Utilitarianism says the right act does the most good for the most people. Picture a hospital with ten beds and twenty patients. Someone must choose who is helped first. A utilitarian weighs everyone’s gain and loss.
Contents
What is utilitarianism?
Utilitarianism is a theory about right and wrong. It says an act is right if it gives the most good to everyone it affects. It looks at results, not at motives.
What does it count as good?
The classic thinkers counted happiness. Mill defined happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain. Unhappiness is pain and the lack of pleasure.
How is it different from deontology?
Utilitarianism is consequentialist. It denies that rightness depends directly on anything but results. A deontologist cares about duties, such as keeping a promise, even when results differ.
What is the memory hook?
Utility asks one question: what happens to everyone affected?
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Consequentialism; Mill, Utilitarianism, chapter 2, Project Gutenberg.
Who was Jeremy Bentham?
Jeremy Bentham was an English thinker and law reformer. He was born in London on 15 February 1748. He died there on 6 June 1832.
What did he write?
His major early work was An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. It appeared in 1789. In it he said pain and pleasure are the two sovereign masters of mankind. They decide what we ought to do and what we will do.
Where did his idea come from?
He did not invent the idea from nothing. He found the utility principle in the writings of Hume, Helvétius and Beccaria. He then made it a systematic test for laws.
What is the memory hook?
Bentham: London, 1748 to 1832, pain and pleasure, law reform.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Jeremy Bentham, life and writings.
What is the felicific calculus?
The felicific calculus is Bentham’s way of measuring pleasure and pain. It lists the features that make a pleasure or pain count for more or less.
What does it measure for one person?
Four features matter. They are intensity, duration, certainty and propinquity. Propinquity means how near or far the pleasure is in time.
What is added when judging an act?
Two more features apply to an act’s tendency. Fecundity is the chance of being followed by feelings of the same kind. Purity is the chance of not being followed by the opposite feeling.
What is added when many people are affected?
A further feature is extent. It means the number of people touched by the pleasure or pain.
What is the memory hook?
Intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, then fecundity, purity and extent.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Jeremy Bentham, the hedonic calculus.
How did John Stuart Mill change the theory?
John Stuart Mill was born on 20 May 1806 in Pentonville, London. His father was James Mill. He rewrote the theory in his book Utilitarianism. It first came out in Fraser’s Magazine.
What was his big change?
Mill said pleasures differ in quality as well as quantity. He found it absurd to judge every other thing by quality and quantity, but pleasures by quantity alone. Some pleasures are of a higher kind and are valued more.
Which pleasures are higher?
Mill said pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments are worth far more than mere sensation.
What is his best-known line?
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
What is the memory hook?
Bentham counted amounts; Mill also counted quality.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, John Stuart Mill, life; Mill, Utilitarianism, chapter 2, the pig and Socrates line.
What are act and rule utilitarianism?
The theory has two forms. They differ on what gets judged.
What is act utilitarianism?
An act is right if it gives the most good of all the acts open to you. The classic thinkers held this view. Each single act is tested on its own results.
What is rule utilitarianism?
Here the rightness of an act depends on the results of a rule. Followers ask what would happen if everybody obeyed a rule. They might argue that theft is wrong because a world where everyone steals would be worse.
What is the memory hook?
Act asks about this deed; rule asks about the rule.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Consequentialism, act and rule forms.
What are the main criticisms?
Critics say the theory can clash with common moral sense. Two objections come up most.
What is the objection about innocent people?
If the total good rises, the theory might seem to allow harming one person to help many. A famous case is a doctor who cuts up one innocent patient to save five. Most people think this is wrong. Many utilitarians change the theory to avoid such a result.
What is the objection about demands?
Utilitarianism asks for impartiality among all people. Critics say this ignores special bonds. Saving your drowning wife should not need a sum of results. That would be “one thought too many” in Bernard Williams’s words. Others say the duty to maximise utility is too demanding.
What is the memory hook?
Critics: it can sacrifice one person, and it can ignore loved ones.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Consequentialism, objections.
How did Mill link it to liberty?
Mill also wrote On Liberty. It defends freedom and asks when the state may interfere with a person.
What is the harm principle?
The harm principle is simple. The state may use power over an adult against their will only to stop harm to others. Their own good is not enough.
What is the memory hook?
Harm to others is the only reason to override freedom.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, John Stuart Mill, the harm principle.
How did Bentham use it for law reform?
Bentham gave up a career in the law to work on analytic jurisprudence and law reform. He wanted social and political improvement.
What did he examine?
He studied the death penalty. He first examined its utility in the 1770s. He asked whether it did enough good to justify the harm.
What else did he argue?
He rejected the criminalising of consensual sexual acts. Scholars call his work the first systematic defence of sexual liberty in English.
What is the memory hook?
Bentham tested laws by results.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Jeremy Bentham, law reform and punishment.
What do exams ask?
UPSC has asked utilitarian reasoning in case studies. NDA once asked which statements describe utilitarianism.
What did UPSC ask?
UPSC CSM 2021, GS Paper IV, Q10
Case Study 20 marks · 250 words
The COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly; by 8 May 2020, India had reported 56,342 positive cases. With a population of over 1.35 billion, India struggled to control transmission and imposed a 55-day nationwide lockdown, while schools and colleges shifted to online teaching. India was not prepared for the crisis due to limited human resources, funds and infrastructure, and hospitals faced acute shortages of beds, oxygen cylinders, ambulances, staff and crematoria. You are a hospital administrator in a public hospital at the time coronavirus attacked large numbers of people, with patients pouring in day and night.
(a) Fully knowing this is a highly infectious disease with limited resources and infrastructure, what are your criteria and justification for putting your clinical and non-clinical staff to attend to the patients?
(b) If yours is a private hospital, whether your justification and decision would remain the same as that of a public hospital?
A utilitarian answer lists who gains and who loses. It then tests the plan against fairness.
What did NDA ask?
NDA-NA (II) 2016, Q83
Which of the following are the features of the ideology of utilitarianism?
1. Utilitarians believed that all value derives from land
2. The most celebrated spokesmen of utilitarianism were Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill
3. Utilitarians were advocates of the idea that India could be ruled through indigenous laws and customs
4. Utilitarians were advocates of the idea of the ‘greatest good for the greatest number of people’.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
(a) 1 and 4 only
(b) 2 and 4 only
(c) 1, 2 and 4
(d) 2 and 3
What are the traps?
- Bentham founded it; Mill refined it.
- Only Mill ranked pleasures by quality.
- Utilitarianism is consequentialist, not deontological.
- Act judges single acts; rule judges rules.
- The harm principle comes from On Liberty.
What is the memory hook?
Greatest good, Bentham and Mill, results not duty.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Consequentialism, classic utilitarianism.
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