Utilitarianism Essay

762 Words2 Pages

Utilitarianism is a philosophical theory in which the happiness of the greatest number of people in a community is considered to be the greatest good. According to me, I find utilitarianism the most compelling ethical theory among the three. Not only do I find utilitarianism more compelling but also some government systems such as the United States and many more prefer using this theory in their governing. In circumstances where a man is given the option to torture or kill another man to save a thousand lives. A utilitarian would choose to torture the one man. This is because utilitarianism is an ethical system which is built on the calculation of happiness. The happiness of a thousand lives being saved outweighs the pain of torturing one man. …show more content…

Many people dispute that the action of bombing was not necessary since many lives of the innocent civilians were lost. However, the Japanese government was also working towards developing a similar weapon that could have been used on the United States if they had not interfered. This also helped the United States of America a lot to stop many other countries from getting involved and this ended the war between Japan. The lives of the innocent people lost might have been greater if the atomic bomb had not been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because there would be a war between Japan, United States and many other countries involving more innocent lives. Therefore, although the United States of America killed thousands of Japanese, it was in exchange for the greater good and for the greatest amount of people. This stopped the war between the government of Japan and the United States of America, before other countries could get involved in the same …show more content…

However, in this particular situation utilitarianism has a serious problem of poor distribution of utility that is to say causing one person a lot of pain is no worse than causing many people a little inconvenience. If the one person 's suffering doesn 't cause others to fear that they will

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