Jeremy Bentham's Core Principles Of Happiness And Happiness

What is happiness? We usually refer to happiness as just an emotion but is that all it is? Jeremy Bentham is convinced that avoiding pain and seeking pleasure for the betterment of a community is the end, or the purpose of all human life. Bentham beliefs that happiness relies on pleasure, an idea that contradicts with my belief that happiness is an end onto itself, or self sufficient. I believe that if happiness is to be the sole purpose of man, as Bentham states in his collection of writings, then it should be the ultimate end, leading to nothing else. Therefore if happiness is self sufficient, it cannot rely on pleasure or pain to be man 's purpose because it relies on things outside of itself to make man happy. Bentham 's core ideas of happiness comes from the principle of utility. "The principle of utility is the foundation of the present work: it will be proper therefore at outset to give an explicit and determinate account of what is meant by it... By utility is meant that the property in any object whereby it tends to produce

The principle of utility and ethics governed by pleasure and pain each seem flawed. How can all of our acts be good as long as we seeking pleasure for the greater community? That thought is too vague. That is a free pass to do anything you want as long as it brings people pleasure. Although he claims that he believes that ethics should be objective, the previous statement makes it subjective. Ethics, or morality, should be objective. Objective in a sense that there is a general principle that we each follow in our daily lives. Not to say that each situation requires the same response, but that some things are right and others are not and we need to hold ourselves accountable for the wrong things. Having subjective morals would allow everyone to individually decide if their actions were right. If this were the case there would be no basis to create and uphold any