Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, and the Limits of the Greatest Good
This essay examines utilitarianism as a moral philosophy, tracing its foundational principles through Jeremy Bentham's pain-and-pleasure calculus and testing them against literary and legal cases. Using the Seaman Holmes trial, Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," and the Ivan Karamazov thought experiment from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, the essay argues that utilitarianism contains a fatal flaw: it permits—and even justifies—the suffering of an innocent individual for the benefit of the majority. The essay concludes that utilitarianism lacks the moral grounding provided by virtue ethics and ultimately fails as a just philosophical framework.
- Introduction to Utilitarianism: Seaman Holmes case illustrates utilitarian moral tradeoffs
- Bentham's Principle of Utility and Its Limits: Bentham's pain-pleasure calculus and its contradictions
- Le Guin, Dostoevsky, and the Problem of Innocent Suffering: Literary thought experiments expose utilitarianism's fatal flaw
- Why Utilitarianism Fails as a Moral Framework: Utilitarianism condemned as unjust; virtue ethics preferred
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay grounds abstract philosophical claims in concrete examples — the Seaman Holmes case, Le Guin's fictional Omelas, and Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov — making the critique of utilitarianism vivid and accessible.
- It moves logically from exposition (what utilitarianism is) to critique (where it fails), building toward a clear, confident conclusion rather than simply summarizing competing views.
- The paper uses literary sources alongside legal and philosophical ones, demonstrating that ethical arguments can be illuminated through narrative as well as theory.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The essay uses the technique of reductio ad absurdum through literary analogy: by citing Le Guin's Omelas and Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, the author shows that even a perfectly functioning utilitarian society produces a morally unacceptable outcome — the institutionalized suffering of an innocent — thereby exposing a structural weakness in the philosophy rather than merely asserting it.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with an explanation of utilitarianism illustrated by the Seaman Holmes case, then introduces Bentham's principle of utility and its inherent tension between competing interests. The third section applies Le Guin's and Dostoevsky's thought experiments to reveal utilitarianism's central flaw. The final section delivers a pointed normative judgment, contrasting utilitarianism unfavorably with virtue ethics and tying back to the opening case study.
Introduction to Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is the idea that the right course of action is that which would produce the greatest common good. In the story of Seaman Holmes, for example, the captain orders the seaman to throw several male passengers overboard in order to keep the leaky vessel afloat. The crew reluctantly does as told, and the next day the vessel is saved by another ship. The captain and crew, however, violated the law of the sea, which holds that the crew should always sacrifice their own lives first for the good of the passengers and the ship. In this case, the crew sacrificed some of the passengers in order to keep the ship afloat and everyone else alive.
They chose one common good — the survival of the majority of the passengers — but pursued it in a way that enabled them to sacrifice others rather than themselves, and so there was a trial. The only one to stand trial instead of fleeing was Seaman Holmes. He acquitted himself nobly by saving a child during the rescue, and this, in the eyes of the court, was just cause to grant him mercy for his violation of the law of the sea. Here we have an example of some good or utility identified and applied with respect to rules (p. 199). But it is not always so easy to determine what the greatest utility or good is in any given situation.
Bentham's Principle of Utility and Its Limits
Bentham points out that the two opposing principles of human nature — pain and pleasure — essentially dictate what our sense of good and utility are: "It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do" (p. 200). However, he notes that this approach does not lend itself to any improvement of the moral science. That is why he defines utilitarianism as a better way — based on the principle of utility, "which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question" (p. 200).
The problem arises when there are multiple parties with multiple, conflicting interests, or when different parties hold contradictory ideas of happiness. Who decides which happiness matters most?
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