UTILITARIANISM

Utilitarianism has a profound moral basis which takes as its premise the proposition that the
fundamental objective of morality and justice is to that happiness should be maximized. Though
there are a number of classical utilitarian theories (including those of John Start Mill) it is Jeremy
Bentham’s formulation that tends to be the one that is most familiar to students of jurisprudence.
That sometimes leads to an equation of Bentham and utilitarianism which overlook the fact that
his form of utilitarianism is what JJG Smart calls ‘hedonistic’ (hedonism being the view that the
pursuit of pleasure is the proper objective for all) and may be contrasted with GE Moore’s ‘non-
hedonistic’ utilitarianism, and Mills’s intermediate position. All the different forms of
utilitarianism should be recognized. However, most jurisprudence courses tend to confine their
study to classical utilitarianism represented by Jeremy Bentham.

Consequences
What does it mean to say that a utilitarian is concerned to evaluate the consequences of our action?
Consider the following illustration. I am stranded on a desert island with no one but a dying man
who, in his final hours, entrusts me with $ 10,000 which he asks me to give to his daughter, Rita,
if I ever manage to return from the island. I promise to do so. After my rescue, I find Rita has
married a millionaire and is living in a mansion. The $ 10,000 will now make little difference to
her financial situation. Should I donate the money to charity? As a utilitarian, I consider the
possible consequences of my action.
But what are the consequences? I must weigh the result of my broken promise against the benefit
of giving the $ 10,000 to the children’s home. Would keeping my promise have better
consequences than breaking it? If I break my promise, I may be less likely to keep other promises
I have made, and others may be encouraged not to keep their promises. I must in other words,
attempt to calculate all the likely consequences of my choice.
But a non-consequentialist Kantian might argue that the reason why I should give the money to
Rita is that I have promised to do so. My action ought to be guided not by some uncertain future
consequences, but by an unequivocal past fact: my promise.
My reply might be that I do consider the past fact of my promise- but only to the extent that it
affects the total consequences of my action of giving the money to the charity instead of Rita. I
might also say that it is absurd to argue that I am obliged to keep every promise I make.

JEREMY BENTHAM
Bentham famously stated:
‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and
pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what
we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of
causes and effects, are fastened to their throne’
According to Bentham, the consequences of an act determine whether it is good or bad.
Consequences are measured in terms of pleasure and pain. Thus according to Bentham, we are to
approve or disapprove of any action ‘according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment
or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or what is the same thing in
other words, to promote or oppose that happiness.’ This is the benchmark against which all acts
are to be judged.

Pleasure and pain

Bentham list 12 pains and 14 pleasures.

Notion of utility
Since in judging the merits of any act we are to look to its effect, Bentham’s ethics are classified
as ‘consequentialist’. What is the consequence of the act with regard to the promotion or the
hindering of happiness? What in this respect is its ‘use’?
The word ‘use’, meaning usefulness for a purpose, provides a key to understanding what Bentham
means when he says that it is the notion of utility on which his scheme rests. He explains:
‘By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit,
advantage, pleasure, good or happiness (all this in the present case comes to the same thing)
or (what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil,
or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.’
In regard to the effects of an act, Bentham distinguishes between the effects on the interests of an
individual and on the interest of the community. With regard to individuals ‘a thing is said to
promote the interest …of an individual, when it tends to add to the sum total of his pleasures: or
what comes to the same thing, to diminish the sum total of his pains’. And in the case of
communities, ‘An action may be said to be conformable to the principle of utility… with respect
to community at large… when the tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is
greater than it has to diminish it’
Bentham most clearly envisaged his principle of utility in regard to rightness or wrongness of
government action. In the case of government action, ‘ a measure of government may be said to
be conformable to or dictated by the principle of utility, when… the tendency it has to augment
the happiness of the community is greater than any which it has to diminish it’

The calculus
Since ‘pleasure … and the avoidance of pain, are the ends which the legislature has in view, it
behoves him…’ Bentham says, ‘to understand their value’. But how is a legislature to measure the
‘value’, ie the degree, of happiness produced by an act? He needs some means to measure
happiness because an act may result in happiness to some (free medical treatment) and pain to
others (taxes). Again, some acts may produce a large measure of happiness or pain , others a trifling
amount.
Bentham devised his ‘felicific calculus’ by which we might test the ‘happiness factor’ of any
action. On one side is put the weight of happiness that the act will result in, on the other side weight
of pain that will result. And then see whether the value (the weight) of happiness exceeds the
weight of pain. If it does, the act satisfies the test of utility.
Bentham explains that in case of an individual person the value of pleasure or pain will be greater
or less according to the following circumstances:
a. Intensity,
b. Duration,
c. Certainty or uncertainty and
d. Propinquity or remoteness.
If it is the pleasure or pain of a group that is to be measured, then to the above factors there must
be added the number of persons that will be affected by the act. The following is a crude example.

individual Value of goodness (+) Value of badness

A 20 8
B 4 2
C 18 5
D 6 10
E 19 3
F 9 7
TOTAL 78 35

The results here is that the proposed act satisfies the test of utility since the units of good exceed
those of bad. This result stands notwithstanding that the number of people who vote against the
proposed action exceeds those in favour. This is so because the strength of benefits to be enjoyed,
albeit by a minority, exceeds the weight of drawbacks suffered by the majority. From that, it will
be appreciated that Bentham’s thesis that an act is good if it promotes ‘greatest good of the greatest
number’, unless properly understood, oversimplifies and misrepresents what he proposes.

Criticism
1) Many critics point to the implacability of calculating the consequences of one’s actions:
how can we know in advance what results will follow from what we propose to do?
2) Utilitarianism fails to recognize the ‘separateness of persons’. Utilitarianism, in its pure
form, treats human beings as means rather than ends in themselves. Prof. Hart raises the
following four points:
a. Separate individuals are important to utilitarians only in so far as they are ‘the
channels or location where what is of value is to be found’.
b. Utilitarians treat individual persons equally, but only by effectively treating them
as having no worthy , for their value is not as persons, but as ‘experiencers’ of
pleasure or happiness.
 c. Why should we regard as valuable moral goal the mere increase in total of pleasure
or happiness abstracted from all questions of distribution of happiness, welfare, ets?
d. The analogy used by utilitarians, of a rational single individual prudently sacrificing
present happiness for later satisfaction, is false for it treats my pleasure as
replaceable by the greater pleasure of others.
3) Rawls argues that utilitarianism defines what is right in terms of what is ‘good’. This
means, he says, that it begins with a conception of what is ‘good’ (e.g., happiness) and then
concludes that an action is right in so far at it maximizes that ‘good’.
4) Utilitarianism is concerned only with maximizing welfare while many regard the more
important question as the just distribution of welfare.
5) Are our wants and desires not manipulated by persuasion, advertising, and the like? If so,
can we separate our ‘real’ preference from our ‘conditioned’ ones? Should we, as
utilitarians, then set about to suggest to people that they should prefer reading Ronald
Dworkins to taking beer? If so, how do we justify doing this? If the principle of utility
requires us to do it, should the ‘felicific calculus’ include not only what we want, but also
what we may one day decide to want as a result of persuasion or ‘re-education’?
6) Is it possible (and, if it is, is it desirable?) to balance my pleasure against your pain? On a
large scale, can judges or legislatures, when faced with a choice between two or more
courses of action, realistically (or even sensibly) weigh the majority’s happiness against a
minority’s misery?
7) How far into the future do (or can) we extend the consequences of our actions?
8) The motives behind actions are ignored. Consider two individuals, A and B, who donate
$100 and $1,000, respectively, to a charity. Suppose individual A donated the money
because he wanted to help the charity and individual B made the donation so that he could
improve his own standing in society. Utilitarianism would consider individual B’s donation
to be superior to individual A’s donation, despite the fact that it was made with an ulterior,
and less noble, motive.
9) Aggregate measures of happiness ignore distributional aspects
Consider three actions: X, Y, and Z. The effect of each of the actions on five individuals is
given below:
Utilitarianism would prefer action Z over actions X and Y. In addition, actions X and Y
would be considered equal because they yield the same level of aggregate happiness.