Utilitarianism: The Greatest Happiness Principle

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Utilitarianism was first brought up along the nourishing of “The Greatest Happiness Principle” introduced by Jeremy Bentham and further developed by John Stuart Mill, who was a follower of Bentham (Sweet, 2013). Based upon its principle, Utilitarianism states that to be good is to generate the greatest possible amount of happiness for the greatest number. In contrast with rational egoism, Utilitarianism focuses more on maximizing the overall net happiness of the majority. When facing a decision to make, utilitarianism provide us the evaluations of actions taken based upon their consequences (Sweet, 2013). By weighing the consequence, the model often produces more practical results.
Since Utilitarianism judges the decision by weighing the outcomes or we say consequences, it is also known nowadays as consequentialism (Walter, 2012). There are two major branches under utilitarianism, which are act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Although under the same main root of consequentialism, act and rule utilitarianism have different methodology to follow (Brink, 2005). While act utilit...

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