Rawls, Singer, and Williams: Critiques of Utilitarianism

Introduction

This essay addresses three general questions relating to utilitarianism. The first question pertains to John Rawls and his deconstruction of utilitarianism through what came to be known as "the analogy." The second question concerns the views of Peter Singer as stated in Famine, Affluence, and Morality. The third takes up Bernard Williams, who, like Rawls, viewed utilitarianism skeptically and offers specific examples explaining his disagreement. For all three questions, a critique of the overall argument is provided. While cases can be made both for utilitarianism and against it, there are notable gaps in the logic that justifies utilitarianism and governs how it operates in practice.

Rawls and the Analogy Argument

Of all the ethical and moral philosophers who have engaged with utilitarianism, John Rawls is among the most notable. Rawls was a persistent critic of utilitarianism, arguing that it was neither ethically nor rationally sound. His critique came to be known as the analogy. Put simply, the analogy holds that utilitarianism treats society as though it were a single individual rather than a collection of individuals with different values, perceptions of fairness, and opinions. As Rawls himself stated, "a society is properly arranged when its institutions maximize the net balance of satisfaction." In other words, utilitarianism posits a single standard aimed at producing the greatest happiness for all people, applied uniformly across society (Rawls, 1971).

To use a modern example, having a single government-run system that maximizes health outcomes for as many people as possible would represent the utilitarian approach to healthcare. By contrast, a free marketplace offering different options and coverage levels — where individuals choose according to their preferences — represents the alternative. The former advances a collective, uniform view of what is best for society; the latter leaves the decision to individual choice. The former is also constrained by finite taxpayer resources, meaning it aims to maximize the number of people who benefit rather than the depth of benefit any one person receives. The definition of what is needed and what is affordable is made collectively rather than by each person. In a free-market system, people choose coverage based on what they can afford and what they feel they need. The downside is that not everyone can afford the care they want, and some cannot afford anything at all, creating inequity. The upside, however, is that no single standard is imposed on everyone (Rawls, 1971).

The utilitarian response to the advantages of a free market involves the concept of the impartial spectator — an idealized figure who guides and defines what society, viewed as a unified whole, can and should provide. As Rawls put it, "for it is by the conception of the impartial spectator and the use of sympathetic identification in guiding our imagination that the principle for one man is applied to society." The obvious criticism of this idea is the question of who that person should be, what conclusion they would reach, and why their conclusion should be considered authoritative. One need only look at the current political landscape of the United States to see the difficulty. Two firmly established camps — the liberal/Democratic side and the conservative/Republican side — would give very different answers about what people need and how to allocate finite resources. Democrats tend to favor universal healthcare and an expanded social safety net, representing the more utilitarian view. Republicans tend to emphasize self-sufficiency and limited government provision. Both camps claim to act in the public interest, yet they arrive at opposing conclusions (Rawls, 1971).

The deeper problem is the logical difficulty of allowing one person or ideology to serve as the sole arbiter of societal need. Compromise is possible but often elusive when divergent ideologies share the same political system. This tension is visible in debates over unemployment benefits, Social Security, welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, and similar programs, where one side views benefit cuts as a necessary corrective against abuse while the other views them as unconscionable (Rawls, 1971).

Singer on Famine, Affluence, and Moral Obligation

Peter Singer argued, through what he called the qualified principle, that no level of poverty or deprivation should be permitted to persist. He further asserted that the physical distance between a wealthy person and a suffering person is morally irrelevant. Using the example of starving people in Bengal, Singer wrote that his principle "takes no account of proximity or distance. It makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbor's child ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away." He further argued that the duty to act and the capacity to act are not as separable as many people assume (Singer, 1972).

Yet Singer himself is willing to partially complicate his own assertions, describing these counter-considerations as "paradoxes." One such paradox involves questions of how much individuals give, how much others give, how much others are perceived to give, and whether those perceptions are accurate. He acknowledges that if everyone gave more than they currently do, outcomes would improve. If everyone gave less than they "ought" to, outcomes would worsen. But when the question turns to what people believe they are obligated to give, the results become difficult to predict. Many people in, say, Dallas, Texas, might feel they bear no obligation to assist starving people in North Korea, having had no part in creating that situation and being unable to help those individuals directly even if they wished to (Singer, 1972).

This is precisely where Singer's argument encounters its most significant difficulty. Using North Korea as an example: the suffering of the North Korean people results from the deliberate policies of a totalitarian regime. Providing money or resources to that government would carry a serious risk of reinforcing that regime rather than relieving the suffering it causes. Singer's framework focuses predominantly on the fact of suffering and the moral obligation it generates, without fully accounting for the causes of that suffering or the political constraints on effective intervention. The "why" behind a situation matters enormously when determining what kind of response, if any, is likely to help (Singer, 1972).

A parallel problem exists with poverty and homelessness in the United States. The causes of homelessness are rarely uniform: they include mental illness, job loss, addiction, poor choices, and simple misfortune, often in combination. A homeless veteran suffering from untreated post-traumatic stress disorder may have made destructive choices, but those choices were partly shaped by conditions beyond his control. Blanket utilitarian giving — handing money to anyone who appears to need it — can produce harmful outcomes, yet a blanket refusal to help, based on assumptions about how the money will be used, can deprive genuinely struggling people of meaningful assistance. As Singer himself noted (though attributing this formulation to Rawls), "neither our distance from a preventable evil nor the number of other people who, in respect to that evil, are in the same situation we are, lessens our obligation to mitigate or prevent that evil." That principle is admirable in intent, but in practice, "preventing" evil is far more complicated when international despotism or multi-causal personal hardship is involved (Singer, 1972).

Conclusion

As with most things, there is no clear winner between utilitarianism and its antithesis. There are times when the utilitarian view is the proper one, but it is not something that works — or should be attempted — in all instances. Rawls and Williams make the stronger overall cases here. Pure anti-utilitarianism adopted as a rigid rule is no more defensible than reflexive utilitarianism, but the critiques offered by Rawls and Williams reveal genuine and serious limitations in utilitarian reasoning that should temper any uncritical application of the doctrine.

References

Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Singer, P. (1972). Famine, affluence, and morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1(1).

Smart, J., & Williams, B. (1973). Utilitarianism: For and against. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.