The Reasons Of Utilitarianism: The Duality Of Morality

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One of the reasons that morality is such an abstract and complicated idea is its duality of nature. An action that looks clearly and absolutely immoral for one person maybe completely moral for another person at the same time. It seems like morality acquires different nature when it is trying to be defined by different people. Throughout the history, there have been many attempts to change this nature of morality. Philosophers, from Aristotle to Kant, tried to make morality an absolute (objective) idea by introducing different moral theories that sought to place rationality above any other factor in determining what morality is. They had a good reason for their attempts; when morality is adequately rationalized, it is no longer abstract, and it is no longer elusive. Utilitarianism is one of those moral theories. Its attempt for absolutizing morality leads to a formula, which is very similar to …show more content…

Utilitarianism wants to create a simple yet rational formula for what is right that works almost without exception. The most critical objection that is imposed on utilitarianism is that despite its simple principle (seeking greater happiness), it is not easy at all to determine what greater happiness is in different situations. In fact, there might be many “greater happiness” factors in a particular situation. Utilitarianism responds to this objection by stating that human race has lived enough to predict the consequence of different behaviors. However, I do not believe that utilitarianism’s response adequately address this objection. Humans are referred as rational beings in utilitarianism, but in fact, humans are both emotional and rational. We cannot expect humans to act as if they are smart computer programs that can decide based on a database. In practice, different people will not only have different interpretation about greater happiness, but also they cannot ignore their

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