Bentham's Objection To Utilitarianism

The strongest objection to utilitarianism is that Bentham fails to respect individual rights and liberty, values that are advocated by Libertarian philosophers. Unlike libertarianism, utilitarians only value individuals under the condition that each unit of their happiness is measured collectively with the happiness of everyone else. Dudley and Stephens cannibalised Parker in order to save three lives and bring about the subsequent happiness of their families. Although the overall balance of happiness was evidently maximised, this was entirely committed at the expense of Parker, the unfortunate minority. This emphasises the injustices brought about by utilitarianism: during the antebellum South, slavery was clearly justifiable from a utilitarian perspective; it provided cheap labour that made the South prosperous and clearly benefited more people than it harmed. In the present day, the idea of slavery is rejected under all circumstances, because …show more content…
In R v Dudley and Stephens, the morality of Parker’s murder was measured by the units of happiness experienced by the three survivors and their respective families, subtracted by the units of pain and suffering suffered by Parker. Even though utilitarianism appears to be a relatively simple theory to apply, in which all one must do is weigh the anticipated good consequences of an action against its anticipated harmful ones and determine the essential point produces a greater balance of benefits over harms, critics contend that it is impossible to translate all moral actions into a common currency of value without losing anything in the translation. Measuring happiness is incomparable to measuring the costs and benefits of taking a bus or train from London to Edinburgh; happiness is a qualitative rather than quantitative concept in which the subjective and ineffable nature of its qualities renders it impossible to