Good Mill Essay Example

Utilitarianism, which is the greatest happiness principle, considers that a good action is an action that paves the way to production of happiness, and a bad action lead to producing unhappiness. The only factor that plays a significant role is consequence or result of action, and most significant consequence is happiness or unhappiness. Utilitarianism theory does not require somehow certain knowledge regarding future, instead it demands that when individuals act, they should be aware of what they want they desire the outcome to be first. The theory is of the view that it is only possible to judge wrong and right in accordance with the things that turned out, and it is not possible to predict before.
According to Mill, morality cannot be, however, investigated in a scientific manner, but individuals can accept the truth even if they are not much aware of concepts. It is possible to identify the actions that pave the way to greatest amount of happiness for majority of people without having knowledge of the future. In this regard, Mill has presented moral theory that set the criteria for right and wrong. Mill focused on impartiality, aggregate happiness of all individuals, and moral rationality that maximize aggregate happiness of human beings.
Further, a utilitarian can be consistently rejected as immoral, as it considers that enslaving a small group of people is justified if their enslavement paves the way to great happiness of majority of people. This can be criticized because it is not necessary that if majority people are getting benefits from an act, it does not means that the act is essential ethical. This theory is also not widely acceptable because it only focuses on the results of actions, and does not considers intentions or desires that play an essential role in motivating people. So, an action that is expected to create harm, but unintentionally paves the way to the creation of good or positive outcome would, however, be considered equal to the results that are obtained from an action accomplished with good intentions.
Utilitarians may, however, claim that the justification of certain acts such as torture, murder, and slavery would need unrealistically huge benefits in order become dominating on direct sufferings, and also to consider indirect influence of social acceptability of cruel policies.
The above mentioned facts suggests that utilitarianism is an unsatisfactory ethical theory as it has not taken into account the facts and reality that nature of human beings is changing and dynamic, because of which the idea of single utility regarding all human beings is not beneficial and useful. However, utilitarians have no final justification for giving prime importance to pleasure. Further, it is not possible to compare and measure happiness among different people. It is impossible to measure and compare happiness practically as well as principally, and just rough estimates are made in order to deal with the problems that humans face in their daily life.
Moreover, utilitarianism cannot be considered as satisfactorily an ethical theory because of the concept that it applies to slavery. It is because, it is a known fact that slavery is not acceptable and it is inherently wrong, and it is not appropriate for a moral theory to endorse slavery. The theory has focused on enslaving people in order to maximize utility. As a matter of fact, utilitarianism approach emphasizes on maximizing utility on a given activity or action.