Utilitarianism: A Closer Look
Utilitarianism is an old political theory. It has been put forth in one form or another by many political philosophers over the years as the basis for a good political system. Epicurus was one of the early proponents of utilitarianism, though he did not call it by that name. However, he did promote the idea that happiness or pleasure was a good indicator of moral decisions. Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sigwick, all well-known political philosophers, also put forth utilitarian ideas in their political philosophies. While a utilitarian political philosophy may have some uses in making decisions that affect a large number of people, such as the decision to go to war or the decision to raise taxes to pay for health care, utilitarianism does not take into consideration the distinctions between people. There is no room for individual thought or action in utilitarianism, as each person's actions must be taken in context with the amount of pleasure or pain those actions will bring to others. This paper argues that utilitarianism is not useful as an individual philosophy, as it does not take the differences between individuals into consideration.
The political philosophy of utilitarianism is highly impersonal in nature. It focuses on what is good for humans as a whole, rather than what is good for one human. As people are different from each other by nature, each with different interests, likes, dislikes, and beliefs, the philosophy of utilitarianism can not be effectively used where individuals are concerned. A government operating under a utilitarian philosophy would be required to take into consideration the relative pain or pleasure that...
Not only that, but every possible effect any decision made could have on every single person in the country would also have to be taken into consideration before a decision could be made. Even if it were possible for a government to somehow determine whether its decisions would bring pleasure or pain to each and every one of its citizens, it would be practically impossible for the government to determine every possible effect the decision about to be made could have on every citizen. The very nature of utilitarianism then -- focusing on the whole rather than on the individual -- makes it impractical as a political philosophy.
While it may seem from this that utilitarianism does take individual differences into consideration -- it does, after all, look at how each person will be affected by a potential decision -- a closer look at utilitarianism will reveal that this is not the case. Almost all of the political philosophers who have been proponents of utilitarianism have advanced the idea that what brings pleasure to the greatest number of people is the best moral course of action to take. However, the reality is that any decision to be made could have a variety of effects on a person, ranging from pleasure to pain to indifference. A person may even feel both pleasure and pain about a decision, such as if the decision brought pain to someone that person was personally close to. In fact, any potential decision that a government could make has the potential to have many varied and subtle effects on every person it touches. By simply grouping the effects a decision can have on a person into either "pleasure" or…
