Advantages And Disadvantages Of Utilitarianism

Superior Essays
Most persuasive: Utilitarianism

Mill’s theory of utilitarianism is based on “greatest happiness principle” that says “actions are

right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse

of happiness” (Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues, Chapter 5). Mill defines happiness as

pleasure and absence of pain. According to Mill, morality is based on the quality and quantity of

pleasure produced by an action. It is not what you do, but how much of pleasure is produced by

your action is what defines the morality. Everyone desires for pleasure and happiness at the end,

happiness is everyone’s goal. Thus, any event or action is desirable only if leads to higher level

of happiness. When taking moral
…show more content…
Some argue that

why do you have to sacrifice your own happiness to be considered moral? Is your happiness not

important? How is it immoral to think about your happiness? In above example of saving a

drowning person, if the person does not go to save drowning person, is it immoral? The person is

probably afraid of himself drowning. In my opinion, giving up your own happiness for others is a

weakness of utilitarianism theory, because, I think, everyone deserves to be happy. Another

weakness of utilitarianism is happiness derived from wrong motive. Sometimes wrong motive or

deed can give happiness to more people. Does that mean somebody who acts with wrong motive

moral? Furthermore, utilitarianism focuses on happiness and pleasure only; sometimes an act can

be moral for reasons other than happiness. Although there are some weakness to utilitarianism

theory of morality, this theory is most persuasive to me.

Least persuasive: Egoism

Egoism, as the name suggests, focuses on I, me and myself mentality. In egoism, unlike

utilitarianism, it is my pleasures or pains that matter not the happiness of other people.

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The theory of Utilitarianism is very vulnerable to criticism due to its reliance on vague underlying principles that leave many questions unanswered. The Utilitarianism ideology is grounded in three simple propositions. First off, actions are solely deemed right if they result in the best consequences. Secondly, the only way consequences are assessed are by how much happiness and unhappiness they cause.…

    • 148 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Summary of Adam Grant Adam Grant’s article, “Does Trying to Be Happy Make Us Unhappy,” discusses finding happiness. Grant’s thesis indicates that, trying to be happy will not make us happy. He evaluates an individual case by applying different happiness related theories. At the beginning, Adam Grant points out that searching out for happiness is not a correct way of persuading happiness.…

    • 377 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Utilitarianism is one of the persuasive approaches to ethics in the history of philosophy. It is widely used by everyone on a daily basis but has barely gotten recognition it deserves. Utilitarianism was founded in Ancient Greece but was not popularly used until the 19th century when it was re-introduced by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. While both men are credited as two of the most influential people in the foundation of, what we now consider, ethical theory. The approach in which we utilize the theory to make decisions is different from each other.…

    • 1521 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Utilitarianism is a normative philosophy of ethics that has been around since the late eighteenth century. It earliest proponents were Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. The general idea of utilitarianism is that there is no morality measurement except results. So, when one is deciding how to act, the only thing that matters is what the results of the actions are. Utilitarianism says that the actions that cause the most happiness and the least amount of unhappiness or pain are the moral acts.…

    • 1678 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The pursuit of happiness can be arduous if one’s interpretation of happiness is entitled to the idea of happiness depending on the ability to get what we want. Nevertheless, happiness is defined as showing pleasure or contentment with a person, situation, or the self. According to psychologist Dan Gilbert, however, happiness can be divided into two concepts: natural happiness and synthetic happiness. Gilbert defines natural happiness as what people get when they get what they wanted, and synthetic happiness as what people make when they don’t get what they wanted. Indeed, natural happiness can produce genuine happiness, but the flaw in this kind of happiness is that people don’t always get what they want.…

    • 256 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Rhetorical Analysis

    • 1180 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The pursuit of happiness is a universal concept amongst humans. But is this concept universally believed and understood in the same way? Is happiness really the end goal, or does pursuing a meaningful life lead to a more fulfilling life? In an article from The Atlantic, “There’s More to Life than Being Happy,” Emily Esfahani Smith discusses the misconception of the pursuit of happiness and the difference between those who seek a life of meaning through the use of ethos, pathos, logos, and other rhetorical devices utilized within these methods. First, Smith expertly utilizes ethos throughout the essay to support her research by numerously stating the scholarly sources she uses.…

    • 1180 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    B00317142 What measures a happy life? Is it by a life that is void of struggle and hardships? Is it by how much money you make? Or perhaps by how many friends you have? Is it a direct result of physical pleasure?…

    • 1282 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As stated by Yuuki Asuna, “Life isn’t just doing things for yourself. It’s possible to live in such a way that other people’s happiness, makes you happy too.” Doing something for oneself is selfish and pointless. Happiness has been pursued by the people who come to America, wanting the American dream, to be happy and get what they want. Not being happy even have a negative connotation to it.…

    • 730 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Everybody has fundamental reasons of why she acts the way she does. The highest good is what we ultimately want to obtain in life and why we do the things we do. If we have just the highest good, everything else would have little to none impact on us. In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, he states that the highest good is happiness. I believe that he is right because happiness the underlying reason of why we live life.…

    • 943 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    So Kelly was a criminal in her past life but has since become a changed woman that has garnered a good reputation in a town where she has become mayor. Unfortunately, a homeless derelict was arrested and has been mistakenly identified as Kelly. Kelly is in a catch-22 right now; she could either own up to her past, take the place of the arrested homeless woman, give up her credibility and let the town suffer because they depend on Kelly’s leadership. Her second option is to do nothing and let the homeless woman get convicted and have her son left without a parent to take care of him. To solve this dilemma, we must use the concept of utilitarianism.…

    • 799 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Let us begin by formally defining act utilitarianism: a theory of right action that defines the act to be “right if and only if, and because, its consequences contain at least as large a net balance of wellbeing minus ill-being as those of any alternative possible act in that situation” (Frick, Lecture 1 Slides). And thus, an act utilitarian, when making decisions regarding human life, looks solely at the net difference in wellbeing and ill-being. I would like to call attention to the impersonality — which I believe to be the strongest objection to act utilitarianism— that results from this process of quantifying happiness, as it disregards perspectives of the individual as well as the intrinsic value of human life. Take, for example, the moral dilemma caused by the fat man in the trolley problem as presented by Thomson in “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem.” The situation with the fat man is essentially as follows:…

    • 993 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Happiness is a strange word. For some, to be happy is to lead a life of wealth and comfort with a family and lots of friends. For others, to be happy is to live in a peaceful and successful community. A person that follows the first path is considered an individual that makes finding their own happiness their first priority. A person that follows the second path is considered an individual that believes the society’s prosperity takes priority over an individual’s success in life.…

    • 1038 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Argument of Utilitarianism In “Utilitarianism” John Stuart Mill presents the case of Utilitarianism as a moral theory. Moral theories are structured as a set of statements used to predict a set of factors or concept. Moral theories are thought to be universal and tell which action is the right one in any given situation. Utilitarianism is one the most influential and best known moral theories, often called “The Greatest Happiness Principles”.…

    • 1146 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The second flaw to utilitarianism is that does dehumanize ethics. Even though it is the best part about utilitarianism that it is objective and tries to have ethics based on facts and in logic it is too dehumanizing. When you are just looking at numbers when doing the calculus, it tears away the true value of these numbers that are supposed to represent. These numbers are supposed to values of a human being. When you make a decision based off of these number we must keep in mind the decision is still affecting people with lives and…

    • 1459 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In “Utilitarianism,” John Stuart Mill argues that consequences of an action are all that really matter. Defining utilitarianism at its core, is a theory holding that the moral rightness and/or wrongness of an action depends entirely on the consequences of that action. Thereby agreeing that an action or decision is considered good if it generates happiness and bad if it generates the reverse. In his ethical approach, Mill suggests that the measure of success and happiness depends on how many people and how much happiness was developed as a result of that action, or the “greatest happiness principle.” This principle, Mill declares, “holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the…

    • 1398 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays