Utilitarianism

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Introduction
This essay seeks to apply the ideas of Punishment and Utilitarianism to the speech made by John Kerry to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations on behalf of the Vietnam War veterans. The normative idea of utilitarianism purports that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness”, thus it is submitted that firstly utilitarianism focuses on the subjective pleasures, satisfactions, or preferences of the actor and secondly, it requires the aggregation of all of the subjective goods of individuals and it considers as best the outcome in which the total of individual satisfactions is maximized. The speech delivered by John Kerry brings to the fore issues regarding the various moral implications and the utility of the actions of the American soldiers during the war. This essay examines whether the a utilitarian view of the defence of torture and punishment inflicted by the American soldiers in the Vietnam War provides a viable argument for justifying torture on those grounds. The speech by Kerry raises important issues which criticise a utilitarian view of the war by claiming that it ignores the core value of justice and retribution. The essay shall first detail the concept of Utilitarianism and shall then proceed to describe the role it plays in assigning penal sanctions, concluding with an analysis of both these concepts within the context of Kerry’s speech.
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism requires that society be rightly ordered and should achieve justice though the various social institutions present in the society, by working to achieve the maximum possible aggregate utility. This idea has seen application in various fields such as social...

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... school of thought argues for the proportional application of sanctions, that is the punishment should be in accordance with the moral culpability of the individual, while the other school of thought submits that the passing of penal sanctions on a fellow human being is itself a wrongful act. With regards to the first school of thought, the steps to consider would be the quanta of punishment necessary to have a deterrent effect on the individual and on society. While the other school of thought needs to consider what the benchmark for justice really is, and the quanta of punishment required that will help in having a preventative effect and have a similar deterrent effect on society as a whole. Thus the idea such as rightful retribution in cases where self-defence plays an equally vital role in assessing what justice allows due to the prevailing morals of society.

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