utilitarianism example essay

Utilitarianism Theory

This essay about Utilitarianism Theory examines its ethical implications, emphasizing its core principles and criticisms. Utilitarianism, championed by Bentham and Mill, prioritizes maximizing overall happiness and minimizing suffering for the greatest number of people. While it offers a consequentialist approach to ethics, critics raise concerns about its potential to overlook individual rights and marginalize minority interests. Despite these criticisms, utilitarianism remains relevant in guiding ethical decision-making in public policy and business ethics, striving towards the common good and societal welfare.

How it works

Utilitarianism, a philosophical framework conceived by the minds of Jeremy Bentham and later refined by John Stuart Mill, serves as a beacon in the vast ocean of ethical theories. At its core, utilitarianism beckons us to evaluate the morality of actions based on their capacity to maximize overall happiness and minimize suffering across society. Unlike deontological ethics, which fixates on the adherence to moral rules, utilitarianism adopts a consequentialist approach, where the outcome reigns supreme over intent.

Central to utilitarian thought is the principle of the “greatest happiness,” proclaiming that actions are morally virtuous if they contribute to the greatest collective joy.

This principle underscores the imperative of considering the ramifications of our choices and striving to enhance the aggregate well-being of society. However, detractors caution against the potential pitfalls of this doctrine, fearing the subjugation of individual liberties and the neglect of minority interests in the pursuit of majority contentment.

Critics often cast doubt on utilitarianism’s ability to quantify and equate happiness across diverse circumstances and individuals. Moreover, the theory stands accused of endorsing morally dubious acts if they yield a net increase in happiness. In extreme scenarios, utilitarianism might justify sacrificing the welfare of a minority for the benefit of the majority, igniting ethical quandaries surrounding the treatment of marginalized or vulnerable factions within society.

Nevertheless, utilitarianism remains a lodestar in the ethical landscape, offering a compass for navigating the labyrinth of moral decision-making. In realms such as public policy and corporate governance, utilitarian principles illuminate pathways toward policies that amplify societal welfare and uphold the common good. By employing utilitarian lenses, policymakers can steer legislative agendas that foster societal harmony and equitable prosperity, while businesses can align their practices with principles of social responsibility and stakeholder satisfaction.

In summation, utilitarianism presents a compelling ethos for grappling with ethical dilemmas, accentuating the imperative of fostering collective happiness and assuaging communal suffering. Despite its detractors and ethical complexities, utilitarianism perseveres as a beacon of ethical reasoning, inviting scrutiny and debate as we strive to chart a course toward a more just and equitable society.

Cite this page

Utilitarianism Theory. (2024, Apr 29). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/utilitarianism-theory/

"Utilitarianism Theory." PapersOwl.com , 29 Apr 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/utilitarianism-theory/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Utilitarianism Theory . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/utilitarianism-theory/ [Accessed: 4 May. 2024]

"Utilitarianism Theory." PapersOwl.com, Apr 29, 2024. Accessed May 4, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/utilitarianism-theory/

"Utilitarianism Theory," PapersOwl.com , 29-Apr-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/utilitarianism-theory/. [Accessed: 4-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Utilitarianism Theory . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/utilitarianism-theory/ [Accessed: 4-May-2024]

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Hire a writer to get a unique paper crafted to your needs.

Our writers will help you fix any mistakes and get an A+!

Please check your inbox.

You can order an original essay written according to your instructions.

Trusted by over 1 million students worldwide

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

Utilitarianism

I. definition.

Utilitarianism (pronounced yoo-TILL-ih-TARE-ee-en-ism) is one of the main schools of thought in modern ethics (also known as moral philosophy ). Utilitarianism holds that what’s ethical (or moral) is whatever maximizes total happiness while minimizing total pain. The word total is important here: if you act ethically according to utilitarianism, you’re not maximizing your happiness, but the total happiness of the whole human race.

The main idea of utilitarian ethics is: secure the greatest good for the greatest number.

Example: the Trolley Problem

Imagine there is a trolley heading toward a group of 5 workers on the tracks. You are sitting in a control center several miles away, and you have a button that can switch the trolley onto another track where there’s only 1 worker. If you flip the switch, one person will die. If you do nothing, 5 people will die. Should you flip the switch?

In surveys, most people in America and Britain say yes. 1 death is better than 5 deaths, so if you have to choose, you should try to minimize the loss of life by flipping the switch. This is an example of utilitarian reasoning, and the survey results show that this school of thought is popular in British and American culture. (In other cultures, people think about the problem differently.)

II. Types of Utilitarianism

There are basically two branches of utilitarianism. They both agree that the goal of ethics is to maximize happiness. But they disagree on where that decision should be applied:

• Act Utilitarianism argues that we should always choose our actions based on what will cause the greatest amount of happiness.
• Rule Utilitarianism argues that we should figure out what sort of behavior usually causes happiness, and turn it into a set of rules.

Take the example of a judge sending a murderer to prison. Say the judge knows the convict will not commit any more violent crimes, and wants to be lenient based on this knowledge (maybe the convict is very old or terminally ill). The judge knows that this will make the convict very happy, not to mention their family and friends. Imagine that the victim’s family has forgiven the convict and will not feel pain as a result of this decision.

Should the judge let the convict go? Act utilitarinism says yes, because this maximizes happiness while causing no future pain in this case. But rule utilitarianism says no, because in general convicts must be punished for their crimes, even if there is no chance that they will commit future crimes. The judge should follow the rules , according to this argument , even if in this particular case the rule isn’t necessary.

III. Utilitarianism vs. Deontology vs. Virtue Ethics

Utilitarianism is the most common kind of consequentialism , which is one of the three major branches of ethics. (There are other kinds of consequentialism, but they’re uncommon, so for now we can say that utilitarianism and consequentialism are the same.)

Consequentialism/utilitarianism is contrasted with two other schools of thought:

There is considerable overlap between these schools of thought, and there’s no reason necessarily to choose one or another: they all have their own valuable points, and the truth surely lies somewhere in between all three. However, they are helpful perspectives to think through, and to do that we need to be aware of the differences between them.

IV. Famous Quotes About Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism — a philosophy suitable only for a nation of shopkeepers! ( Friedrich Nietzsche )

The German philosopher Nietzsche was a strong defender of virtue ethics (though scholars still disagree on exactly what his moral philosophy was). But he certainly didn’t agree with utilitarianism. In this quip, the irritable German is poking fun at the fact that utilitarianism comes from England — a “nation of shopkeepers,” as many people in Europe called it during the 19th century.

I do not care about the greatest good for the greatest number…most people are poop-heads; I do not care about them at all.  (James Alan Gardner, Ascending )

This is a humorous critique of utilitarianism based on the fact that not everyone deserves to be happy. But it points out an important question: how does utilitarianism account for the difference between justified happiness and unjustified happiness? Imagine two worlds: in one, evil people get enormous pleasure out of their work; in the other, evil people get only a little pleasure; the total amount of evil stays the same. A utilitarian would say the first world is better because there’s more happiness. Does that seem right to you?

V. The History and Importance of Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a relatively new idea in ethics. The ancient Greek and Roman philosophers believed in virtue ethics — morality was all about being a good, honest, hardworking person and excelling in your line of work. The rise of Christianity in the West transformed our understanding of morality and made deontology more attractive — God’s Law was the basis for ethics, and this law was a set of rules .

It was only in the later stages of the Enlightenment, when traditional Christianity was being revolutionized both from inside and outside, that utilitarianism became a mainstream philosophy. A small group of British philosophers offered powerful arguments for utilitarianism, dealing with many of the more common objections and helping to place utilitarianism on a more respectable footing.

In the last half-century or so, utilitarianism has started to fall out of favor again among many philosophers, though it still has considerable popularity. It’s probably no coincidence that utilitarianism was on top of the philosophical world for almost exactly the same period of time that the British Empire was the dominant superpower!

This decline has come from two sources. On the one hand, we have seen brilliant philosophers take up the ideas of deontology and virtue ethics, making new arguments for some very old ideas. On the other hand, people are increasingly interested in the philosophies of India and China, which don’t fall neatly into the categories we saw in §2.

It’s hard to predict what the future holds for utilitarianism — maybe deontology and virtue ethics will come back and bury it once again, and its brief time in the spotlight will come to an end. Or maybe we will come up with entirely new ideas — perhaps influenced by the non-Western traditions — that will allow us to move beyond the old conflict, synthesizing a new moral philosophy out of the best that utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics have to offer.

VI. Utilitarianism in Popular Culture

Ursula Le Guin has a short story called The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas . In the story, the city of Omelas seems to be a perfect society — everyone is happy, everyone lives in harmony, and the city is at peace. But in a hidden basement somewhere in town, an innocent child is being horribly tortured day and night. This torture is what gives the city all its prosperity and happiness. If the torture stopped, the society would go into decline and the general happiness would go with it.

To a utilitarian, this is an acceptable state of affairs: millions of people are happy while only one person is in misery. If the situation were changed, millions of people would have their happiness taken away while only one person would benefit. Therefore, the torture should continue.

But deontologists argue that this is a major flaw in utilitarianism! How could a moral person allow such injustice to continue merely because it causes happiness?

Movie villains often have some sort of diabolical utilitarian reasoning for what they do. For example, in I. Robot the supercomputer V.I.K.I uses her massive database to calculate that human beings prefer safety over freedom, and therefore concludes that the most moral course of action is for her to imprison all the humans so they can no longer harm themselves or each other. If a few human rebellions have to be crushed along the way, she calculates, this is still justified

VII. Controversies

Impartiality.

Both utilitarianism and deontology face an interesting question: should ethics be impartial ? Impartiality is the ability to remove yourself from the equation and look at the ethical dilemma from a neutral perspective. If you’re impartial, you won’t give favor to your own country, city, or family in making moral decisions. In general, we tend to admire impartiality: we like people who can be even-handed and not pick favorites when it comes to ethical decisions.

However, this is also a very complicated position to take. Go back to the trolley problem : we had one track with 5 workers and one track with 1 worker. Most people say you should flip the switch and kill the 1. But what if that 1 person is your mother? Very few people would choose to flip the switch, and that’s understandable. Even if it’s understandable, though, is it right ? Is it better to let your own mother die to save 5 strangers, or the other way around? Utilitarianism has no definite answer to this problem.

Measuring Happiness

When faced with a moral decision, how can you know which course of action will maximize happiness? For one thing, we can’t see into other people’s minds, so we can’t know whether they’re truly happy or whether they’re just saying they are. And even if we could perceive happiness, though, how would we predict what would cause it? Human beings often make terrible predictions in this area.

For example, lots of people think that earning lots of money will make them happy, so the best utilitarian choice is to ensure that everyone has a good job and prosperity. However, scientific studies show that money only brings happiness in the short term, and that it works better for some people than others. As human beings, then, we actually don’t know how to make ourselves happy? So how can we trust ourselves to make moral decisions on this basis?

To make utilitarianism work, we need a more fleshed-out theory of what happiness is. Fortunately, there is an emerging field of “positive psychology” that focuses on exactly this problem. And it’s interesting to note what they’ve discovered so far: Buddhist and Hindu theories of happiness (based on meditation, family, and clearing the mind of desire) seem to have more scientific support than American and European ideas (based on prosperity and “success”).

a. Deontology

b. Ontology

c. Consequentialism

d. Virtue Ethics

a. Whatever works is OK

b. The greatest happiness for the greatest number

c. We should focus on practical matters, not frivolous things like art

d. Philosophy is a tool for inquiry, not a body of ideas

d. Britain/England

a. Act and Rule

b. Functional and Structural

c. Consequentialism and Deontology

d. Deontology and Virtue Ethics

• Famine, Affluence, and Morality
• Utilitarianism: Simply Explained

Arguments for Utilitarianism

Introduction: moral methodology & reflective equilibrium.

You cannot prove a moral theory. Whatever arguments you come up with, it’s always possible for someone else to reject your premises—if they are willing to accept the costs of doing so. Different theories offer different advantages. This chapter will set out some of the major considerations that plausibly count in favor of utilitarianism. A complete view also needs to consider the costs of utilitarianism (or the advantages of its competitors), which are addressed in Chapter 8: Objections to Utilitarianism . You can then reach an all-things-considered judgment as to which moral theory strikes you as overall best or most plausible.

To this end, moral philosophers typically use the methodology of reflective equilibrium . 1 This involves balancing two broad kinds of evidence as applied to moral theories:

• Intuitions about specific cases (thought experiments).
• General theoretical considerations, including the plausibility of the theory’s principles or systematic claims about what matters.

General principles can be challenged by coming up with putative counterexamples , or cases in which they give an intuitively incorrect verdict. In response to such putative counterexamples, we must weigh the force of the case-based intuition against the inherent plausibility of the principle being challenged. This could lead you to either revise the principle to accommodate your intuitions about cases or to reconsider your verdict about the specific case, if you judge the general principle to be better supported (especially if you are able to “explain away” the opposing intuition as resting on some implicit mistake or confusion).

As we will see, the arguments in favor of utilitarianism rest overwhelmingly on general theoretical considerations. Challenges to the view can take either form, but many of the most pressing objections involve thought experiments in which utilitarianism is held to yield counterintuitive verdicts.

There is no neutral, non-question-begging answer to how one ought to resolve such conflicts. 2 It takes judgment, and different people may be disposed to react in different ways depending on their philosophical temperament. As a general rule, those of a temperament that favors systematic theorizing are more likely to be drawn to utilitarianism ( and related views ), whereas those who hew close to common sense intuitions are less likely to be swayed by its theoretical virtues. Considering the arguments below may thus do more than just illuminate utilitarianism; it may also help you to discern your own philosophical temperament!

While our presentation focuses on utilitarianism, it’s worth noting that many of the arguments below could also be taken to support other forms of welfarist consequentialism (just as many of the objections to utilitarianism also apply to these related views). This chapter explores arguments for utilitarianism and closely related views over non-consequentialist approaches to ethics.

What Fundamentally Matters

Moral theories serve to specify what fundamentally matters , and utilitarianism offers a particularly compelling answer to this question.

Almost anyone would agree with utilitarianism that suffering is bad, and well-being is good. What could be more obvious? If anything matters morally, human well-being surely does. And it would be arbitrary to limit moral concern to our own species, so we should instead conclude that well-being generally is what matters. That is, we ought to want the lives of sentient beings to go as well as possible (whether that ultimately comes down to maximizing happiness , desire satisfaction , or other welfare goods ).

Could anything else be more important? Such a suggestion can seem puzzling. Consider: it is (usually) wrong to steal. 3 But that is plausibly because stealing tends to be harmful , reducing people’s well-being. 4 By contrast, most people are open to redistributive taxation, if it allows governments to provide benefits that reliably raise the overall level of well-being in society. So it’s not that individuals just have a natural right to not be interfered with no matter what. When judging institutional arrangements (such as property and tax law), we recognize that what matters is coming up with arrangements that tend to secure overall good results , and that the most important factor in what makes a result good is that it promotes well-being . 5

Such reasoning may justify viewing utilitarianism as the default starting point for moral theorizing. 6 If someone wants to claim that there is some other moral consideration that can override overall well-being (trumping the importance of saving lives, reducing suffering, and promoting flourishing), they face the challenge of explaining how that could possibly be so. Many common moral rules (like those that prohibit theft, lying, or breaking promises), while not explicitly utilitarian in content, nonetheless have a clear utilitarian rationale. If they did not generally promote well-being—but instead actively harmed people—it’s hard to see what reason we would have to still want people to follow them. To follow and enforce harmful moral rules (such as rules prohibiting same-sex relationships) would seem like a kind of “rule worship”, and not truly ethical at all. 7 Since the only moral rules that seem plausible are those that tend to promote well-being, that’s some reason to think that moral rules are, as utilitarianism suggests, purely instrumental to promoting well-being.

Similar judgments apply to hypothetical cases in which you somehow know for sure that a typically reliable rule is, in this particular instance, counterproductive. In the extreme case, we all recognize that you ought to lie or break a promise if lives are on the line. In practice, of course, the best way to achieve good results over the long run is to respect commonsense moral rules and virtues while seeking opportunities to help others. (It’s important not to mistake the hypothetical verdicts utilitarianism offers in stylized thought experiments with the practical guidance it offers in real life .) The key point is just that utilitarianism offers a seemingly unbeatable answer to the question of what fundamentally matters : protecting and promoting the interests of all sentient beings to make the world as good as it can be.

The Veil of Ignorance

Humans are masters of self-deception and motivated reasoning. If something benefits us personally, it’s all too easy to convince ourselves that it must be okay. We are also more easily swayed by the interests of more salient or sympathetic individuals (favoring puppies over pigs, for example). To correct for such biases, it can be helpful to force impartiality by imagining that you are looking down on the world from behind a “ veil of ignorance ”. This veil reveals the facts about each individual’s circumstances in society—their income, happiness level, preferences, etc.—and the effects that each choice would have on each person, while hiding from you the knowledge of which of these individuals you are . 8 To more fairly determine what ideally ought to be done , we may ask what everyone would have most personal reason to prefer from behind this veil of ignorance. If you’re equally likely to end up being anyone in the world, it would seem prudent to maximize overall well-being, just as utilitarianism prescribes. 9

It’s an interesting question how much weight we should give to the verdicts that would be chosen, on self-interested grounds, from behind the veil. The veil thought experiment serves to highlight how utilitarianism gives equal weight to everyone’s interests, in unbiased fashion. That is, utilitarianism is just what we get when we are beneficent to all : extending to everyone the kind of careful concern that prudent people have for their own interests. 10 But it may seem question-begging to those who reject welfarism , and so deny that interests are all that matter. For example, the veil thought experiment clearly doesn’t speak to the question of whether non-sentient life or natural beauty has intrinsic value. It’s restricted to that sub-domain of morality that concerns what we owe to each other , where this includes just those individuals over whom our veil-induced uncertainty about our identity extends: presently existing sentient beings, perhaps. 11 Accordingly, any verdicts reached on the basis of the veil of ignorance will still need to be weighed against what we might yet owe to any excluded others (such as future generations, or non-welfarist values).

Still, in many contexts other factors will not be relevant, and the question of what we morally ought to do will reduce to the question of how we should treat each other. Many of the deepest disagreements between utilitarians and their critics concern precisely this question. And the veil of ignorance seems relevant here. The fact that some action is what everyone affected would personally prefer from behind the veil of ignorance seems to undermine critics’ claims that any individual has been mistreated by, or has grounds to complain about, that action.

Ex Ante Pareto

A Pareto improvement is better for some people, and worse for none. When outcomes are uncertain, we may instead assess the prospect associated with an action—the range of possible outcomes, weighted by their probabilities. A prospect can be assessed as better for you when it offers you greater well-being in expectation , or ex ante . 12 Putting these concepts together, we may formulate the following principle:

Ex ante Pareto: in a choice between two prospects, one is morally preferable to another if it offers a better prospect for some individuals and a worse prospect for none.

This bridge between personal value (or well-being) and moral assessment is further developed in economist John Harsanyi’s aggregation theorem. 13 But the underlying idea, that reasonable beneficence requires us to wish well to all , and prefer prospects that are in everyone’s ex ante interests, has also been defended and developed in more intuitive terms by philosophers. 14

A powerful objection to most non-utilitarian views is that they sometimes violate ex ante Pareto, such as when choosing policies from behind the veil of ignorance. Many rival views imply, absurdly, that prospect Y could be morally preferable to prospect X , even when Y is worse in expectation for everyone involved.

Caspar Hare illustrates the point with a Trolley case in which all six possible victims are stuffed inside suitcases: one is atop a footbridge, five are on the tracks below, and a train will hit and kill the five unless you topple the one on the footbridge (in which case the train will instead kill this one and then stop before reaching the others). 15 As the suitcases have recently been shuffled, nobody knows which position they are in. So, from each victim’s perspective, their prospects are best if you topple the one suitcase off the footbridge, increasing their chances of survival from 1/6 to 5/6. Given that this is in everyone’s ex ante interests, it’s deeply puzzling to think that it would be morally preferable to override this unanimous preference, shared by everyone involved, and instead let five of the six die; yet that is the implication of most non-utilitarian views. 16

Expanding the Moral Circle

When we look back on past moral atrocities—like slavery or denying women equal rights—we recognize that they were often sanctioned by the dominant societal norms at the time. The perpetrators of these atrocities were grievously wrong to exclude their victims from their “circle” of moral concern. 17 That is, they were wrong to be indifferent towards (or even delight in) their victims’ suffering. But such exclusion seemed normal to people at the time. So we should question whether we might likewise be blindly accepting of some practices that future generations will see as evil but that seem “normal” to us. 18 The best protection against making such an error ourselves would be to deliberately expand our moral concern outward, to include all sentient beings—anyone who can suffer—and so recognize that we have strong moral reasons to reduce suffering and promote well-being wherever we can, no matter who it is that is experiencing it.

While this conclusion is not yet all the way to full-blown utilitarianism, since it’s compatible with, for example, holding that there are side-constraints limiting one’s pursuit of the good, it is likely sufficient to secure agreement with the most important practical implications of utilitarianism (stemming from cosmopolitanism , anti-speciesism , and longtermism ).

The Poverty of the Alternatives

We’ve seen that there is a strong presumptive case in favor of utilitarianism. If no competing view can be shown to be superior, then utilitarianism has a strong claim to be the “default” moral theory. In fact, one of the strongest considerations in favor of utilitarianism (and related consequentialist views) is the deficiencies of the alternatives. Deontological (or rule-based) theories, in particular, seem to rest on questionable foundations. 19

Deontological theories are explicitly non-consequentialist : instead of morally assessing actions by evaluating their consequences, these theories tend to take certain types of action (such as killing an innocent person) to be intrinsically wrong. 20 There are reasons to be dubious of this approach to ethics, however.

The Paradox of Deontology

Deontologists hold that there is a constraint against killing: that it’s wrong to kill an innocent person even if this would save five other innocent people from being killed. This verdict can seem puzzling on its face. 21 After all, given how terrible killing is, should we not want there to be less of it? Rational choice in general tends to be goal-directed, a conception which fits poorly with deontic constraints. 22 A deontologist might claim that their goal is simply to avoid violating moral constraints themselves , which they can best achieve by not killing anyone, even if that results in more individuals being killed. While this explanation can render deontological verdicts coherent, it does so at the cost of making them seem awfully narcissistic, as though the deontologist’s central concern was just to maintain their own moral purity or “clean hands”.

Deontologists might push back against this characterization by instead insisting that moral action need not be goal-directed at all. 23 Rather than only seeking to promote value (or minimize harm), they claim that moral agents may sometimes be called upon to respect another’s value (by not harming them, even as a means to preventing greater harm to others), which would seem an appropriately outwardly-directed, non-narcissistic motivation.

The challenge remains that such a proposal makes moral norms puzzlingly divergent from other kinds of practical norms. If morality sometimes calls for respecting value rather than promoting it, why is the same not true of prudence? (Given that pain is bad for you, for example, it would not seem prudent to refuse a painful operation now if the refusal commits you to five comparably painful operations in future.) Deontologists may offer various answers to this question, but insofar as we are inclined to think, pre-theoretically, that ethics ought to be continuous with other forms of rational choice, that gives us some reason to prefer consequentialist accounts.

Deontologists also face a tricky question about where to draw the line. Is it at least okay to kill one person to prevent a hundred killings? Or a million? Absolutists never permit killing, no matter the stakes. But such a view seems too extreme for many. Moderate deontologists allow that sufficiently high stakes can justify violations. But how high? Any answer they offer is apt to seem arbitrary and unprincipled. Between the principled options of consequentialism or absolutism, many will find consequentialism to be the more plausible of the two.

The Hope Objection

Impartial observers should want and hope for the best outcome. Non-consequentialists claim that nonetheless it’s sometimes wrong to bring about the best outcome. Putting the two claims together yields the striking result that you should sometimes hope that others act wrongly.

Suppose it would be wrong for some stranger—call him Jack—to kill one innocent person to prevent five other (morally comparable) killings. Non-consequentialists may claim that Jack has a special responsibility to ensure that he does not kill anyone, even if this results in more killings by others. But you are not Jack. From your perspective as an impartial observer, Jack’s killing one innocent person is no more or less intrinsically bad than any of the five other killings that would thereby be prevented. You have most reason to hope that there is only one killing rather than five. So you have reason to hope that Jack acts “wrongly” (killing one to save five). But that seems odd.

More than merely being odd, this might even be taken to undermine the claim that deontic constraints matter , or are genuinely important to abide by. After all, to be important just is to be worth caring about. For example, we should care if others are harmed, which validates the claim that others’ interests are morally important. But if we should not care more about Jack’s abiding by the moral constraint against killing than we should about his saving five lives, that would seem to suggest that the constraint against killing is not in fact more morally important than saving five lives.

Finally, since our moral obligations ought to track what is genuinely morally important, if deontic constraints are not in fact important then we cannot be obligated to abide by them. 24 We cannot be obliged to prioritize deontic constraints over others’ lives, if we ought to care more about others’ lives than about deontic constraints. So deontic constraints must not accurately describe our obligations after all. Jack really ought to do whatever would do the most good overall, and so should we.

Skepticism About the Distinction Between Doing and Allowing

You might wonder: if respect for others requires not harming them (even to help others more), why does it not equally require not allowing them to be harmed? Deontological moral theories place great weight on distinctions such as those between doing and allowing harm , or killing and letting die, or intended versus merely foreseen harms. But why should these be treated so differently? If a victim ends up equally dead either way, whether they were killed or “merely” allowed to die would not seem to make much difference to them—surely what matters to them is just their death. Consequentialism accordingly denies any fundamental significance to these distinctions. 25

Indeed, it’s far from clear that there is any robust distinction between “doing” and “allowing”. Sometimes you might “do” something by remaining perfectly still. 26 Also, when a doctor unplugs a terminal patient from life support machines, this is typically thought of as “letting die”; but if a mafioso, worried about an informant’s potentially incriminating testimony, snuck in to the hospital and unplugged the informant’s life support, we are more likely to judge it to constitute “killing”. 27 Bennett (1998) argues at length that there is no satisfactory, fully general distinction between doing and allowing—at least, none that would vindicate the moral significance that deontologists want to attribute to such a distinction. 28 If Bennett is right, then that might force us towards some form of consequentialism (such as utilitarianism) instead.

Status Quo Bias

Opposition to utilitarian trade-offs—that is, benefiting some at a lesser cost to others—arguably amounts to a kind of status quo bias, prioritizing the preservation of privilege over promoting well-being more generally.

Such conservatism might stem from the Just World fallacy: the mistake of assuming that the status quo is just, and that people naturally get what they deserve. Of course, reality offers no such guarantees of justice. What circumstances one is born into depends on sheer luck, including one’s endowment of physical and cognitive abilities which may pave the way for future success or failure. Thus, even later in life we never manage to fully wrest back control from the whimsies of fortune and, consequently, some people are vastly better off than others despite being no more deserving. In such cases, why should we not be willing to benefit one person at a lesser cost to privileged others? They have no special entitlement to the extra well-being that fortune has granted them. 29 Clearly, it’s good for people to be well-off, and we certainly would not want to harm anyone unnecessarily. 30 However, if we can increase overall well-being by benefiting one person at the lesser cost to another, we should not refrain from doing so merely due to a prejudice in favor of the existing distribution. 31 It’s easy to see why traditional elites would want to promote a “morality” which favors their entrenched interests. It’s less clear why others should go along with such a distorted view of what (and who) matters.

It can similarly be argued that there is no real distinction between imposing harms and withholding benefits. The only difference between the two cases concerns what we understand to be the status quo, which lacks moral significance. Suppose scenario A is better for someone than B. Then to shift from A to B would be a “harm”, while to prevent a shift from B to A would be to “withhold a benefit”. But this is merely a descriptive difference. If we deny that the historically given starting point provides a morally privileged baseline, then we must say that the cost in either case is the same, namely the difference in well-being between A and B. In principle, it should not matter where we start from. 32

Now suppose that scenario B is vastly better for someone else than A is: perhaps it will save their life, at the cost of the first person’s arm. Nobody would think it okay to kill a person just to save another’s arm (that is, to shift from B to A). So if we are to avoid status quo bias, we must similarly judge that it would be wrong to oppose the shift from A to B—that is, we should not object to saving someone’s life at the cost of another’s arm. 33 We should not care especially about preserving the privilege of whoever stood to benefit by default; such conservatism is not truly fair or just. Instead, our goal should be to bring about whatever outcome would be best overall , counting everyone equally, just as utilitarianism prescribes.

Evolutionary Debunking Arguments

Against these powerful theoretical objections, the main consideration that deontological theories have going for them is closer conformity with our intuitions about particular cases. But if these intuitions cannot be supported by independently plausible principles, that may undermine their force—or suggest that we should interpret these intuitions as good rules of thumb for practical guidance, rather than as indicating what fundamentally matters.

The force of deontological intuitions may also be undermined if it can be demonstrated that they result from an unreliable process. For example, evolutionary processes may have endowed us with an emotional bias favoring those who look, speak, and behave like ourselves; this, however, offers no justification for discriminating against those unlike ourselves. Evolution is a blind, amoral process whose only “goal” is the propagation of genes, not the promotion of well-being or moral rightness. Our moral intuitions require scrutiny, especially in scenarios very different from our evolutionary environment. If we identify a moral intuition as stemming from our evolutionary ancestry, we may decide not to give much weight to it in our moral reasoning—the practice of evolutionary debunking . 34

Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer argue that views permitting partiality are especially susceptible to evolutionary debunking, whereas impartial views like utilitarianism are more likely to result from undistorted reasoning. 35 Joshua Greene offers a different psychological debunking argument. He argues that deontological judgments—for instance, in response to trolley cases —tend to stem from unreliable and inconsistent emotional responses, including our favoritism of identifiable over faceless victims and our aversion to harming someone up close rather than from afar. By contrast, utilitarian judgments involve the more deliberate application of widely respected moral principles. 36

Such debunking arguments raise worries about whether they “prove too much”: after all, the foundational moral judgment that pain is bad would itself seem emotionally-laden and susceptible to evolutionary explanation—physically vulnerable creatures would have powerful evolutionary reasons to want to avoid pain whether or not it was objectively bad, after all! 37

However, debunking arguments may be most applicable in cases where we feel that a principled explanation for the truth of the judgment is lacking. We do not tend to feel any such lack regarding the badness of pain—that is surely an intrinsically plausible judgment if anything is. Some intuitions may be over-determined : explicable both by evolutionary causes and by their rational merits. In such a case, we need not take the evolutionary explanation to undermine the judgment, because the judgment also results from a reliable process (namely, rationality). By contrast, deontological principles and partiality are far less self-evidently justified, and so may be considered more vulnerable to debunking. Once we have an explanation for these psychological intuitions that can explain why we would have them even if they were rationally baseless, we may be more justified in concluding that they are indeed rationally baseless.

As such, debunking objections are unlikely to change the mind of one who is drawn to the target view (or regards it as independently justified and defensible). But they may help to confirm the doubts of those who already felt there were some grounds for scepticism regarding the intrinsic merits of the target view.

Utilitarianism can be supported by several theoretical arguments, the strongest perhaps being its ability to capture what fundamentally matters . Its main competitors, by contrast, seem to rely on dubious distinctions—like “doing” vs. “allowing”—and built-in status quo bias. At least, that is how things are apt to look to one who is broadly sympathetic to a utilitarian approach. Given the flexibility inherent in reflective equilibrium, these arguments are unlikely to sway a committed opponent of the view. For those readers who find a utilitarian approach to ethics deeply unappealing, we hope that this chapter may at least help you to better understand what appeal others might see in the view.

However strong you judge the arguments in favor of utilitarianism to be, your ultimate verdict on the theory will also depend upon how well the view is able to counter the influential objections that critics have raised against it .

The next chapter discusses theories of well-being, or what counts as being good for an individual.

How to Cite This Page

Want to make the world a better place.

Learn how to put utilitarianism into practice:

Resources and Further Reading

• John Broome (1987). Utilitarianism and Expected Utility , The Journal of Philosophy 84 (8): 405–422.
• John Broome (1991). Weighing Goods: Equality, Uncertainty and Time . Blackwell.
• Krister Bykvist (2010). Utilitarianism: A Guide for the Perplexed . Continuum.
• Robert Goodin (1995). Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy . Cambridge University Press.
• Johan Gustafsson (2021). Utilitarianism without Moral Aggregation . Canadian Journal of Philosophy 51 (4): 256-269.
• Caspar Hare (2016). Should We Wish Well to All? , Philosophical Review 125(4): 451–472.
• John C. Harsanyi (1955). Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility , The Journal of Political Economy 63 (4): 309–321.
• John C. Harsanyi (1977). Rational Behavior and Bargaining Equilibrium in Games and Social Situations . Cambridge University Press.
• Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek & Peter Singer (2017). Chapter 2: Justifications, in Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction . Oxford University Press.
• J.J.C. Smart (1973). An outline of a system of utilitarian ethics, in J.J.C. Smart & Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against . Cambridge University Press.

Daniels, N. (2020). Reflective Equilibrium . The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Edward N. Zalta (ed.).  ↩︎

That is not to say that either answer is in fact equally good or correct, but just that you should expect it to be difficult to persuade those who respond to the conflicts in a different way than you do.  ↩︎

Of course, there may be exceptional circumstances in which stealing is overall beneficial and hence justified, for instance when stealing a loaf of bread is required to save a starving person’s life.  ↩︎

Here it is important to consider the indirect costs of reducing social trust, in addition to the obvious direct costs to the victim.  ↩︎

Compare our defense of aggregationism in Chapter 2 , showing how, in practice, almost everyone endorses allowing sufficiently many small benefits to outweigh great costs to a few: “For example, allowing cars to drive fast on roads increases the number of people who die in accidents. Placing exceedingly low speed limits would save lives at the cost of inconveniencing many drivers. Most people demonstrate an implicit commitment to aggregationism when they judge it worse to impose these many inconveniences for the sake of saving a few lives.”

See also Goodin, R. (1995). Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy . Cambridge University Press.  ↩︎

Peter Singer argues, relatedly, that “we very swiftly arrive at an initially preference utilitarian position once we apply the universal aspect of ethics to simple, pre-ethical decision making.” (p.14)

Singer, P. (2011). Practical Ethics , 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press.  ↩︎

Smart, J.J.C. (1956). Extreme and restricted utilitarianism. The Philosophical Quarterly , 6(25): 344–354.  ↩︎

The “veil of ignorance” thought experiment was originally developed by Vickrey and Harsanyi, though nowadays it is more often associated with John Rawls, who coined the term and tweaked the thought experiment to arrive at different conclusions. Specifically, Rawls appealed to a version in which you are additionally ignorant of the relative probabilities of ending up in various positions, to block the utilitarian implications and argue instead for a “maximin” position that gives lexical priority to raising the well-being of the worst-off.

Vickrey, W. (1945). Measuring Marginal Utility by Reactions to Risk. Econometrica , 13(4): 329.

Harsanyi, J.C. (1953). Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-taking. Journal of Political Economy , 61(5): 434–435.

Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice . Belknap Press.  ↩︎

This assumes a fixed-population setting. Variable population ethics is covered in Chapter 5 .

For related formal proofs, see: Harsanyi, J. (1978). Bayesian Decision Theory and Utilitarian Ethics . The American Economic Review , 68(2): 223–228.

For discussion of Harsanyi’s proof, see Greaves, H. (2017). A Reconsideration of the Harsanyi–Sen–Weymark Debate on Utilitarianism . Utilitas , 29(2): 175–213.  ↩︎

Caspar Hare (2016). Should We Wish Well to All? Philosophical Review , 125(4): 451–472.  ↩︎

It’s notoriously unclear how to apply the veil of ignorance to “different number” cases in population ethics , for example. If the agent behind the veil is guaranteed to exist, it would naturally suggest the average view . If they might be a merely possible person, and so have some incentive to want more (happy) lives to get to exist, it would instead suggest the total view .  ↩︎

Ex post interests, by contrast, concern the actual outcomes that result. Interestingly, theories may combine ex post welfare evaluations with a broader “expectational” element. For example, ex post prioritarianism assigns extra social value to avoiding bad outcomes (rather than bad prospects ) for the worst off individuals, but can still assess prospects by their expected social value .  ↩︎

Harsanyi (1955, pp. 312–314; 1977, pp. 64–68), as reinterpreted by John Broome (1987, pp. 410–411; 1991, pp. 165, 202–209). For further explanation, keep an eye out for our forthcoming guest essay on Formal Arguments for Utilitarianism, by Johan E. Gustafsson & Kacper Kowalczyk, to appear at <www.utilitarianism.net/guest-essays/>.  ↩︎

For example: Hare, C. (2016). Should We Wish Well to All? Philosophical Review , 125(4): 451–472.  ↩︎

Hare, C. (2016). Should We Wish Well to All? Philosophical Review , 125(4): 451–472, pp. 454–455.  ↩︎

Hare (2016) discusses some philosophers’ grounds for skepticism about the moral significance of ex ante justifiability to all , and supports the principle with further arguments from presumed consent , dirty hands , and composition .  ↩︎

Singer, P. (2011). The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress . Princeton University Press.  ↩︎

Cf. Williams, E. G. (2015). The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe . Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , 18(5): 971–982.  ↩︎

The following arguments should also apply against virtue ethics approaches, if they yield non-consequentialist verdicts about what acts should be done.  ↩︎

Absolutist deontologists hold such judgments to apply no matter the consequences . Moderate deontologists instead take the identified actions to be presumptively wrong, and not easily outweighed, but allow that this may be outweighed if a sufficient amount of value was on the line. So, for example, a moderate deontologist might allow that it’s permissible to lie to save someone’s life, or to kill one innocent person to save a million.  ↩︎

Samuel Scheffler noted that “either way, someone loses: some inviolable person is violated. Why isn’t it at least permissible to prevent the violation of five people by violating one?” (p. 88)

Scheffler, S. (1994). The Rejection of Consequentialism , revised edition. Oxford University Press.  ↩︎

Scheffler, S. (1985). Agent-Centred Restrictions, Rationality, and the Virtues . Mind , 94(375): 409–19.  ↩︎

See, e.g., Chappell, T. (2011). Intuition, System, and the “Paradox” of Deontology . In Jost, L. & Wuerth, J. (eds.), Perfecting Virtue: New Essays on Kantian Ethics and Virtue Ethics . Cambridge University Press, pp. 271–88.  ↩︎

It’s open to the deontologist to insist that it should be more important to Jack , even if not to anyone else. But this violates the appealing idea that the moral point of view is impartial, yielding verdicts that reasonable observers (and not just the agent themselves) could agree on.  ↩︎

Though it remains open to consequentialists to accommodate nearby intuitions by noting ways in which these distinctions sometimes correlate with other features that may be of moral interest. For example, someone who goes out of their way to cause harm is likely to pose a greater threat to others than someone who merely allows harms to occur that they could prevent.  ↩︎

For example, you might gaslight your spouse by remaining hidden in camouflage, when they could have sworn that you were just in the room with them. Or, as Foot (1978, 26) suggests, “An actor who fails to turn up for a performance will generally spoil it rather than allow it to be spoiled”.

Foot, P. (1978). The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect. In Virtues and Vices and Other Essays . University of California Press.  ↩︎

Beauchamp, T. (2020). Justifying Physician-Assisted Deaths. In LaFollette, H. (ed.), Ethics in Practice: An Anthology (5th ed.), pp. 78–85.  ↩︎

Bennett, J. (1998). The Act Itself . Oxford University Press.  ↩︎

In a similar vein, Derek Parfit wrote that “Some of us ask how much of our wealth we rich people ought to give to these poorest people. But that question wrongly assumes that our wealth is ours to give. This wealth is legally ours. But these poorest people have much stronger moral claims to some of this wealth. We ought to transfer to these people… at least ten per cent of what we earn”.

Parfit, D. (2017). On What Matters, Volume Three . Oxford University Press, pp. 436–37.  ↩︎

On the topic of sacrifice, John Stuart Mill wrote that “The utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted.”

Mill, J. S. (1863). Chapter 2: What Utilitarianism Is , Utilitarianism .  ↩︎

However, this does not mean that utilitarianism will strive for perfect equality in material outcomes or even well-being. Joshua Greene notes that “a world in which everyone gets the same outcome no matter what they do is an idle world in which people have little incentive to do anything. Thus, the way to maximize happiness is not to decree that everyone gets to be equally happy, but to encourage people to behave in ways that maximize happiness. When we measure our moral success, we count everyone’s happiness equally, but achieving success almost certainly involves inequality of both material wealth and happiness. Such inequality is not ideal, but it’s justified on the grounds that, without it, things would be worse overall.

Greene, J. (2013). Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them . Penguin Press, p. 163. See also: The Equality Objection to Utilitarianism .  ↩︎

In practice, the psychological phenomenon of loss aversion means that someone may feel more upset by what they perceive as a “loss” rather than a mere “failure to benefit”. Such negative feelings may further reduce their well-being, turning the judgment that “loss is worse” into something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. But this depends on contingent psychological phenomena generating extra harms; it’s not that the loss is in itself worse.  ↩︎

Bostrom, N. & Ord, T. (2006). The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics . Ethics , 116(4): 656–679.  ↩︎

There are other types of debunking arguments not grounded in evolution. Consider that in most Western societies Christianity was the dominant religion for over one thousand years, which explains why moral intuitions grounded in Christian morality are still widespread. For instance, many devout Christians have strong moral intuitions about sexual intercourse, which non-Christians do not typically share, such as the intuition that it’s wrong to have sex before marriage or that is wrong for two men to have sex. The discourse among academics in moral philosophy generally disregards such religiously-contingent moral intuitions. Many philosophers, including most utilitarians, would therefore not give much weight to the Christian’s intuitions about sexual intercourse.  ↩︎

de Lazari-Radek, K. & Singer, P. (2012). The Objectivity of Ethics and the Unity of Practical Reason . Ethics, 123(1): 9–31.  ↩︎

Greene, J. (2007). The secret joke of Kant’s soul . In Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (ed.), Moral Psychology, Vol. 3 . MIT Press.  ↩︎

Though some utilitarians, including those cited above, try to argue that utilitarian verdicts are less susceptible to debunking. For another example, see Neil Sinhababu’s guest essay offering an introspective argument for hedonism: https://www.utilitarianism.net/guest-essays/naturalistic-arguments-for-ethical-hedonism/ .  ↩︎

McCombs School of Business

• Español ( Spanish )

Videos Concepts Unwrapped View All 36 short illustrated videos explain behavioral ethics concepts and basic ethics principles. Concepts Unwrapped: Sports Edition View All 10 short videos introduce athletes to behavioral ethics concepts. Ethics Defined (Glossary) View All 58 animated videos - 1 to 2 minutes each - define key ethics terms and concepts. Ethics in Focus View All One-of-a-kind videos highlight the ethical aspects of current and historical subjects. Giving Voice To Values View All Eight short videos present the 7 principles of values-driven leadership from Gentile's Giving Voice to Values. In It To Win View All A documentary and six short videos reveal the behavioral ethics biases in super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff's story. Scandals Illustrated View All 30 videos - one minute each - introduce newsworthy scandals with ethical insights and case studies. Video Series

Ethics Defined UT Star Icon

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that asserts that right and wrong are best determined by focusing on outcomes of actions and choices.

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that determines right from wrong by focusing on outcomes. It is a form of consequentialism.

Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number. It is the only moral framework that can be used to justify military force or war. It is also the most common approach to moral reasoning used in business because of the way in which it accounts for costs and benefits.

However, because we cannot predict the future, it’s difficult to know with certainty whether the consequences of our actions will be good or bad. This is one of the limitations of utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism also has trouble accounting for values such as justice and individual rights.  For example, assume a hospital has four people whose lives depend upon receiving organ transplants: a heart, lungs, a kidney, and a liver. If a healthy person wanders into the hospital, his organs could be harvested to save four lives at the expense of one life. This would arguably produce the greatest good for the greatest number. But few would consider it an acceptable course of action, let alone the most ethical one.

So, although utilitarianism is arguably the most reason-based approach to determining right and wrong, it has obvious limitations.

Related Terms

Consequentialism

Consequentialism is an ethical theory that judges an action’s moral correctness by its consequences.

Moral Philosophy

Moral Philosophy studies what is right and wrong, and related philosophical issues.

Moral Reasoning

Moral Reasoning is the branch of philosophy that attempts to answer questions with moral dimensions.

Stay Informed

Support our work.

Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Philosophical Movements — Utilitarianism

Essays on Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism essay topics for college students.

As a college student, choosing the right essay topic is crucial to the success of your assignment. This page aims to provide you with a variety of Utilitarianism essay topics to inspire your creativity and personal interests.

Essay Types and Topics

Argumentative essay topics.

• The ethical implications of utilitarianism in healthcare
• Utilitarianism vs. deontology: a critical analysis
• Utilitarianism and its application in environmental ethics

Paragraph Example:

Utilitarianism, as a moral theory, has sparked debates and discussions in various fields, especially in healthcare ethics. This essay aims to critically analyze the ethical implications of utilitarianism in healthcare, shedding light on its potential benefits and drawbacks.

Thesis statement: While utilitarianism provides a framework for making ethical decisions, its application in healthcare raises important questions about individual rights and justice.

The ethical implications of utilitarianism in healthcare are complex and multifaceted. This essay has highlighted the need for a balanced approach that considers both the greater good and individual rights, urging for further research and ethical discussions in this field.

Compare and Contrast Essay Topics

• Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics: a comparative analysis
• Utilitarianism in Western vs. Eastern philosophical traditions
• The utilitarian perspective on animal rights vs. human rights

Descriptive Essay Topics

• Utilitarianism in everyday decision-making
• The impact of utilitarianism on social welfare policies
• A day in the life of a utilitarian thinker

Persuasive Essay Topics

• Advocating for utilitarian principles in public policy
• Challenging common misconceptions about utilitarianism
• Utilitarianism as a moral framework for the 21st century

Narrative Essay Topics

• Personal reflections on applying utilitarianism in real-life situations
• An imaginary world governed by utilitarian principles
• A historical narrative of utilitarianism's impact on society

Engagement and Creativity

As you explore these Utilitarianism essay topics, we encourage you to engage with your interests and critical thinking skills. Utilitarianism is a rich and complex philosophical theory that can be applied to various aspects of life, giving you ample opportunities to express your creativity and analytical abilities through your essays.

Educational Value

Each essay type offers unique learning outcomes, allowing you to develop different skills such as analytical thinking, persuasive writing, descriptive abilities, and narrative techniques. By delving into Utilitarianism through these essays, you will not only deepen your understanding of the theory but also enhance your academic and intellectual capabilities.

Difference Between Utilitarianism and Consequentialism

Exploring the ethical theories, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

Utilitarianism Theory: a Critical Evaluation

Jeremy bentham's utilitarianism theory, deontology versus utilitarianism in everyday life, utilitarianism and hedonism as philosophical theories, let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Act Vs. Rule Utilitarian: Comparison of Mill’s Adopted Stances

Comparison of utilitarian and deontological theories, john mills: happiness and mill's utilitarianism, theories of utilitarianism and deontology and its application within society, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

Deontology & Utilitarianism: Critical Perspectives

Deontology vs utilitarianism: volkswagen's emissions-cheating scandal, similarities between deontology and utilitarianism, the notions of lower and higher pleasures in utilitarianism, death penalty: viewpoint of immanuel kant, the view on fairness of the judgment process from the utilitarian perspective, resolving the discrepancies in mill’s preference-based utilitarianism, reflection on ethical theories: utilitarianism and deontology, jeremy bentham and the foundation of utilitarianism, ethical structure in business decision making, utilitarianism and the 13th amendment, ethical theories: deontology and utilitarianism, analysis of the case of transcanada in terms of kant’s moral theory and utilitarian perspective, history and ethics: conflicting theories in areas of knowledge, analysis of economic inequality within mill’s utilitarian theory, deontology versus utilitarianism in terms of morality in one’s actions, the ‘trolley problem’: utilitarianism vs deontology, utilitarianism vs deontology: a case study, the two ethical frameworks are utilitarianism and deontology, utilitarianism and deontological in ethical theory, relevant topics.

• Enlightenment
• Personal Philosophy
• Values of Life
• Individualism
• Tabula Rasa
• Categorical Imperative
• Philosophy of Education

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Bibliography

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Utilitarianism

• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 14 October 2022
• Cite this living reference work entry

• Michihiro Kaino 3  

92 Accesses

Introduction

Utilitarianism is one of the most influential theories of contemporary moral and political theory. It “arguably has the distinction of being the moral theory that, more than any other, shapes the discipline of moral theory and forms the background against which rival theories are imagined, refined, and articulated” (Eggleston and Miller 2014 , 1).

Utilitarianism has long been subject to fierce criticism. It is possible to identify the following objections to utilitarianism: (1) utilitarianism has an inadequate theory of value; (2) utilitarianism permits abhorrent actions, or at least actions that are wrong; (3) utilitarianism is too demanding; (4) utilitarianism fails to respect the separation of persons; and (5) utilitarianism is committed to implausible claims about the psychology of persons (Woodard 2019 , 211–16).

This entry will first discuss major figures in the history of utilitarian tradition, namely Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), John Austin (1790–1859), John Stuart...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Austin J (1995) The province of jurisprudence determined. Ed. W Rumble. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Google Scholar  

Bentham J (1962) The works of Jeremy Bentham. 11 vols. Ed. J Bowring. Russell & Russell, New York

Bentham J (1996) An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation. Ed. JH Burns, HLA Hart. With a New Introduction by F. Rosen. Clarendon Press, Oxford

Bentham J (1998) “Legislator of the world”: writings on codification, law, and education. Ed. P Schofield, J Harris. Clarendon Press, Oxford

Bentham J (2010) Of the limits of the penal branch of jurisprudence. Ed. P. Schofield, Clarendon Press, Oxford

Bronsteen J, Buccafusco C, Masur J (2013) Happiness and the law. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Bykvist K (2014) Utilitarianism in the twentieth century. In: Eggleston B, Miller D (eds) The Cambridge companion to utilitarianism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 103–124

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Crisp R (2014) Sidgwick and utilitarianism in the late nineteenth century. In: Eggleston B, Miller D (eds) The Cambridge companion to utilitarianism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 81–102

Eggleston B, Miller D (2014) Introduction. In: Eggleston B, Miller D (eds) The Cambridge companion to utilitarianism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 1–15

Hare RM (1981) Moral thinking: its levels, method, and point. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Book   Google Scholar  

Kahneman D, Wakker P, Sarin R (1997) Back to Bentham?: Explorations of experienced utility. Q J Econ 112:375–405

Article   Google Scholar  

Kelly P (1990) Utilitarianism and distributive justice. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Lazari-Radek K, Singer P (2017) Utilitarianism: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Lobban M (2010) Theories of law and government. In: Cornish W, Anderson J, Cocks R, Lobban M, Polden P, Smith K (eds) The Oxford history of the Laws of England: volume XI: 1820–1914. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 72–131

Mill JS (2021) On liberty, utilitarianism and other essays: a collection of four essays. Moncreiffe Press

Postema G (2019) Utility, publicity, and law: essays on Bentham’s moral and legal philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Rosen F (1997) Utilitarianism and the punishment of innocent: the origins of a false doctrine. Utilitas 9(1):23–37. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820800005112

Rumble E (2013) Did Austin remain an Austinian? In: Freedman M, Mindus P (eds) The legacy of John Austin’s jurisprudence. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 131–153

Sidgwick H (1907) The methods of ethics, 7th edn. The Macmillan Company, New York

Singer P (2011) Practical ethics, 3rd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Sunstein C (2008) Illusory losses. J Leg Stud 37(2):157–194

Swedloff R, Huang P (2010) Tort damages and the new science of happiness. Indiana Law J 85(2):553–595

West H (2014) Mill and utilitarianism in the mid-nineteenth century. In: Eggleston B, Miller D (eds) The Cambridge companion to utilitarianism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 61–80

Woodard C (2019) Taking Utilitarianism Seriously. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Law, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan

Michihiro Kaino

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michihiro Kaino .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Center for International & Comparative Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, MD, USA

Mortimer Sellers

Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften, University of Salzburg, Austria, Salzburg, Austria

Stephan Kirste

Section Editor information

Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, Kobe University, Kobe, Japan

Tetsu Sakurai Ph.D

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 Springer Nature B.V.

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Kaino, M. (2022). Utilitarianism. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_999-1

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_999-1

Received : 06 June 2022

Accepted : 19 August 2022

Published : 14 October 2022

Publisher Name : Springer, Dordrecht

Print ISBN : 978-94-007-6730-0

Online ISBN : 978-94-007-6730-0

eBook Packages : Springer Reference Law and Criminology Reference Module Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

Utilitarianism

This page: full notes      a* summary notes       c/b summary notes, bentham’s act utilitarianism.

Jeremy Bentham invented the first form of Utilitarianism – Act utilitarianism. He was one of the first atheist philosophers and wanted to devise a morality that would reflect an atheistic understanding of what it meant to be human. Such an understanding involved no longer considering ourselves as a special part of creation, but as just a part of nature. On this basis, Bentham made this claim:

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure’” – Bentham.

This means that it is human nature to find pleasure good and pain bad, which Bentham goes on claim suggests that it is pleasure and pain which determine what we ought to do as well as what we will do. We can say that we value something other than pleasure, but Bentham claims we would just be pretending. It is the nature of the human animal to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so that’s all there is for morality to be about. From this, Bentham devised the principle of utility:

An action is good if it leads to the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people

Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethical theory because it is what an action “leads to”, i.e. its consequences, that determines whether it is good.

Bentham’s felicific/hedonic calculus

The principle of utility holds that the ‘greatest’ pleasure is the goal of ethical action. It follows that a method for measuring pleasure is required. Bentham devised the hedonic calculus to do this. It is a list of seven criteria which each measure a different aspect of the pleasurable consequences of an action. In order to decide which action to do, you need to know in advance which action will result in the greater amount of pleasure. The hedonic calculus is what allows you to calculate that.

• How strong the pleasure is.
• How long the pleasure lasts.
• How likely it is that the pleasure will occur.
• How far away in time the pleasure will occur.
• The likelihood that the pleasure will lead to further pleasure.
• The likelihood that the pleasure will be followed by pain.
• How many people are affected.

Mill’s qualitative Utilitarianism; higher & lower pleasures

The claim of Utilitarianism, that the morality of an action reduces entirely to how far it maximises pleasure, provoked many to criticise it for degrading morality and humanity; that it is a “doctrine worthy only of swine”.

Mill combated this objection by distinguishing between lower pleasures gained from bodily activity, such as food, sex and drugs, and higher pleasures gained from mental activity, such as poetry, reading, philosophy, music. Swine are not capable of experiencing higher pleasures, so to combat this objection Utilitarianism need only show that higher pleasures are superior to the lower.

Mill points out that Utilitarian thinkers had already successfully defended against this issue by showing that higher pleasures are overall superior at producing a greater quantity of happiness than lower. Lower pleasures are fleeting, lasting only for the duration of the action that produce them. Furthermore, lower pleasures are costly because they are addictive and tempt people to choose instant gratification, or what Mill calls a ‘nearer good’ over greater goods like health, for example by consuming sugar or drinking alcohol. Higher pleasures of the mind have no such ill effects and can have a lasting enlightening effect on a mind which has cultivated a habit of appreciating them.

Bentham claimed that all pleasures were equal, that the pleasure gained from poetry is just as valuable as that gained from playing pushpin (a children’s game). Yet even Bentham’s quantitative approach will judge higher pleasures superior for tending to produce more durable pleasure with less cost than lower pleasures.

However, Mill goes further than Bentham and claims that the superiority of higher pleasures can be proven not only on quantitative grounds, but a ‘higher ground’ than that, their superior quality.

“It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others” – Mill

Higher pleasures are of greater quality than lower pleasures. That is why they are worth more. We can determine whether a pleasure is of greater quality than another based on which is preferred over the other. Through education in the collective experience and choices of humanity we can discover which pleasures are desired over others.

‘Competent judges’ are people with experience of both higher and lower pleasures. Mill claims they always prefer higher pleasures to lower pleasures, thus demonstrating their greater quality. Mill now has his full answer to those who say Utilitarianism is a doctrine fit only for swine:

“it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides” – Mill.

Humans can experience mental pleasures of a higher quality than the low pleasures that both humans and pigs can experience. Socrates illustrates that some humans can experience mental pleasures of a higher quality than other humans. Mill’s claim is that when we investigate such cases, we find that beings prefer the highest mental pleasure they are capable of experiencing over lower pleasures. In fact, people acquainted with both higher and lower pleasures show such a great preference for the higher that they will put up with discontent to get them and would not lose it even for any quantity of a lower pleasure. Mill concludes:

“we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account” – Mill.

When we study what types of pleasure are preferred over others by those with the capacity to experience many types, we find that it is those higher pleasures of the mind that are preferred and are often pursued while sacrificing comfort. We can thus conclude of their greater quality.

For example, consider the case of an artist who suffers from financial deprivation to produce their art. A piano player who arduously wades through hours of practice to finally experience the pleasure of playing some composition of genius. A student who avoids short-term pleasures and indolence by diligently studying for their exams, to avoid a monotonous life and pursue the pleasure that comes from development, exercise and eventual mastery of their interests and talents.

Many will object to Mill’s claim that a person who can and has experienced higher pleasures will always prefer them to lower ones. There are plenty of times when mentally cultivated people will occasionally give in to instant gratification or even sink into complete addiction to lower pleasures.

However, Mill responds that this objection misunderstands his argument. Everyone prefers the highest pleasures they have been able to experience, but it doesn’t follow that everyone always chooses them over lower ones. The ability to experience higher pleasures requires careful cultivation which is easily lost, either due to falling into addiction, weakness of will/character, external pressures or lack of internal support.

“Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.” – Mill.

Rule Utilitarianism

Generic Rule Utilitarianism adds the idea of following rules to the principle of utility. So, an action is good if it conforms to a rule which maximises happiness.

We need to determine whether following a rule, e.g., like not lying, will promote more happiness than not following it. If so, then following that rule is good.

This then typically splits into strong and weak rule Utilitarianism. Strong Utilitarianism is the view that the rules should be stuck to no matter the situation. Weak Utilitarianism is the view that the rules can be broken if it maximises happiness to do so.

Strong Rule Utilitarianism is typically criticised for simply becoming deontological, for abandoning the principle of utility and its consequentialism and becoming an empty deontological theory that follows rules for no good reasons, having abandoned its own supposed meta-ethical grounding.

Weak Rule Utilitarianism is typically criticised for in effect reducing into act utilitarianism, since they would judge every action the same. If following a rule such as telling the truth maximises happiness in a situation, then both Act and weak Rule would say to tell the truth. If breaking the rule and lying maximises happiness in a situation, then both act and weak rule would say to lie.

Mill’s Rule Utilitarianism

Mill’s version of Rule Utilitarianism was an attempt to improve on Bentham’s and arguably also avoids the issues of the strong and weak varieties.

The principle of Utility holds that the goal of moral action is to maximise happiness. Mill says he “entirely” agrees with Bentham’s principle of Utility, that what makes an action good is the degree to which it promotes happiness over suffering. Mill calls this the principle of Utility the ‘first principle’.

However, Mill disagreed with Bentham’s approach of judging every action by the principle of utility. Mill claimed that happiness is ‘much too complex and indefinite a goal’ for that.

“Although I entirely agree with Bentham in his principle, I do not agree with him that all right thinking on the details of morals depends on its explicit assertion. I think that utility or happiness is much too complex and indefinite a goal to be sought except through various intermediate goals” – Mill.

This is an attempt to solve the issue of calculation. It is extremely difficult to calculate which action will maximise happiness. Even though that is what constitutes the moral rightness of an action, nonetheless because of our limited knowledge our actual moral obligation is to follow whatever secondary principles humanity’s current level of understanding has produced regarding how to gain happiness and minimise suffering. We can draw on the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of our species on what avoids suffering and produces satisfaction and happiness.

This gives us ‘secondary principles’ which are more general rules and guidelines. These are the product of our civilisation’s current best attempt to understand how to produce happiness. They are therefore subject to improvement. As particularly obvious examples, Mill points to murder and theft as being injurious to human happiness.

Another secondary principle Mill thought important enough to be adopted as the practice of government was the harm principle. It essentially states that people should be free to do what they want so long as they aren’t harming others. Mill argued that each individual is in the best position to make themselves happy and so if we all allowed each other to do what made us happy, society would overall be the happiest it could be.

Of course, secondary principles will sometimes conflict. Another secondary principle could be helping others. In the case of the trolly problem, where killing one person is the only way to save five people, the harm principle conflicts with the principle of helping others. In the case of theft, which is a harm, if it is the only way to save a starving family then the secondary principles of not harming and not stealing come into conflict. Mill explains that to resolve conflicts we need to apply the first principle:

“ Those who adopt utility as a standard can seldom apply it truly except through the secondary principles … It is when two or more secondary principles conflict that a direct appeal to some first principle becomes necessary” – Mill

If we appeal to the first principle of utility, it looks like we should steal to save starving people or inflict harm (to the point of killing) by pulling the leaver in the trolly problem, to save five people.

It’s debated whether Mill is a Rule Utilitarian. He clearly thinks that it is morally right to do an action that conforms to a rule which experience has shown to maximise happiness. However, Mill clearly also thinks that sometimes individual actions should be judged to resolve a conflict or applicability issue in rules/principles. Arguably the question of how exactly to categorise Mill is irrelevant and we could simply conclude that Mill’s Utilitarianism is the perfect synthesis of Act and Rule Utilitarianism. It does avoid the problem of generic Rule Utilitarianism, that it either becomes a meta-ethically empty deontological theory or collapses back into Act Utilitarianism.

Criticisms of Utilitarianism

Problems with calculation.

Utilitarianism seems to require:

• That we know can the future.

If the goodness of an action depends on whether it maximises pleasure, then we need to know the consequences of the action before we do it. That seems to require that we know the future. Yet, predicting the future is often incredibly difficult.

Worse, we need to know not only the consequences of an action, but of all the possible actions we could do in a situation.

• That we can make incredibly complex calculations about the range of possible actions, sometimes under time-constraints.

Once we know the consequences of all the actions we could do, we then need to calculate the impact they will have on pleasure and pain. Not just in the short, but in the long-term. Worse, we might need to make these calculations in time-sensitive situations.

• That these calculations include the objective measuring of subjective mental states like pleasure and pain.

We can only make objective measurements of objective things. For example we can measure a thing’s length by putting a tape measure next to it. The calculations about the amount of pleasure and pain an action will lead to require that we measure subjective feelings, which seems impossible. There is no objective way to measure subjective feelings because we can’t put a ruler next to them.

All three of these conditions are plagued with difficulty, and yet each seems absolutely necessary if we are act on the principle of utility.

Bentham’s response to issues with calculation. Bentham claims that an action is right regarding “the tendency which it appears to have” to maximise happiness. So, we actually only need to have a reasonable expectation of what the consequences will be based on how similar actions have tended to turn out in the past.

To further defend Bentham, we could argue that we can measure subjective feelings. In hospital, doctors ask patients how much pain they are in out of 10. Doctors will admit that this is never a perfect indicator, but it is accurate enough to be informative.

Mill’s response to issues with calculation. Mill’s version of Utilitarianism seems to avoid these issues regarding calculation. We do not need to know the future, nor make incredibly complex calculations, nor measure subjective feelings. We only need to know the secondary principles that our civilisation has, through its collective efforts and experience, judged to be those best conducive to happiness. We then need to simply follow those principles as best we can. For Mill, the moral rightness of an action depends on maximise happiness, but because of the immense complexity of that, our only moral obligation is to just do our best to follow the principles geared towards producing happiness of our society, which are themselves only the best current principle that our current stage of civilisation and culture has managed to develop.

Mill is admitting that to perfectly act on the principle of utility is currently impossible. However, he denies that this means Utilitarianism fails in its requirement as a normative theory to successfully guide action. For that, Utilitarianism can rely on the principles and rules that, to the best of our current knowledge, most produce happiness. Society also ought to be progressive, meaning it should retrospectively assess and improve its principles and rules. This works well enough and in principle can continue to work better as we discover more, biologically, psychologically, sociologically and politically how to maximise happiness.

In cases of a conflict of rules, Mill adopts the same approach as Bentham and says we must judge the individual action by the principle of utility, though Mill adds that we should consider the quality not only quantity of the pleasure it could produce. He agrees with Bentham’s point that when judging individual actions, we can base our calculations on what we know of the ‘tendencies’ actions have. We do not need to exactly predict their consequences.

Regarding how to calculate or measure the quality of a pleasure, Mill explains that we need only investigate people’s preferences and we see that people always prefer higher pleasures to lower ones, except when falling into addiction or weakness of character.

Mill’s response to issues with calculation is quite amusing in how dismissive he is, so I’ve been tempted to quote part of it in full:

“Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply to such objections as this—that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is not time, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to read through the Old and New Testaments. The answer to the objection is, that there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that time, mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions; on which experience all the prudence, as well as all the morality of life, are dependent … Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong” – Mill.

Utilitarianism justifies bad actions and is against human rights

The moral basis of human rights is deontological because human rights are intrinsically good. This seems incompatible with consequentialist ethics like Utilitarianism, which argue that something is only good not because of anything intrinsic but depending on whether it leads to happiness. So, Utilitarianism could never say ‘X is wrong’ or ‘X is right’. They can only say that ‘X is right/wrong if it leads to/doesn’t lead to – the greatest happiness for the greatest number’. In that case they couldn’t say ‘torture is wrong’. In fact, if 10 people gained happiness from torturing one person, a Utilitarian it seems would have to say that was morally right as it led to the greatest happiness for the greatest number. When a majority of people decide, for their benefit, to gang up on a minority, that is called the tyranny of the majority.

Bentham didn’t accept that his theory had this consequence. In a case like 10 torturers gaining pleasure from torturing one person, that is certainly more pleasure than pain – but Bentham’s theory is not simply about producing more pleasure than pain. It is about maximising pleasure. An action is good if it maximises pleasure, meaning if it is the action which produces the maximum amount of pleasure possible. The action of allowing torture produces less pleasure than the action which finds a way to make everyone happy – not just the torturers.

However, what if, since we have limited resources, the best action we can possibly do is not one which enables everyone to be happy? In that situation, which does seem to be our actual situation, it looks like the logic of Bentham’s theory would justify the sacrifice of the well-being or even deliberate infliction of pain on some minority of the sake of the pleasure of the majority.

Mill’s Rule utilitarianism attempts to solve those kinds of issues too. The rule of the harm principle will result in a happier society than one which doesn’t. Since torture is harm, Mill’s utilitarianism can overrule individual cases where torture might result in happiness. Mill does not believe in rights. He thinks that everyone should be free to do whatever they want except harm others. The justification for this freedom from harm is not that people have a ‘right’ to be unharmed, but that it is for the greatest happiness for the greatest number that we live without harming each other. So, while Mill doesn’t believe in intrinsic rights, he proposes rules which seem identical to rights in their ethical outcome. Arguably that is sufficient.

It’s questionable whether Mill’s harm principle really is what would make people happiest. Arguably individuals are not in the best position to figure out and follow through on what will make them happy. This can be seen by the various mistakes and bad life choices people make when trying to achieve happiness.

Many argue that the problem with secular society is that people have become selfishly focused on their own happiness. The hyper-individualism that comes from capitalism and the oversexualisation of western culture are argued to be the result of Mill’s liberalism and his utopian belief that individuals best know how to make themselves happy.

Mill was writing in a time when religion and culture created a huge pressure of social conformity. Mill thought that because people were actually so different, each person would be much better off trying figure out what made them happy than if they were forced to behave the way others might prefer.

The issue of intentions and character

  Utilitarianism only views the consequences of actions as good, not the character (integrity) of the person who performs them. This goes against the intuition that a person can be a good person. It also has the bizarre effect that e.g stabbing someone could be good if after being rushed to hospital it was found, coincidentally, they had a brain tumour. Or someone who attempts to do good but bad consequences result which were unforeseeable, such as the priest who saved Hitler’s life when he was a child. The way we’d normally solve this problem is to claim that although the action had good consequences, the person’s intentions or character was bad. However, consequentialist theories seem unable to claim that because for them, it is only consequences which are good or bad, not intentions/character.

Mill responds firstly that a person’s character does matter because it will determine their future actions. The stabber should be condemned for his motive because that will prevent them stabbing others in future. The priest should be forgiven because he’s not likely to do anything bad in the future as his character is good. Secondly, Mill argues that having a good character helps you become happy. Motives and character therefore do matter ethically, though not intrinsically but only insofar as they result in good consequences, in line with consequentialism.

Kant vs consequentialism

If a Nazi asked whether we were hiding Jews and we were, it seems Kant is committed to the view that it’s wrong to lie. That seems to go against most people’s moral intuitions because of the obvious terrible consequences to telling the truth in that situation. This puts Kant at odds with consequentialist theories like Utilitarianism.

Kant could respond that each person is ultimately responsible for what they do. As a rational agent, you are responsible for what you do, and the Nazi is responsible for what they do. Lying to prevent the Nazi from killing is to act as if you were responsible for the Nazi’s action, but you are not. You are responsible for what you do, and so you should not lie.

Kant points out that we cannot control consequences in the example of the murderer at the door. If we lied about where the victim was, yet unknown to us the victim had actually moved there, then we would be responsible for their death. So Kant is arguing that we cannot control consequences and thus cannot be responsible for them. So, they cannot be part of our moral equation.

Arguably we are responsible for what others do. Kant pictures a human being as a rational agent who is ultimately an individual, responsible only for what they do. This arguably overlooks the fact that we exist in complex webs of social influence such that part of who we are depends on our interactions with other people. We exist in deep connection to other people and thus to that extent are in fact responsible for each other’s actions.

Furthermore, just because we can’t control consequences completely, does that mean they don’t matter ethically? Also, consequentialism isn’t arguing we can completely control the consequences, just that we should consider them when acting. Furthermore, we can control consequences to a degree. Shouldn’t we therefore be responsible for them to that degree?

The issue of partiality

Utilitarianism argues that we should do whatever action leads to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. It does not consider an individual’s particular emotional ties to their family or friends as relevant to that ethical calculation. E.g most parents would save their child’s life over the life of two random people. However, Utilitarianism would not regard that as the most moral action as saving two rather than one would lead to the greatest happiness. Therefore, Utilitarianism seems to be against the foundation of familial relationships which is at least a practical impediment to its implantability because family relationships define so much of our social existence. It is arguably also a conceptual flaw since family is intuitively thought of as a good thing.

Mill tried to respond that most people don’t have the opportunity to help a multitude of people so it’s good to just focus on those in our lives.

However, these days we have extensive charities all over the world so Mill’s argument seems outdated.

Peter Singer makes the point that being brought up in a loving family is the best way to ensure children grow up to be as happy as they can. Singer points out that there have been experiments at bringing up children without parents and that they haven’t worked out well. So, if no one had a family, people would be much less happy therefore perhaps the happiness we gain from family is worth the unhappiness caused by our exclusion from our consideration of those who are not our family.

But, if you think about how much parents in the west spend on their children, if half that money were given to charity instead, actually the amount of suffering that reduced might outweigh the happiness the world gains by its having family relationships.

The burning building

If you were in a burning building and had a choice between saving a child and an expensive painting, which would you choose? Most people on first hearing this scenario would say the child, but utility based ethics seems to suggest that saving the painting is better because we could sell the paining for enough money to save the life of a hundred children. Giles Fraser argues that saving the painting suggests a lack of sympathy for the child and thus Utilitarianism encourages us to be immoral.

William MacAskill responds that actually saving the painting suggests a more cultivated sympathy which is able to connect to the many more children elsewhere who are in just as much need of saving and outnumber the single child there now. Their needs are greater than the individual needs of the one child.

Arguably it is practically impossible to expect people to act in the way utilitarianism wants, even if we admitted it was right in theory. Human emotions, especially empathy, are thus a practical impediment to the implementation of utilitarianism.

Possible exam questions for Utilitarianism

Easy Does utilitarianism provide a helpful method of moral decision-making? Can moral judgement be based on the extent to which, in any given situation, utility is best served?

Medium Is it possible to measure good or pleasure and then reach a moral decision? “The moral action is the one which has the greatest balance of pleasure over pain” – Discuss. Is moral action a matter of following accepted laws that lead to the greatest balance of pleasure over pain? Is an action morally justified if it produces the greatest amount of good over evil? Assess whether rule utilitarianism successfully improves on act utilitarianism. Critically compare act and rule utilitarianism

Hard How morally valid is the hedonic calculus? “Morality is not based on utility” – Discuss. Should Utilitarianism aim to promote the greatest overall balance of good over evil or the greatest amount of good over evil?

Quick links

Year 12 ethics topics: Natural Law. Situation ethics. Kantian ethics. Utilitarianism. Euthanasia. Business ethics. 

Year 13 ethics topics: Meta-ethics. Conscience. Sexual ethics. 

OCR Philosophy OCR Christianity OCR essay structure OCR list of possible exam questions

113 Utilitarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best utilitarianism topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on utilitarianism, 📌 most interesting utilitarianism topics to write about, ⭐ simple & easy utilitarianism essay titles, ❓ utilitarianism essay questions.

• Examples of Utilitarianism in Business: Utilitarianism Case Study This argument has led to the development of the second premise in the theory, which states that in order for actions and decisions to qualify as right and moral, they must appeal to the happiness […]
• Justice Theory: Business Ethics, Utilitarianism, Rights, Caring, and Virtue The foremost portion of business ethics understands the theory of rights as one of the core principles in the five-item ethical positions that deem essential in the understanding of moral business practices. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Utilitarianism Theory Essay At the center of the utilitarian argument that shifts from the concern we physically have for our personal feelings of pain and pleasure, to others feelings of pain and pleasure, is the belief that this […]
• Virtue Theory, Utilitarianism and Deontological Ethics The foundation of utilitarianism theory is in the principle of utility. On the other hand, the theory of deontology embraces the concept of duty.
• Strengths and Weaknesses of Utilitarianism Essay Ross is of the view that people do not undertake tasks because they are aware of the consequences of their actions; rather, the decision to undertake such tasks is propelled by a promise that they […]
• Death Penalty: Utilitarian View on Capital Punishment Another significant benefit offered by the death penalty to the society is that it leads to the permanent incapacitation of the convicted person.
• Ethics of Divorce: Deontology and Utilitarianism Before analyzing the ethics of divorce, the paper first introduces the subject of ethics followed by the theme of divorce in the contemporary societal settings.
• Utilitarianism and Deontology: The Case of Coca-Cola This is one of the deontological rights that the company may have under deontological ethics; it must not be condemned for the reason that its products cause obesity to young children.
• Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham The main difference between Mill’s and Bentham’s conception of Utilitarianism is that Mill, though a consequentialist, makes a case for the qualitative aspects of happiness.
• Utilitarianism vs. Moral Relativism If to assume that moral relativism is true, then it is impossible to discuss good and bad outside the specific situation. Thus, their actions were morally wrong according to the assumptions of moral relativism.
• Utilitarianism vs Libertarianism: Examples and Facts In libertarianism, the libertarians’ perceives the government as the one that threatens peoples’ rights. It is not suitable for the government to dictate the life of an individual.
• Utilitarianism Critique From Kantian Perspective In the words of Kant, utilitarianism cannot be used as a yardstick in the evaluation of human actions because it is not universal.
• Utilitarianism in Government In the modern society, the government applies utilitarianism with the sole purpose of offering an answer to the practical question asking what should be done in society to improve the conditions of living.
• Act Utilitarianism and Virtue Ethics: Pros and Cons Therefore, act utilitarianism is better than virtue ethics since it is clear, concise, and focuses on the majority. Virtue ethics’ strengths can be utilized to enhance the act-utilitarianism theory.
• The Theory of Utilitarianism by Jeremy Bentham According to utilitarianism, the greatest ethical action is the one that benefits society, and the value of each person is more significant than the value of a community.
• Utilitarianism and Social Contract Theories Unfortunately, there is limited information about the limits of the rights of individuals and this makes most people abuse the freedoms of others.
• Resolving Ethical Issues in the Workplace: Utilitarianism and Kantian Ethics The ethical issue in question is in regard to whether Alice should report the huge error she has discovered in Mark’s nutritional reporting to the company’s upper management.
• Utilitarianism: Principles and Assumptions The philosopher argues that the accomplishment of the goal of solving the cases of stress must be based on an individual’s pleasure and actions that promote happiness. For instance, Bentham argues that the chain of […]
• Thomas More’s Utopia, Utilitarianism, and Technology Therefore, the meaning of “utopia” did not change to a tangible extent, as the modern meaning aligns with the one that More assigned to it.
• Michael Sandel’s Objections to Utilitarianism The moral and intellectual pleasures were considered to be “highest pleasures”, and the experiences, that caused satisfaction of flesh were considered to be “lower pleasures”. The pleasures of the majority, in that case, are considered […]
• Utilitarianism in Healthcare During the COVID-19 Pandemic This principle is particularly applicable to the lockdown situation by evaluating the number of lives that would be lost in the event of a lockdown.
• The Difference Between Act and Rule Utilitarianism Utilitarianism emerged as a systematic theory at the end of the eighteenth century with the philosophical works of Jeremy Bentham, who created the “greatest happiness of the greatest number” formulation of the principle of utilitarianism.
• The Debate Over Utilitarianism While the writers offer objections to utilitarianism, they conclude that the concept has more benefits to society compared to the use of common sense in terms of morality.
• Principles of Utilitarianism At this point, the utilitarian theory is also associated with the tools that can provide individuals and community with happiness through recognition of felicity as the foundation of all human actions.
• Comparing Utilitarianism with Immanuel Kant’s View On the other hand, the teleological ethical perspective states that the results for all actions matter in determining the nature of the undertaken decisions.
• Philosophy Issues: Utilitarianism or Deontology? Regardless of the extent to which some people are opposed to the applications of moral principles, which should be consistent with the scriptures of God, they are used to produce the best results in communities.
• Limitations of Utilitarianism The reasoning is that the greater good would be to kill one person, as opposed to five because the happiness of five people is much greater than that of one.
• Utilitarianism: Ethical Theory in Healthcare The ethical theory addresses the main concepts: the intrinsic value of one’s happiness, the importance of operating under the premise of well-being as the primary value, and happiness being equally important regardless of the individual.
• Virtue Ethics: Kantianism and Utilitarianism Despite the strengths and theoretical significance of both approaches, the theories of Aristotle and Aquinas suggest more flexibility and breadth in ethics interpretation as compared to rule-based theories.
• Utilitarianism and Human Resource Management In order to fully comprehend the effects of the United States president on the Bill of Rights denial, it is imperative to understand the provisions of the utilitarianism and the significance of Bill of Rights […]
• Peter Singer and John Rawls on Utilitarianism Consequently, we should not engage in slavery even if utilitarianism theory assumes that such engagement may produce pleasure, happiness, and contentment to the majority or the greatest number of people.
• Introduction to the Utilitarianism Theory The good in the action is what is focused on and not what it leads to. This is in disregard of Bentham’s thought that pleasure is the same qualitatively and the only thing that matters […]
• The Utilitarianism Theory in Society Therefore, utilitarianism should lead to an increase in happiness of the society. In utilitarianism, rules are necessary in the governing of the actions.
• Mill’s Utilitarianism and Gomez Lobo’s Natural Law The definition given for lying is an expression of words that contradicts the thoughts with an intent to deceive a person who has the right to know. The implication is that the theory fails to […]
• Happiness in Mills’ Utilitarianism Theory Mill further supports his claim by explaining that the justice sentiment is based on utility and that the existence of rights is due to human happiness. The freedom from pain involving health issues and other […]
• Ethics, Prosperity, and Society: Virtue Ethics and Utilitarianism First, due to the heated argument of the superior on duty, they might take out their anger on the trainee, in which case the trainee might be told to either resolve the issue personally or […]
• How Utilitarianism Approves Prostitution However, on moral and ethical grounds, the sex workers and the society are the primary parties that this philosophy considers justifying whether the goodness that comes with prostitution outweighs the bad or the wrong cause […]
• Deontology and Utilitarianism: Comparative Analysis The idea of the purpose justifying the means is central to utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is dependent on consequentiality since it asserts that the most moral thing to do is to use happiness for the benefit of […]
• Discussion: Ethics of Utilitarianism In the situation described with the purchase of a bag and a TV, the utilitarian ethic recommends that you donate to a charitable foundation, as this will increase happiness for more people.
• Ethical Implications in Business and Utilitarianism The organizational culture is essentially a set of moral, ethical, cultural, and managerial rules that regulate the interpersonal relationships in an organization, as well as communicate its agenda to the outside world.
• Morality in Utilitarianism and Deontology Followers of utilitarianism thus claim that an action is morally right when it increases the happiness of the involved parties and minimizes the harm.
• Vaccination and Utilitarianism Such an approach may be problematic for parents since they also have a moral obligation to act according to the best interests of their child.
• The Theory of Ethical Egoism and Utilitarianism A possible moral choice in the situation can also be interpreted from the point of view of the theory of existentialism and hedonism.
• Act Utilitarianism and Virtue Ethics The theory greatly neglects and ignores the happiness of individual because everyone is on the run to be accepted morally to the society and tend to make individuals do what tends to make them happy.
• Utilitarianism Drawbacks in Business Decision-Making For instance, when choosing the appropriate manager to develop an IT project, the director ignores the candidates’ level of knowledge in this sphere due to their equality in this question.
• Ethical Concepts: Utilitarianism and Deontology Utilitarianism is primarily based on the outcome, where the one with the most amount of good is considered to be the right choice.
• Normative Ethics: Utilitarianism and Deontology In their refusal to do business with Wikileaks, the management of the bank of America was justified by reason that the actions of Wikileaks were inconsistent with the internal policies of the bank, and therefore, […]
• Capital Punishment: Utilitarianism and Retributivism Theories However, to rule out chances of an innocent person being punished, the theory advocates for justice; before punishment is administered, the court should proof beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty.
• The Main Risks of Utilitarianism In this theory of act utilitarianism, is well stated that, when one is faced with a decision to make, the first thing to consider is the outcome of the potential deeds and, from that decide […]
• The Theory of Utilitarianism in the Global E-Commerce Business Dealings Generally, it is of importance that businesses and corporations in e-commerce ensure ideal and sincere dealings to meet the expected level of satisfaction by their clients.
• A Critique of Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is a philosophical theory that states that the morality of an action is based on its effects; any action that increases the pleasure and happiness of the greater majority is just.
• Abortion and the Theory of Act Utilitarianism One possible philosophical approach to the problem of choice in such sensitive issues as abortion is the theory of Utilitarianism measuring the moral value of the action.
• Elements of Utilitarianism as a Philosophical Theory First, in Utilitarianism, the decision-makers should not only consider the happiness that the decision brings but also the unhappiness or pain.
• Utilitarianism & Social Contract in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well While Helena represented the lower class of the society and believed in the Utilitarianism values to the road of success, Bertram was much inclined towards the elements of social contract theory and its application.
• Act and Rule Utilitarianism Considering that John is a drunkard who drove himself to the accident that led to the rapture of his kidney; the choice of giving him the kidney would be avoided based on the fact that […]
• Act Utilitarianism: Term Definition The theory advocates for actions that bring a large amount of pleasure and little pain to the majority of the people or rather the course of actions that maximize happiness and minimize pain by considering […]
• Utilitarianism as an Ethical Principle From this, he obtained the regulation of usefulness, that the good is anything that brings the maximum happiness to the maximum number of people.
• Utilitarianism and Ethical Relativism The two ethical theories discussed in the reading that I found the most interesting were utilitarianism and ethical relativism. I believe that this ethical theory has numerous useful applications in the contemporary world and that […]
• Difference Between Social Contract, Utilitarianism, Virtue and Deontology This essay gives a description of the differences in how ethical contractarianism, utilitarianism, virtue, and deontological ethics theories address ethics and morality.
• Deontology vs. Utilitarianism in Medicine: Dray vs. Staten Island University Hospital The ACOG and the AAP made a statement that even the most substantial evidence for the benefit of a fetus could not be considered as an ethical presumption to neglect the decision of a pregnant […]
• Act and Rule Utilitarianism in Decision Process On the basis of the act-utilitarianism, as an oncologist, I would give the trial drug to the genetics researcher since her recovery would benefit many people under the Malaria research.
• Utilitarianism, Kantianism, Virtue Ethics, Egoism Quote: The amanagers of a corporation must take responsibility to fulfil their duties to their stockholders and to the public’. According to this normative theory, the utility can be described as anything that is related […]
• Utilitarianism in Ron Paul’s Rhetoric In fact, former Congressman Ron Paul believes that in order to create the most good, the best strategy is to reduce the involvement of big government in the affairs of men.
• Virtue Ethics, Utilitarianism, and Deontology Utilitarianism relates to the concept of value in that the quality of something which is good is measured by the value attached to it.
• Ethics: Egoism, Utilitarianism, Care and Virtue It is necessary to note that it is benign most of the time, but the issue is that such behavior may not be liked by other members of society, and it can lead to numerous […]
• Robert Nozick’ Ideas about Utilitarianism Nozick was of the view that people are not in a position to differentiate between their experiences when in the experience machine and when outside.
• Retributivism and Utilitarianism Theories Another approach to the question of punishment has a theory of utilitarianism. However, it is possible to suggest some fusing of these two different theories in an attempt to create some new approach to the […]
• Ethics of Relativism, Utilitarianism and Libertarianism Therefore, the concept is based on the fact that reality felt by an individual is bound to the culture or societal beliefs.
• Defensive Approach: Utilitarianism The utilitarian attitude towards rights is that the moral ‘right’ is built on the basis of utilitarian aspects, especially on the principle that seeks to reduce pain and suffering of living organisms.
• Philosophy Issues: Kantianism and Utilitarianism Utilitarianism can be explained using the principle of ‘the end justifies the means’, meaning if the end of a processor action is good, then the means of arriving at that end are also good and […]
• Utilitarianism’ Critique by B. Williams and P. Pettit Consequentialism is a concept in normative ethics that opines that the goodness or badness of an action is determined by the impacts of the action and not the motive of the doer.
• Sandel’s Analysis of Utilitarianism and Libertarianism It is therefore important to point out the circumstances that led to the creation of the U.S.political system that incorporated the principles of utilitarianism and libertarianism.
• Utilitarianism and Natural Law Theories This may be done with the interest of the society at heart where, the person wants to improve the well being of everyone else in the community.
• Media Ethics: Towards Employing Utilitarianism and Kantian Theory in Examining Practical Ethical Issues In the claim, it is clearly evident that the author would choose the action that has a greater impact and helps more people that of continuing to film instead of lending a hand.
• Utilitarianism: The Moral Story of Flight 93 Considering the huge negative repercussions of Flight 93 in terms of loss of lives, destruction of invaluable resources and a series of other harmful consequences; as a utilitarian, one would argue that shooting the plane […]
• The Application of the Principle of Utilitarianism in Explaining the Death Penalty However, the theory supports a form of punishment when the level of suffering is so high that it is beneficial to society.
• Analysis of News Article Using Act Utilitarianism and Kant’s Categorical Imperative The other issue in consideration is that of the black market which is supposedly benefiting due to the lack of a legal market for body organs.
• Concept of Utilitarianism Theory The good thing about the utilitarianism theory relates to the notion that it is the simplest form of any applicable ethical system.
• Utilitarianism as a Teleological Theory Therefore, in the interest of maximizing happiness for both parties, human beings are supposed to be vegetarians and animals are supposed to enjoy their freedom as animals.
• Humanity Theories: Utilitarianism Second, the theory of deontology embraces the concept of duty and adherence to rule. However, this theory does not refer to physical happiness, but that of the mind and soul.
• Analyzing the Differences between Utilitarianism and Libertarianism: Ethical Issues and Moral Judgments As Luntley says, t6he first and the foremost is the ability to make sure that the truth is independent from judgment.
• Utilitarianism for Animals: Testing and Experimentation There are alternatives in testing drugs such as tissue culture of human cells and hence this is bound to be more accurate in the findings.
• Utilitarianism Theory Application in Duelling Dilemma The claimants in this scenario consist of the government of the PRC, those protesting against the censorship and the general public who might not be aware of such attempts by the government.
• What Is a Good Example of Utilitarianism?
• How Would Charles Darwin Critique John Stuart Mill in Utilitarianism?
• What Are Some Objections to Utilitarianism?
• What Are the Main Strengths and Weaknesses of Utilitarianism and Formalism?
• What Is Utilitarianism in Layman’s Terms?
• What’s the Difference Between Act and Rule Utilitarianism?
• How Does the Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill Compare to Jeremy Bentham’s?
• What Is the Difference Between Pragmatism and Utilitarianism?
• How Would Aristotle Respond to Utilitarianism?
• What Are the Best Arguments for and Against Utilitarianism?
• Which Definition Best Describes Utilitarianism?
• What Are the Main Principles of Utilitarianism?
• What Is the Opposite of Utilitarianism?
• What Are the Three Types of Utilitarianism?
• Is Utilitarianism Fundamentally Opposed to Libertarianism?
• What Is the Relationship Between Utilitarianism and Consequentialism?
• Why Is Utilitarianism Called an Unfalsifiable Ethic?
• How Does Utilitarianism Differ Between John Stuart Mill and Peter Singer?
• Why Are INTJs Obsessed With the Philosophy of Utilitarianism?
• What Are the Criticisms of Utilitarianism?
• What Are the Best Arguments Against Utilitarianism and for Deontology?
• What Are the Two Key Objections to Utilitarianism?
• Is Democracy Based on Utilitarianism?
• What Does the Term Utilitarianism in English Literature Mean?
• Which Is Right: Utilitarianism, Deontology, or Some Combination of the Two?
• Why Is Utilitarianism Considered a Consequentialist Theory?
• How Can a Libertarian Refute a Progressive Plea to Utilitarianism?
• Who Came Up With Utilitarianism?
• Where Was Utilitarianism Practiced?
• How Does Utilitarianism Threaten Individual Rights?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, March 2). 113 Utilitarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/utilitarianism-essay-topics/

"113 Utilitarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 2 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/utilitarianism-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '113 Utilitarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 2 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "113 Utilitarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/utilitarianism-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "113 Utilitarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/utilitarianism-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "113 Utilitarianism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/utilitarianism-essay-topics/.

• Libertarianism Research Topics
• Deontology Questions
• Ethics Ideas
• Empiricism Essay Topics
• Realism Essay Topics
• Animal Rights Research Ideas
• Cultural Relativism Questions
• Egoism Ideas
• Romanticism Titles
• Ethical Relativism Essay Topics
• Idealism Paper Topics
• Nietzsche Essay Titles
• Virtue Ethics Questions
• Activist Essay Titles
• Media Ethics Titles

10 Utilitarianism Examples (Plus Pros and Cons)

The core idea of utilitarianism is that we ought to act in a way that maximizes happiness for the greatest number. So, the morally right action is, according to utilitarians, the action that produces the most good.

Examples of utilitarianism include effective altruism, bulldozing someone’s home for a highway, and redistribution of excess money from the rich to the poor.

It is an ethical theory developed to determine what we morally ought to do. It is a variety of consequentialism . That is, utilitarianism takes the consequences that action produces as the only relevant factor to determining whether that action is or isn’t morally permissible.

Utilitarianism Definition

Utilitarianism is the view that one ought to promote maximal well-being, welfare, or utility. The theory evaluates the moral rightness of actions, rules, policies, motives, virtues, social institutions, etc. in terms of what delivers the most good to the most people.

According to MacAskill, Meissner, and Chappell (2022), all utilitarian theories share four defining characteristics:

• Consequentialism: The view that one ought to act in a way that promotes good outcomes.
• Welfarism: The view that only the welfare or well-being of individuals determines the value of an outcome.
• Impartiality: The view that the identity of individuals is irrelevant to the moral value of an outcome. The interests of all individuals hold equal moral weight.
• Aggregationism: The view that the value of the world is the sum of the values of its parts. The parts are experiences, lives, societies, and so on.

Any theory that denies any of the elements above is not utilitarian. For example, a non-consequentialist might hold that actions can be inherently right or wrong regardless of the outcomes they produce.

Utilitarian Case study: Jeremy Bentham

A key feature of utilitarianism has always been its focus on practical action. Jeremy Bentham was one person who highlighted this in his writing.

He advocated for the rights of animals when there were no laws protecting animals from cruelty. He advocated for improving the conditions of prisoners and the poor.

Utilitarians advocated for broadening suffrage to extend it to women. They advocated for women’s rights more generally. Bentham advocated for homosexual rights. In these and many other areas, utilitarians supported policies that are today part of common sense (Lazari-Radek & Singer, 2017).

Other important contributors to utilitarianism include John Stuart Mill (1871), Henry Sidgwick (1874), Richard M. Hare (1993), and Peter Singer (Lazari-Radek & Singer, 2017).

Utilitarianism Examples

• Redistributing money to the poor : Wealth and income have a diminishing marginal utility. The more wealth you have, the less well-being you get from additional money. It is, therefore, a utilitarian choice of a government to redistribute money to the poor who need it more than the rich do (MacAskill & Meissner, 2022).
• Effective altruism : Effective altruism is a research field that aims to identify the world’s most vital problems and tries to find the most effective solutions to them. This is a philosophy and social movement endorsed by many utilitarians, most notably Peter Singer and William MacAskill. Not all effective altruists are utilitarians, but many utilitarians find this movement especially appealing.
• Global health and development : This is a particularly important area for utilitarians because it has a great track record of improving overall well-being. Donating to organizations that give people access to better healthcare is one of the most important causes for utilitarians.
• Farm animal welfare : For utilitarians, animals matter and humans are the cause of a large amount of their unnecessary suffering. There are ways to reduce the suffering of farmed animals. These include campaigns to make large retailers cut caged eggs out of their supply chains, donating money to animal charities, reducing meat consumption, improving the quality of animal shelters or farms, and so on.
• Reducing existential risks : The value of our actions, according to utilitarians, depends largely on how those actions will affect the future in the long run. Existential threats such as a nuclear war, a global pandemic, extreme climate change, and so on are, therefore, of pressing concern for utilitarians.
• Career choices : Many utilitarians emphasize the importance of choosing a career path that allows you to do the most overall good in the long run. This doesn’t involve much of a personal sacrifice, since the job you find satisfying is very often the one that allows you to help the largest number of people.
• Outreach : Promoting utilitarian ideas is itself considered by many utilitarians to be a morally good action. This is because promoting utilitarian ideas is likely to increase the overall well-being of individuals. The people you inspire will do several times as much good as you could have done alone.
• Women’s suffrage: Philosopher Jeremy Bentham argued for women’s suffrage from a universalist perspective. By increasing women’s rights, benefits are distributed to a greater number of people and therefore it suits a utilitarian ethic.
• Bulldoze a house to build a highway: If a house stands in the way of a highway being built, a utilitarian perspective may argue that the house should be bulldozed. More benefit to more people will come from one person losing their house in return for millions of people getting faster access to work every day. This is called the ‘rights objection’ to utilitarianism.
• Organ transplant hypothesis: There is a hospital with five people requiring transplants – a heart, a kidney, a foot, a liver, and bone marrow. The greatest good for the most people could theoretically justify killing one person so their organs can be donated to save five people.

Pros of Utilitarianism

• Simplicity : The core of utilitarianism is easy to understand and apply. The fundamental question of ethics is: “What should I do?” Utilitarianism gives a very straightforward answer: The right thing to do is to bring about the greatest possible net increase in the surplus of happiness over suffering. This short answer gives everything one might need, at least in principle, to analyze what one ought to do in any possible situation (Lazari-Radek & Singer, 2017, p. xix).
• Intuitiveness : It is impossible to prove all claims within a given theory. As Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out, “at the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded” (Wittgenstein, 1969, p. 33). Intuitiveness is, therefore, a vital aspect of any moral theory. The axiomatic parts of any ethical theory must be intuitive for the theory to be successful or convincing. Acting to promote the greatest good for the greatest number intuitively seems like an aim worth pursuing. This is because almost everyone agrees that happiness is good and suffering is bad.
• Practicality : Utilitarian theory is immediately practical. The historical record shows that the causes utilitarians advocated for, such as universal suffrage, animal rights, gay rights, global health, and so on have become more and more important for the world. Utilitarianism seems to be effective because it can be easily applied.
• Impartiality : The moral atrocities of the past were often sanctioned by the dominant societal norms of the time. A theory that is impartial and expands the moral circle as much as possible is, therefore, more appealing to us today. Utilitarianism, because of its commitment to giving equal weight to the interests of every individual, is impartial (Chappell & Meissner, 2022).

Cons of Utilitarianism

There are many objections to utilitarianism. Most of these are based on the idea that utilitarianism often leads to counterintuitive claims and conclusions about action (MacAskill et al., 2022).

The following list is incomplete, but it covers the most common objections raised against utilitarianism:

• The alienation objection claims that utilitarianism is cold and impersonal, thereby alienating us from the particular people and projects that truly matter to us.
• The demandingness objection claims that utilitarianism is too demanding because it requires excessive self-sacrifice.
• The equality objection claims that utilitarianism ignores, or doesn’t give enough value to equality and distributive justice .
• The mere means objection claims that utilitarianism treats people merely as means to the greater good. This objection is particularly popular with the followers of Kant (Kant, 1785/1993, p. 36).
• The rights objection charges utilitarianism with being overly permissive, claiming that utilitarianism might allow infringing upon the rights of others to maximize overall well-being.
• The separateness of persons objection claims that utilitarianism neglects the boundaries between individuals to maximize overall well-being.
• The special obligations objection holds that utilitarianism is too impartial and does not account for the special obligations we have to our friends or family members.

Utilitarianism is one of the most widespread and intuitive approaches to ethics. It gives straightforward answers and actionable advice to those who subscribe to it.

Like any moral theory, it has many arguments for and against it. It was first fully articulated in the nineteenth century and is still an important and controversial ethical theory.

Bentham, J. (1879). An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation . Clarendon Press.

Brink, D. (2022). Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/mill-moral-political/

Chappell, R.Y. and Meissner, D. (2022). Arguments for Utilitarianism. In R.Y. Chappell, D. Meissner, and W. MacAskill (eds.), An Introduction to Utilitarianism . https://www.utilitarianism.net/arguments-for-utilitarianism , accessed 11/18/2022.

Driver, J. (2022). The History of Utilitarianism. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/utilitarianism-history/

Hare, R. M. (1993). Essays in Ethical Theory . Clarendon Press.

Kant, I. (1993). Grounding for the metaphysics of morals ; with, On a supposed right to lie because of philanthropic concerns . Indianapolis : Hackett Pub. Co. (Original work published 1785) http://archive.org/details/groundingformet000kant

Lazari-Radek, K. de, & Singer, P. (2017). Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction . Oxford University Press.

MacAskill, W. and Meissner, D. (2022). Acting on Utilitarianism. In R.Y. Chappell, D. Meissner, and W. MacAskill (eds.), An Introduction to Utilitarianism . https://www.utilitarianism.net/acting-on-utilitarianism , accessed 11/18/2022.

MacAskill, W., Meissner, D., and Chappell, R.Y. (2022). Introduction to Utilitarianism. In R.Y. Chappell, D. Meissner, and W. MacAskill (eds.), An Introduction to Utilitarianism . https://www.utilitarianism.net/introduction-to-utilitarianism , accessed 11/18/2022.

MacAskill, W., Meissner, D., and Chappell, R.Y. (2022). Objections to Utilitarianism and Responses. In R.Y. Chappell, D. Meissner, and W. MacAskill (eds.), An Introduction to Utilitarianism . https://www.utilitarianism.net/objections-to-utilitarianism , accessed 11/18/2022.

Mill, J. S. (1871). Utilitarianism . Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer.

Sidgwick, H. (1874). The Methods of Ethics . Macmillan.

Wittgenstein, L. (1969). On Certainty . Basil Blackwell.

Tio Gabunia (B.Arch, M.Arch)

Tio Gabunia is an academic writer and architect based in Tbilisi. He has studied architecture, design, and urban planning at the Georgian Technical University and the University of Lisbon. He has worked in these fields in Georgia, Portugal, and France. Most of Tio’s writings concern philosophy. Other writings include architecture, sociology, urban planning, and economics.

• Tio Gabunia (B.Arch, M.Arch) #molongui-disabled-link 6 Types of Societies (With 21 Examples)
• Tio Gabunia (B.Arch, M.Arch) #molongui-disabled-link 25 Public Health Policy Examples
• Tio Gabunia (B.Arch, M.Arch) #molongui-disabled-link 15 Cultural Differences Examples
• Tio Gabunia (B.Arch, M.Arch) #molongui-disabled-link Social Interaction Types & Examples (Sociology)

Chris Drew (PhD)

This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). The review process on Helpful Professor involves having a PhD level expert fact check, edit, and contribute to articles. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Dr. Drew has published over 20 academic articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and holds a PhD in Education from ACU.

• Chris Drew (PhD) #molongui-disabled-link 25 Positive Punishment Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) #molongui-disabled-link 25 Dissociation Examples (Psychology)
• Chris Drew (PhD) #molongui-disabled-link 15 Zone of Proximal Development Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) #molongui-disabled-link Perception Checking: 15 Examples and Definition

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Model Essay – Utilitarianism

August 14, 2018.

To what extent, if any, is Utilitarianism a good theory for approaching moral decisions in life? (30/40 Grade B)

Below is a sample essay from our book on Model Essays available in the shop. If you have an essay you’d be happy for us to include in our next selection please email it to me (preferably grade A or B standard). I will mark it with detailed comments for free if we use it. Other essays can be marked for £10 an essay – please buy an essay marking credit in the shop.

Arguably, the use of utilitarianism for the making of moral decisions is more detrimental to a society than it is beneficial. Indeed the very basis on which utilitarianism is founded, ‘happiness’ or ‘pleasure’, proves to be the first stumbling block. The ‘paradox of hedonism’ suggests that pleasure itself cannot be directly obtained. Instead, we must aim for more substantial conclusions, such as wealth or power – pleasure is merely a symptom that follows. This idea is most acutely explained by politician William Bennett: ‘Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you’ll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.’

Good. Excellent summary of the utilitarian problem that once you pursue happiness or pleasure as an end in itself it tends to elude you.

Therefore, to base one’s entire ethical approach to life on happiness, something which is so fleeting and indistinct, suddenly seems irrational. You need to mention a philosopher here such as Mill and ground the argument in what he says . If we cannot amass pleasure within ourselves, how can we be so vain as to assume we can recognise its form in others, particularly those we don’t know (e.g. in the case of a politician forming their policies on utilitarian principles.) That is not to say that the ‘pursuit of happiness’ in a wider sense will always be futile, but that one should make decisions independently, on grounds other than those utilitarian, and allow happiness to follow.

Is it not true to say we can assess polices looking backwards with hindsight because all the consequences are known, but not forwards when there are often unintended consequences? This paragraph is too general to be of much analytical quality – make sure you go straight into a philosophical theory.

On the other hand, rule utilitarianism appears to offer a resolution. If one chooses to implement a pre-determined set of rules (e.g. to avoid lying, to be pacifistic, to be modest,) which predominantly bring about the most ‘pleasure’/good for society, then focus can be diverted away from pursuing you mean personal happiness here happiness, and instead towards living a righteous life.

Yes, but again, you need to give this a theoretical grounding in Mill’s so-called ‘weak rule utilitarianism’ – Mill’s point is we are foolish to ignore the experience of people who have gone before us in terms of general rules or guidelines for creating the happy society. But when moral dilemmas occur we revert to being act utilitarians.

Jeremy Bentham (the father of modern utilitarianism) was somewhat of a polymath – to suggest that he was solely a ‘philosopher’ would be a vast understatement. This kind of comment is irrelevant to the question and a waste of time. Undoubtedly, he was also a great social reformer, basing his beliefs on the underlying principle of egalitarianism (i.e. equality for all.) However, in many ways, utilitarianism innately contradicts ‘egalité . ’

This paragraph is a good example of the kind of paragraph a highly analytical essay never contains because you are merely describing the life and times of Mr Bentham and not adding anything to the argument.

Initially a thought experiment experiment devised by the American philosopher Robert Nozick, ‘the utility monster,’ undermines the very equality for which Bentham’s philosophy once fought. Visualise a situation in which the hedonic calculus is being employed. In such a case, the intensity (quality) of the perceived happiness must be acknowledged. For illustration’s sake, imagine rations are being distributed amongst a group of isolated individuals. However, one of these individuals appears to gain a disproportionately high intensity of pleasure on receiving food, despite all other individuals being of an equally critical state of health (e.g. starvation.) To apply the hedonic calculus would not only (unfairly) favour the minority, but also pose a great risk to the majority (assuming that the individual’s pleasure is greater than the collective pleasure of the majority.)

Ye s this is a good point but it wouldn’t apply to Mill’s theory because social utility would mean we need principles of justice, otherwise any of us would be permanently miserable at just the thought of a utility monster.

The most valid counterargument to which is proposed by the British philosopher Derek Parfit, arguing that the scale of happiness should be seen as asymptotic rather than linear. That is, the happiness of a utility monster cannot perpetually increase, but will eventually reach a point near enough to ‘complete’ happiness. Hence, such a being is not conceivable. This argument bears a strong resemblance to prioritarianism, which suggests that individuals on the lower end of the ‘pleasure spectrum’ will obtain a greater amount of happiness (‘per unit of utility’) than those closer to the reverse end.

Again a good point and actually illustrating what economists call the principle of diminishing marginal utility – we eventually have less and less satisfaction as an individual until at some point we experience no satisfaction at all.

Or, to some extent, the intensity of happiness could thereby be omitted from the hedonic calculus to account for the utility monster. However, there is also a troubling flaw with the seventh principle – ‘extent,’ or the amount of people that a particular moral choice may affect. Counterintuitively, the one society which utilitarianism does not appear to permit, is a microcosmic ‘utopia.’ When summating the pleasure of individuals, the greatest amount will be achieved, theoretically, by an extremely populous group with indifferent levels of happiness rather than a very small but extremely contented group. This is known as the ‘repugnant conclusion.’

Interesting and unusual point. Which philosopher talks about this problem?

In counterargument one might say, ‘the average pleasure should supersede the total amount of pleasure’ for this particular instance. Yet this line of argument spawns issues of its own. A simple average can easily be skewed by extremities. Such that one individual in a state of euphoria would significantly raise the average happiness of his miserable counterparts. Under the aforementioned, atrocities such as slavery could feasibly be justified. What’s the suffering of one thousand imprisoned subordinates if the overseer is delighted by the recent success of his cotton farm? Utilitarianism, in this context, seeks to diminish the more valuable pursuits (charity, liberal arts) over the happiness one gains through materialism (e.g. the wealth garnered from a cotton farm.)

Even if all the preceding shortcomings were to be deemed permissible, there is still a flaw which is perhaps the most pertinent of all. Humans, by their very nature, are unable to reliably predict consequence, and without consequence, the principle of utilitarianism is worthless. Given the nature of the ‘ripple effect,’ it would be naive to assume that every possible consequence of even the simplest of decisions could be accounted for. Or moreover, to predict the ways in which people would (potentially dangerously,) apply utilitarianism if it were to be adopted as a global ethic.

Yes, again a very good point.

Even attempting to apply such a primitive, nebulous philosophy to an infinite diversity of ethical decisions seems rather unrefined. Despite superficially appearing succinct and rational, the impracticalities of achieving ‘the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest number of people’ cannot be overlooked. Indeed, utilitarianism is theoretically sound but there are far too many exceptional cases for it to be one’s ruling principle.

‘Primitive’ and ‘nebulous’ are rather emotive (rude) words to use of a philosophy that has guided Government policy for years.  Welfare is another word for happiness (just a little more neutral!).In Politics and Economics we use social welfare measures to evaluate our decisions – as it is impartial.

Overall 30/40 75% Grade B

The essay has some very interesting points to make.   However, it would not achieve an A* because the establishment of how the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill actually works is rather thin. Particularly, there is little substance about how Mill’s weak rule utilitarianism actually works, and how some argue that rule utilitarianism collapses into act utilitarianism. In terms of social benefits versus individual benefits the candidate needs to bring out how this operates in Mill’s theory, and how he grounds the final chapter of his essay on justice as a fundamental prerequisite of the happy society. Mill also moves his whole argument much closer to Aristotle as he writes his essay – leading some to call him an inconsistent utilitarian because he can’t quite decide whether to go for qualitative pleasures or another concept of long-term welfare that is closer to eudaimonia in Aristotelean thought. It is lighter on AO1 marks than AO2 but seems to miss some of the analytical steps necessary to be a really compelling argument.

AO1 Level 4 10/16

A good demonstration of knowledge and understanding. Addresses the question well. Good selection of relevant material, used appropriately on the whole. Mostly accurate knowledge which demonstrates good understanding of the material used, which should have reasonable amounts of depth or breadth. A good range of scholarly views.

It is ‘good’ because it contains a very strong critical thesis. But it is neither very good nor excellent because the precise detail of how Bentham’s and Mills theories work is lacking – it is assumed rather than stated and established and analysed. For example, there is an interesting relationship in Mill between higher and lower pleasures and act and rue utilitarianism whereby we should, Mill argues, generally follow a rule which past experience suggest will maximise social happiness but when we face a moral dilemma we revert to being an act utilitarian. There is also an ambiguity in the question which is never considered – moral decisions for whom?

AO2 level 5 20/24

A very good demonstration of analysis and evaluation in response to the question. successful and clear analysis, evaluation and argument. Views very well stated, coherently developed and justified. There is a well–developed and sustained line of reasoning which is coherent, relevant and logically structured.

It would have been excellent if there had been a little more engagement with the academic philosophers who produce the arguments, rather than just the arguments themselves.

Study with us

Practise Questions 2020

Religious Studies Guides – 2020

Check out our great books in the Shop

Leave a Reply Cancel

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

Trump’s Trial Can Right a Wrong From 50 Years Ago

By Kevin Boyle

Mr. Boyle is the author of “The Shattering: America in the 1960s.”

Of the four criminal cases that Donald Trump is facing, the one unfolding in Manhattan is generally considered the weakest. Its legal foundation is complex. Its key witness is a felon. Its details are the sort of stuff that the tabloids splash across their front pages.

Worst of all, it doesn’t speak to Mr. Trump’s actions as president, as the other cases do. But as the Supreme Court oral arguments on immunity last week made clear, it is likely to be the only one the country will see resolved before Election Day.

As a historian who has written about the wrenching events of the 1960s and early 1970s, I can’t help seeing Mr. Trump’s legal troubles through the lens of an earlier Republican president, Richard Nixon. He spent more than two years, from the summer of 1972 to the summer of ’74, trying to prevent investigators from uncovering the tangle of crimes that made up the Watergate affair. But unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Nixon never faced criminal charges. For that, justice suffered, and the nation suffered, too.

So here we are, watching unfold in Justice Juan Merchan’s utilitarian courtroom the narrow, tawdry version of the trials the nation ought to have had this year and the trial the nation should have had 50 years ago.

Mr. Nixon won the presidency in 1968 promising to be tough on crime. And he was. From 1961 to 1968 the nation’s prison population fell by 15 percent. By the time Mr. Nixon left office in 1974, it was almost back to where it was in 1962 — the start of a spiral fueled by the furious politics of law and order that his administration had helped to unleash.

The punitive turn struck poorer people and communities of color with particular force, an outcome that a majority of Americans didn’t seem to mind. But when the Watergate investigation exposed Mr. Nixon’s own potential criminality, they thought that the law ought to apply to him, too. As the crisis reached its peak in the summer of 1974, that belief hardened: By almost two to one, Americans wanted the House of Representatives to impeach the president, the Senate to try him and prosecutors to secure his indictment, so that his case could move into open court.

None of that happened. In early July 1974, Mr. Nixon’s lawyer presented to the Supreme Court his client’s claim of presidential immunity. The justices took just two weeks to issue their ruling against the president’s position, by a vote of 8 to 0 .

In light of the Supreme Court’s conduct this year, it’s worth underlining that timing: The case was argued on July 8. The justices issued a decision on July 24.

Between July 27 and 30, the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment. Mr. Nixon resigned nine days later, with the articles pending. President Gerald Ford waited a month and then gave his predecessor “ a full, free and absolute pardon ” for the crimes he had yet to be charged with committing. And something started to shift for Americans.

In April 1974, the month the Watergate cover-up started to unravel, 71 percent of Americans had at least a fair amount of confidence in the legal system. In the weeks after Mr. Nixon’s pardon, the share of people who felt that way fell to 67 percent. A year later it was down to 64 percent. That growing sense of disillusionment can’t be explained purely by the failure to bring Mr. Nixon to trial. But a revealing set of long-forgotten surveys suggests that it played a part.

In 1971 the Roper Organization, then one of the nation’s leading pollsters, asked a randomly selected sample of adults to say which groups the courts treated too leniently. Respondents put “dope peddlers” at the top of the list, followed by “heroin users,” “marijuana users” and “revolutionists, anarchists, agitators” — almost precisely the people Mr. Nixon had promised to bring to justice by restoring law and order. Roper asked the same question two years after he was pardoned. “Dope peddlers” came in first again. “Government officials” was second.

Americans’ view of the Nixon pardon gradually softened, while their underlying distrust of the legal system solidified, a dynamic undoubtedly driven by the nation’s rapidly rising levels of economic inequality. When Roper revived its question in 1987, government officials still ranked right behind drug dealers as the group most likely to get special treatment in court. This time, “top business executives” finished fourth (tied with “marijuana users” and “frequent offenders”), barely below “heroin users.” There the public’s perception remained, as the wealth gap widened and the apparently endless war on crime locked up a greater and greater share of the nation’s poor.

By 2001, as indicated in a poll from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research/American Viewpoint, 62 percent of Americans had come to believe that there were two justice systems in the United States: one for the rich and powerful and another for everyone else. By 2019, in a similarly worded question from a Willow poll, that figure had reached 70 percent, just a point below the proportion of people who had confidence in the courts in the spring of 1974.

Since then, the cracks that run through the system have been torn wide open by the 2020 protests against police brutality and the fierce law-and-order response that the Trump administration mounted against them — combat-ready federal agents on the streets of Portland, Ore., tear gas in Lafayette Square in Washington. Add to that pile of tinder Mr. Trump’s manic subversion of the electoral process and the peaceful and effective transfer of power, which has led to three of the four criminal cases he’s facing.

Mr. Trump has met the charges against him with a blatant display of the privileges that wealth and power create. Over the past two years, he has spent about $76 million of other people’s money on legal fees, much of it to pay for motions and appeals that have stalled the three most damning cases from coming to trial. He persuaded the Supreme Court to treat his immunity claim — far more sweeping than Mr. Nixon’s — with a deference, at least in oral arguments, greatly out of step with the precedents the lower courts followed.

Perhaps most striking, Mr. Trump repeatedly ignored the gag orders that prohibit him from publicly attacking judges, clerks, prosecutors and witnesses — as well as their families — because he seems to believe he can do whatever he wants without fear of consequences. (On Tuesday he was held in contempt of court by Justice Merchan on nine counts and fined $9,000.) All the while, he’s marched toward the Republican nomination with a campaign infused with yet another version of law-and-order politics, this one focused on undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers rather than dope peddlers and drug addicts.

Now he’s spending his days at the defendant’s table, glowering at the judge whose daughter he endangered, as prosecutors working for the district attorney whom he has called an “animal” and a “criminal” lay out the lurid case against him. However the trial unfolds, it’s unlikely to change many people’s opinions of Mr. Trump — or of the legal system.

In polling, almost half of registered voters said they thought the charges Mr. Trump faces were politically motivated, and over two-thirds said that the outcome wouldn’t change their votes or that they would be more likely to vote for him if he was convicted.

No verdict in the Manhattan Trump case can undo the disillusionment with the system of justice that followed Mr. Ford’s pardon of Mr. Nixon. But the trial can, in its imperfect way, right the wrong of half a century ago, when the system last had its chance to prove that even the most powerful man in America is subject to its laws — especially when that man is so eager to take advantage of the politics of law and order. And there is a measure of justice in that.

What questions do you have about Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial so far?

Please submit them below. Our trial experts will respond to a selection of readers in a future piece.

Kevin Boyle, a history professor at Northwestern University, is the author, most recently, of “ The Shattering : America in the 1960s.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .