Utilitarianism In Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

The human race is so diverse that it is hard to determine how decisions are made, but one thing is for certain, happy as the end result is all that is craved regardless of how it came to be. Utilitarianism is the belief that the happiness of the greatest number of people is what makes an action morally good. There is no mention of whether or not there is importance of how people achieved that happiness, so that in itself brings up great concern. This concern is immediately brought up by Rachel Carson in her groundbreaking environmental book Silent Spring. Carson places her evidence of great environmental destruction of “biocides” caused by utilitarianism. Biocides is a term Carson coined in her book to include insecticides, pesticides, etc., …show more content…
When people began to become aware of the residual effects of biocides on ecosystems and even on humans, people gathered against them. Carson quotes a forestry officer from Germany stated that “We, therefore, have to put an end to these unnatural manipulations brought into the most important and almost last natural living space which has been left for us” (Dr. Ruppertshofen 296). Carson took what Dr. Ruppertshofen indicated into consideration and encouraged anti-biocides attitudes. Dr. Ruppertshofen focuses on the effect biocides had on non-human lifeforms. He states that although large damages have been done to ecosystems, there is still time to turn around and allow for the remaining ecosystems to be again. Carson places great importance to non-human ecosystems, but she includes that the damage can also be reverse or the growth of numbers of people being negatively affected by biocides can be stop. She promotes utilitarianism by indicating that by stopping the use of biocides, both human and non-human ecosystems would greatly benefit. She not only proposes that the stop of biocides would benefit the lives of then, but that it would benefit the lives of future