THE GREATEST HAPPINESS / UTILITARIANISM

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Recommended: Essays including utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism
Highest principle of morality that Jeremy Bentham thought was the maximization of happiness. In other words, according to Bentham, to maximize joy and happiness(also called utility) is the only criterion of right action. He suggested several policies that reflect his thoughts, and the following is an example of them.

Rounding up beggars
- Bentham observed that people who encounter beggars on the streets suffer from 'sympathy' or 'pain of disgust'. Either way, encountering beggars reduces the utility of the general public. So Bentham proposed removing beggars from the streets and confining them in a workhouse. Although It may seems to Harsh, Bentham’s aim was not punitive. It was meant simply to promote the general welfare by solving a problem that diminished social utility.

Objection 1: Individual Rights
The biggest weakness of utilitarianism is that it does not respect the rights of the individual. By caring only about the sum of utilities, each individual is just dealt with a part of the community. For the utilitarian, individuals matter, but only in the sense that each person’s preferences should be counted along with everyone else’s.

Throwing Christians to lions
- In ancient Rome, they threw Christians to the lions in the Coliseum for the amusement of the crowd. In this situation, utilitarians calculate the christian’s suffer, arised by the lion’s mauling and devouring him, and compare it with collective ecstasy of the cheering spectators packing the Coliseum. If enough Romans derive enough pleasure from the violent spectacle, there are no grounds on which a utilitarian can condemn it. The utilitarian may worry that such games will coarsen habits and breed more violence in the stre...

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...s and even hard-working characteristics also could be determined by environment. However it doesn’t seems reasonable for most people.

Rejecting Moral Desert
If Rawls’s argument about the moral arbitrariness of talents is right, it leads to a conclusion that distributive justice is not a matter of rewarding moral desert. Instead, it’s about meeting the legitimate expectations that arise once the rules of the game are in place. Once the principles of justice set the terms of social cooperation, people are entitled to the benefits they earn under the rules.
No one deserves to get more, but they entitled to them. It can’t be said that Letterman, an American television host, deserves to make seven hundred times as much as a schoolteacher. But they entitled to their earnings. The fact that they happen to live in the society is their good luck, not result of effort.

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