Criticisms of Utilitarianism

The justice objection says utilitarianism can excuse unfair treatment of an innocent person. It does so whenever the unfair act creates enough total benefit.

Utilitarianism judges an action only by its results. The right action is the one that produces the most good for the most people.

An earlier lesson on this site introduced the theory: Utilitarianism: Bentham and Mill.

What is a simple example?

Picture an angry crowd that wants someone punished for a crime. Punishing an innocent person might calm the crowd. On paper, that could give the “best” total outcome. Yet nearly everyone feels it would be deeply unfair.

What is the transplant case?

The transplant case is a standard test. Five patients in a hospital will die without new organs. A sixth, healthy man is there for routine tests. A surgeon could take his organs and save all five.

Most people find this result abominable. Critics say it shows that utilitarianism overlooks justice and rights. Here, the healthy man’s right to life is overlooked.

Do utilitarians have an answer?

Some do. They can “bite the bullet” and accept the hard result. Others change the theory itself, as card 9 shows.

The tyranny of the majority is the risk that a large group gains by badly harming a small group. In theory, utilitarianism can approve such a policy. The majority’s gain only has to outweigh the minority’s loss.

This objection is close to the justice objection. But here the victim is a whole group, not one person.

What does it look like in real life?

Imagine a policy that takes a small community’s land. The land is used for a road or dam that serves a much larger population. On a simple count of total gain, the policy may pass. Yet the small community bears almost all of the cost.

Is this only a theory?

No. Card 13 shows a real Indian case. The Ken-Betwa Link Project promises large benefits. It also displaces families who say their losses are not fully counted.

Critics doubt it. This is the measurement problem. Utilitarianism must add up and compare the well-being of different people. Critics say such a comparison may be impossible.

Why does it matter?

Say one person wants an action and another person opposes it. To decide, a utilitarian must compare the strength of each person’s wish. There is no shared ruler for that.

How do you weigh one family’s grief at losing a home? How does it compare with many drivers’ convenience on a faster highway?

Did Bentham offer a method?

Yes. Jeremy Bentham published An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1789. Many scholars date classical utilitarianism from that book. Bentham scored a pleasure or pain on seven features.

• Intensity: how strong it is.
• Duration: how long it lasts.
• Certainty: how likely it is to happen.
• Nearness: how soon it comes.
• Fecundity: how likely it is to lead to more pleasure or pain.
• Purity: how free it is from the opposite feeling.
• Extent: how many people it affects.

Did he expect a full count every time?

No. Bentham did not ask people to run the full count before every choice. It would cost too much time.

Experience and rules of thumb can guide us instead. A rule of thumb is a simple working guide. But such a rule gives way when it clashes with doing the most good.

The utility monster is an imagined being that gains far more pleasure from any resource than anyone else does. Philosopher Robert Nozick used it to criticise utilitarianism. Utility here means well-being or satisfaction.

Why is it a problem?

Utilitarianism tells us to produce the most total well-being. So strict utilitarianism would give all resources to this one being. A utilitarian should even back a rule that favours it. Most people find this conclusion clearly wrong. Critics say it is repugnant to justice.

Is it only a fantasy?

The monster is imaginary, but the logic is real. Some people really are better at turning resources into well-being. Pure maximising means always aiming for the largest total. It has no built-in way to stop favouring such people.

Many critics say yes. This is the demandingness objection. Classic utilitarianism seems to require acts that should be a free choice.

What is an example?

Your old shoes still work, but they look dirty. You want a new pair that costs $100. You could instead give the $100 to a charity that saves a life. That gift does more total good. So strict utilitarianism says buying the shoes is wrong.

The same logic reaches into most parts of life. It would change many of your personal choices. Many people feel such choices should be left to each person.

How do utilitarians reply?

Some accept the demand. They say we really should change our lives to do much more good.

Others soften the theory. John Stuart Mill said an act is wrong only when it fails to do the most good and also makes the person liable to punishment. On that view, we ought to give more, but failing to give is not always wrong.

Bernard Williams argued that utilitarianism attacks a person’s integrity. Here integrity means wholeness. It means being at one with your own deepest projects and values.

He made this case in Utilitarianism: For and Against (1973). J.J.C. Smart was his co-author. Williams wrote the “Against” half.

What were his two famous cases?

• George is offered a job making weapons of mass destruction. If he refuses, his family stays poor. Someone worse will take the job anyway.
• Jim is told to kill one villager. If he does, twenty others will not be killed.

What was his real point?

Many readers think Williams said utilitarianism gets these cases wrong. He did not say that. He even suggested it tells Jim the right thing.

His point was about the person who must act. Utilitarianism asks George to step aside from his own projects. He must take the impartial view and follow the sum.

Williams said this cuts a person off from his own actions. He called it, “in the most literal sense, an attack on his integrity.”

What else did he object to?

Williams attacked negative responsibility. For a utilitarian, a harm you cause and a harm you allow count the same. Doing and allowing are morally on a par.

He also said some choices should not be calculated at all. Suppose a man can save either his drowning wife or a stranger. Weighing the outcomes first would be “one thought too many”.

What does this look like for an officer?

Imagine an official ordered to carry out a policy he finds morally repugnant. The only reason given is a better statistical outcome. That is the pressure Williams described.

Robert Nozick said individual rights set firm limits on what anyone may do to us. He argued this in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). The book opens: “Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them”.

What is a side constraint?

A side constraint is a firm limit on action. You may chase your goals, but never by crossing that limit. Nozick said such limits “reflect the fact of our separate existences”.

Why does this answer utilitarianism?

Each person lives only one life. So there can be no moral balancing across lives. One person’s loss is not cancelled by someone else’s gain. For Nozick, no greater social good justifies sacrificing some people for others.

The trolley problem tests whether saving more lives always makes an act right. A runaway trolley is heading towards five people. It can be turned onto a side track with one person. Utilitarianism says turn it, since one death is better than five.

Who first described it?

Philosopher Philippa Foot introduced the case in 1967. It came in her paper “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect”. The paper ran in the Oxford Review, volume 5.

In Foot’s case, the trolley driver makes the choice. Judith Jarvis Thomson later changed the case. In her version, a bystander, not the driver, decides.

Why do people’s answers change?

Turning the trolley seems allowed to many people. Yet killing one to save five seems wrong in other cases. The transplant case from card 1 is one example. The number of lives is the same in both. So something besides the count must matter.

What is the doctrine of double effect?

Foot used such cases to test the doctrine of double effect. It says a harm you foresee differs from a harm you intend.

You may sometimes cause a harm you foresee but do not aim at. You may not aim at that same harm as your goal or your means.

Rule utilitarianism judges general rules by their results, not each single act. It picks rules by the good they bring. Those rules then decide which acts are wrong.

Act utilitarianism is the original version. It judges each act on its own results.

How does it answer the justice objection?

Take a rule against punishing the innocent. If everyone follows it every time, society does better in the long run. So rule utilitarianism forbids framing the innocent person, even when one case seems to gain.

What are the objections to this reply?

• Rule worship: followers may stick to a rule even when that is obviously disastrous.
• Collapse: suppose we add an exception whenever breaking a rule does more good. The rules then demand the same acts as act utilitarianism. So the reply adds nothing.

How do defenders answer?

They add a rule that requires us to prevent disaster, even if other rules must bend. That covers the extreme cases.

They also note that each rule costs effort to learn. So simpler codes are easier to teach. Brad Hooker defends this view in Ideal Code, Real World (2000).

The timeline below puts the main works of this debate in order. It runs from Bentham’s 1789 book to Hooker’s 2000 defence.

Defenders say many of them do. The transplant surgeon and the utility monster are extreme, made-up cases. Real life rarely looks like that.

The grid below recaps the six objections from cards 1 to 6. Each box gives the objection and its core worry.

In everyday practice, utilitarian reasoning tends to support widely shared values. Preventing suffering is one example.

Is that a full answer?

Not for every critic. A rare case can still show what a theory counts and what it ignores. That is why exams keep using these cases.

Amartya Sen argues that utility is a poor way to judge how well people live. His critique is aimed mainly at views that maximise utility. It is not aimed at every view that cares about outcomes. Amartya Sen is already covered on this site.

Why is utility a poor measure?

Utility is subjective. That means it is a feeling inside each person. So it is hard to measure and compare across people.

What about poor people who say they are content?

People living in hardship may lower their hopes as a way to cope. They may then feel satisfied with very little. So a poor person who reports being content is not proof of being well off.

What is the pleasure wizard?

Sen pictured a disabled person who is a “pleasure wizard”. She gains a lot of satisfaction from very little. An able-bodied person is much harder to please.

A utility count would then send more help to the able-bodied person. But it cannot be right to give less help to those in greater need just because they are easier to satisfy.

Where does distribution come in?

Standard utilitarianism looks at the total or the average. A society could have high total utility while some people stay in deep poverty.

For example, a country’s average income can rise sharply. Meanwhile, the poorest tenth may see no gain at all. Critics stress that totals can hide such gaps.

John Rawls built his theory of justice partly as an answer to utilitarianism. He argued against utilitarianism, the dominant tradition in modern political thought. He said his “justice as fairness” is better. Rawls’s theory is already covered on this site.

What did Rawls fear?

Under average utilitarianism, some people’s basic liberties might be cut for others’ gain. For example, limiting a weak minority’s political and religious liberties might benefit the majority.

Rawls used a thought experiment called the original position. In it, people choose the rules of society without knowing their own place in it. Rawls argued they would refuse to gamble on ending up in that weak minority.

What is the difference principle?

The difference principle allows social and economic inequalities only on one condition. They must work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society. It protects the worst-off from being sacrificed for a total gain.

Rawls also said each person has “an inviolability founded on justice”. Even the welfare of everyone else cannot override it. Inviolability means something cannot be broken or set aside.

How does this show up in India?

Large building projects raise exactly this question. A dam or highway may produce a large net benefit. It may also displace a smaller number of people. The objections in this lesson explain why that trade-off is ethically contested, not just hard in practice.

The Ken-Betwa Link Project is a live Indian test of the utilitarian trade-off. It promises large gains for the Bundelkhand region. Families who must move say their losses are not fully counted.

What does the project promise?

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid its foundation stone at Khajuraho on 25 December 2024.
• It costs Rs 44,605 crore and is due for completion in 2030.
• The 96.7 m high Daudhan Dam stands on the Ken River, in Panna and Chhatarpur districts.
• It aims to irrigate 10.62 lakh ha and supply drinking water to about 62 lakh people.
• It would also generate 103 MW of hydropower and 27 MW of solar power.

The government says land is taken under the LARR Act 2013. This is India’s 2013 law on fair pay and resettlement in land acquisition. The government says it has taken consent and is running a rehabilitation plan.

Who bears the cost?

Official estimates say 22 villages will be affected across the project. Of these, 10 face complete submergence. More than 7,000 families will be displaced.

The administration says help rose from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 12.50 lakh per family. It says more than Rs 700 crore has been paid.

What happened in 2026?

Here are the main events, newest first.

• 19 July 2026: Police detained activist Amit Bhatnagar and about 150 protesters at Kupi village, Chhatarpur district. He had led the protest while weak from a 14-day fast.
• Collector’s reply: the Chhatarpur Collector rejected the protesters’ claims. He said about 10% of 176 identified participants were affected by the project.
• 3 July 2026: A new protest began at Kupi. It demanded fresh land surveys and corrected records.
• 16 April 2026: The April protest was suspended. Officials had promised to review complaints.
• 12 April 2026: The protest at the dam site reached its eighth straight day, and work stopped. Protesters wanted Rs 12.5 lakh per displaced family, as Daudhan evacuees get, instead of the Rs 5 lakh package for the Majhgawan and Vishramganj dams. Officials called this “policy-wise impossible” for awards passed years ago. They offered a fresh survey for missed names.

Which objection fits which side?

• The benefit column is the utilitarian sum.
• The justice and tyranny-of-majority objections ask about the cost column.
• Rawls asks whether the least advantaged gain.
• Nozick asks whether rights were crossed, whatever the total.

Ethics case studies often ask whether a utilitarian answer is enough. “Save the most lives” sounds strong. But a public official must also weigh rights, rules and integrity.

How should you build an answer?

1. State the utilitarian answer in one line.
2. Test it against the justice objection and Nozick’s rights.
3. Ask who bears the cost, using Rawls’s difference principle.
4. Check your own integrity, as Williams would.
5. Add one Indian example, such as the Ken-Betwa project.

This 2021 case study does not name utilitarianism. But it is a choice about scarce resources and risk to staff. It tests the same trade-offs.

The full question opens with a short COVID-19 background. Start with the utilitarian count of lives saved. Then weigh staff safety, fairness and duty.

Pairs of similar ideas are the usual trap. Check each pair against this list.

1. Justice objection vs tyranny of the majority. The first harms one person. The second harms a whole minority.
2. Act vs rule utilitarianism. Act judges each act. Rule judges the general rule.
3. Williams’s real point. He attacked the loss of integrity. He did not say Jim’s answer was wrong.
4. Foot vs Thomson. Foot’s driver came first, in 1967. Thomson later used a bystander.
5. Sen vs Rawls. Sen doubts utility as a measure. Rawls protects the least advantaged.
6. The 22 villages. That is a project-wide estimate, not a single-dam figure.