Introduction
Morality deals with distinguishing the difference between right and wrong. It dictates the actions and behavior of people; what they should do, and what they should not do. However, because of the diversity of the human conditions and cultures all over the world, there are many ways to perceive morality. These various ways are manifested in different moral theories. One of them is utilitarianism. This is the moral theory that we will be focusing on. The questions that this paper will now try to answer are: what is utilitarianism and is it a valid moral theory?
In order to help us answer these questions, an excerpt from John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism will be used (Mill 144). Mill is a well-known and widely celebrated philosopher who is also a strong advocate of utilitarianism. In the second chapter of his book, Mill (144) states:
The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure
Exegesis
Upon reading the excerpt, it seems that John Stuart Mill’s main point is that utilitarianism is a moral theory that hinges the moral value of an act on how much happiness it can cause. In claiming this, Mill is able to answer the question of what utilitarianism is. First of all, it is a kind of consequentialist moral theory. A consequentialist moral theory is one that considers actions to be right or wrong based on purely their consequences. While some moral theories such as Kantian ethics do not consider the outcome of an act, utilitarianism considers purely the intended outcome of an act. And for utilitarianism, the outcome of a moral act should be one that produces pleasure and prevents pain.
This can be seen in the excerpt, when Mill (144) defined Utilitarianism as “[t]he creed which . . . holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness”. This clearly states that a moral act is one that could cause pleasure and happiness. But more than that, it is also one that could prevent pain. This can be seen in Mill’s continuation: “[A]ctions are. . . wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness”. And according to Mill, the reverse of happiness is “pain and the privation of pleasure”. In other words, a moral act is not only one that intends to create pleasure and happiness but also one that aims to prevent the occurrence of pain among people.
Mill uses happiness as the basis for an act’s moral value because he believes that happiness is the only inherent good in the world. He says so in another quote from the same book; he says that “pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends” (Mill 145). He has already established in the original quote we used that “happiness is intended pleasure” (Mill 144). When he says that happiness—the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain—is the only thing “desirable as ends”, he means that people want to attain happiness for the sake of happiness alone and nothing else. This is as opposed to when people want cars, money, or even relationships; those are not inherently good things because people only want them to gain happiness. They are simply tools to attain the only inherent good. Therefore, utilitarianism promotes the idea that an act is moral because it produces the only inherently good thing: happiness.
It is also important to emphasize the word ‘intended’ when Mill used it to describe happiness as intended pleasure (Mill 144). This means that utilitarianism does not focus on coincidental outcomes of a moral act, rather its intended outcomes. To better understand this, take into consideration a person who decides to commit an act with the intention of causing pain. The act is killing random people in his neighborhood. However, he actually ends up causing pleasure to many people because the targets he chose turned out to be pedophiles who were planning on kidnapping the neighborhood children.
Because of the nature of utilitarianism to value an act’s morality based on the happiness it can cause, there arises an inevitable gradation of morality. This can specifically be seen in Mill’s use of the term “Greatest Happiness Principle” in the excerpt. Simply seeing the term ‘greatest’ already presupposes an existing hierarchy. This term enables people to actually measure morality. This is because an act is measured and ranked in accordance to the kind of outcome it can produce. An act that will cause more pain than pleasure is definitely an immoral one; it is the lowest of the low. Meanwhile, an act that will cause more pleasure than pain is definitely a moral one; so it is higher than the immoral act. But another act, a different one, that will cause more pleasure and less pain than the previous act is a more righteous act; and so it ranks higher than the previous moral act. In summary, Mill’s use of the “Greatest Happiness Principle” means that the more people that an act can make happy, the greater the resulting happiness is, and the lesser the involved pain is; then the more moral the act is.
Opinion
After explaining what utilitarianism is, the next step is to determine whether or not it is a valid moral theory. Upon careful deliberation and critical analyses, utilitarianism seems to be a more than adequate moral theory. One of the reasons for this is that the moral theory acknowledges the well-being of humans. This is a significant aspect to consider because the core of morality is exactly that: the well-being of humans. Morality works as a way for human beings to be able to co-exist with one another. It encourages people to think of others’ well-being because they are not alone in this world and if they want to continue co-existing then they should learn how to think of others.
Utilitarianism’s focus on producing the greatest amount of happiness and on preventing the greatest amount of pain will work as an effective tool that people can use in determining what is right and wrong. Right means being able to make people happy; wrong means making other people sad. It may seem simplistic but its simplicity is actually a good thing. Morality, more often than not, gets so complex and convoluted because there will always be a grey area. But thankfully, utilitarianism is able to simplify even the most intricate moral dilemma. It is, after all, correct in maintaining that happiness is an inherent good.
People might disagree with utilitarianism saying that there is another inherent good: dignity. There are a lot of cases wherein people find themselves having to sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of dignity. For example, a starving homeless man sees an opportunity to steal bread from a bakery. Stealing would make him happy because it will bring him pleasure through food and prevent further pain from starvation. But because the man is a man with dignity, he chooses not to steal. He is not happy—he is still starving—but his dignity is still intact. If one were to use utilitarianism to assess the situation, it would seem that the man is immoral for not choosing the act that can cause more happiness.
However, I disagree with this notion that dignity and happiness can oppose each other. Mill specifically stated that utilitarianism gives more importance to happiness of a higher quality than mere contentment which involves bodily pleasures. Mill states that “a sense of dignity, which all human being possess. . . is so essential a part of happiness” (Mill 147). This means that dignity doesn’t prevent happiness. It might prevent contentment or bodily pleasures like in the case of the homeless man, but it doesn’t prevent happiness. Because happiness is the satisfaction of people’s higher functions such as intellect, rationality, altruism, and, of course, dignity. Therefore, because the man chose to starve but protect his dignity, he did in fact commit a moral act.
Works Cited
Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Ontari: Batoche Books Limited, 2001. Print.
