it is very diificult to determine wheter the utilitarian theory can be
justified. Should we just focus on the positive outcome or should we also focus on the
actions that we take in order to accomplish the greatest good?