Essay On Classical Utilitarianism

In this essay, I shall be discussing what constitutes the philosophical doctrine of utilitarianism while outlining the two key aspects central to it; the hedonistic principle, and the consequentialist principle. According to hedonism, pleasure or happiness is considered to be the only intrinsic ‘good’. On the other hand, consequentialism maintains that an action may be considered good or bad depending on its outcomes. We will see how these two principles work together in utilitarian thinking and how this differs between the two main types of classical utilitarianism; Rule and Act utilitarianism. Since utilitarianism is based on these two principles, it is also subject to criticism on both fronts.
A central question faced by any ethical system …show more content…
This may go on indefinitely. Graham provides us with an example relating to the two World Wars illustrating this point. He supposes, for the sake of the example, that Archduke Ferdinand’s murder was the trigger which set off the First World War. Prior to his murder, the Archduke’s driver made an error and had to turn the car around; this gave the assassins enough time to kill the Archduke. Thus, it seems that from a Utilitarian perspective the driver’s mistake was the cause of the First World War which resulted in further tragedies, the Second World War, and millions …show more content…
I will be discussing two of them here. The first is that happiness is generally a subjective thing – if by subjective we mean depending on your own preference and opinion. What is pleasure producing for me might not be pleasure producing for another person. Thus, we cannot speak of any one activity which makes everyone happy. Although Graham points this out he does not think that this is the most serious issue since generally we are able to identify happiness and pain. Also, Mill shows that there are certain things which usually result in happiness and usually in