Arguments Against Utilitarianism

As a philosophical approach, utilitarianism generally focuses on the principle of “greatest happiness”. According to the greatest happiness principle, actions that promote overall happiness and pleasure are considered as right practices. Moreover, to Mill, actions which enhance happiness are morally right, on the other hand, actions that produce undesirable and unhappy outcomes are considered as morally wrong. From this point of view we can deduct that utilitarianism assign us moral duties and variety of ways for maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain to ensure “greatest happiness principle”. Despite all of moral duties and obligations, utilitarian perspective have many specific challenges that pose several serious threats which constitute variety of arguments in this essay to utilitarianism and specifically Mill answers these challenges in his work. These arguments can be determinated and analyzed as three crucial points that seriously challenges utilitarianism. The first issue can be entitled like that utilitarian idea sets too demanding conditions as to act by motive which always serves maximizing overall happiness. It creates single criterion about “being motived to maximize overall happiness” but moral rightness which are unattainable to pursue in case of the maximizing benefit principle challenges utilitarianism. Secondly, the idea which may related with the first argument but differs from the first idea about single criterion issue, utilitarianism demands people to consider and measuring everything which taking place around before people practice their actions. It leads criticism to utilitarianism since the approach sees human-beings as calculators to attain greatest happiness principle without considering cultural differ...

... middle of paper ...

... expediency as Mill discussed and analyzed create a serious challenge for utilitarian approach.

In light of the explanations above it can be argued that in utilitarian approach there are different kind of challenges which posing serious threat to utilitarianism in a direction to achieve greatest happiness principles. First of all, utilitarian approach is a problematic from point of demanding issue because theory contradicts within itself about motives of our actions and criterion about it. Second challenge about utilitarianism is that the approach missed the analyze the real world conditions about personal experiences and cultural differences about experience. Third questionable idea about utilitarian school is that it has consequentialist points of view which may damage societal welfare and overall happiness because of personal expediency issue.