Analysis Of Bentham's Utilitarianism

Part I (A2): Bentham’s hedonistic utilitarianism was based solely on the aspect of pleasure and happiness and the purpose was to keep pleasure and avoid pain. The goal in life and throughout our decisions should be to bring about the greatest amount of happiness with minimal pain to those involved because with the utilitarianistic views, everyone is equal in the sense that one person’s happiness is no more significant than the next. While Bentham was the founder, Mill’s contributed to the views of utilitarianism by analyzing the various components of happiness and what would actually bring about the greatest amount of happiness to everyone. Mill, while keeping Bentham’s original aspect intact, added in the analysis of things that cause us …show more content…
Although there are many who think the same way as Pojman, there are those who believe similar to Bright in that we should refrain from it because innocent people have been sentenced to death and the location of the trial and prosecutor influences the chance of the death penalty greatly. Pojman believes that when one knows the death penalty is in place they will refrain from committing a crime because they want to avoid being sentenced to death because those who are on death row try to get the execution date “postponed or reduced to long-term prison sentences” (Rachels 185). In addition, he explains that if one is able to murder or commit any significant crime they should face the consequences and be punished with the death …show more content…
George, for example, has a family that have to be provided for and without a job are going to suffer from not being able to do the things that make them happy and even hinder the amount of food they have to survive on. This is a huge sacrifice to make when there is an option out of the suffering and the ability to provide your family with a good life at such a minimal cost. Although George doesn’t support warfare and would feel as if he was doing the wrong thing, after taking the job and seeing the results of the career on his family he would be glad he took the job. Williams brings about some points that could be ignored which are how people see him. Although if you take this point into consideration, everyone that was faced with this obstacle would do the exact same thing in order to provide for their family if it was their family on the line. In addition, although George would feel some guilt for taking the job, he could assure himself that if he took the job it would prevent someone who was for war from taking the job and therefore, in the end, could prevent worse things form occurring. As a result, things that would result if he did take the job would significantly outweigh all of the disadvantages. Jim, on the other hand, faces a significant obstacle of taking a life. In this case, there are many obstacles to utilitarianism but they can all be debunked with a mere