Utilitarianism

Mill's Utilitarianism brings an extended concept of Bentham's philosophy and a response to Kant's deontological philosophy. The basic concept of utilitarianism is to act in such a way as to create the most pleasure or the least pain. This is the guideline because, as Mill states, we desire happiness; happiness is maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. However, is utilitarianism viable? There are many arguments for it, but just as many against.

First, utilitarianism allows for the good of all. Mills wrote, "Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." Because morality is based on the greatest pleasure the more people who benefit from an act, the more moral it is. This prevents a single person from only acting for his own benefit by requiring the consideration of his acts on others. It also allows difficult moral decisions to be made on a governmental level by considering the needs of the many. For example, it is policy in a hostage situation to refuse to give in to the captors. This is morally justified even if it endangers the lives of the hostages because the greater pain lies in encouraging future hostage situations by yielding to the captors.

Another positive aspect of utilitarianism is that there is a purpose to the morality. One acts morally because it causes pleasure and happiness, or prevents as much pain as possible. In fact pleasure and freedom from pain are the only ends desirable in and of themselves. This differs from the deontological concept of philosophy, where an act is not good because it causes pleasure, but only when it is done out of duty from universal maxims. This also creates problems of motivation that are avoided by Mill's Utilitarianism. According to Kant, saving a man's life for a reward or other personal gain is immoral because of the motivation, however Mill would find that this act is indeed moral because saving a life, no matter the intention, prevents the most pain and causes the most pleasure.

Not only is there a purpose behind utilitarian morality, but there is also an inherent flexibility within utilitarianism. Because each act is examined for it's moral worth, there is not the rigidity that is found within Kant's universal maxims. With Kant's deontological philosophy creates moral dilemmas when an act that would seem to be moral goes against a universal maxim. For example, a universal maxim of "Do not kill" would need to be broken in a situation of self-defense. While Kant provides for this with a universalization rule, utilitarianism's individual examination of each act allows morality to be more specific and adaptable. While a murder would almost always be immoral, killing in defense of self would almost always be moral.

A negative to utilitarianism is that, though adding to flexibility, the individual evaluation of an act takes time. To do this mental weighing of pleasure and pain before every act, or even every major act, is not only time consuming but many times self-defeating. Situations that require an immediate action cannot wait while everyone ponders the morality of their potential actions. In fact, it could be posited that a person must ponder the morality of stopping to ponder the morality of the original action. That path leads to turtles all the way down. Mill does have a response to this however: "the state of passive sensibility, and though originally an offshoot from it, may in time take root and detach itself from the parent stock; so much so, that in the case of an habitual purpose, instead of willing the thing because we desire it, we often desire it only because we will it." Or simply, habit will allow us to make decisions without always having to ponder the consequences. However as many people are not typically faced with emergency situations, they won't be able to develop a habit for the very situations that require the most immediate