The Utilitarian Theory: Nussbaum's Consequentialist Theory

Question 1A
According to consequentialist theory, a right action is one that maximizes the good. Utility, or the greatest happiness principle “holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” The greatest happiness principle also holds that the right action increases total amount of utility in the world: “the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent 's own happiness, but that of all concerned” (Mill 5). The principle of Utility states that “…happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain…” (Mill 2). An action is right if it maximizes the good, that being happiness, as it is the only thing that is

Often times, women are treated poorly or unequally. She brings up the issue of interfering with other cultures when we disagree with how they are being treated; it is difficult to interfere because we don’t want to “impose our will”. Nussbaum looks at the Utilitarian approach in order to asses all of the individuals involved, which of course would include women. This approach would allow us to criticize other cultures practices. She also discusses the capability approach, which asserts that preferences might not always be indicators of life quality. She has a list of capabilities, that were generated in order to determine what activities which are so central that they seem definitive of a life that is truly human. Without these, a life would be regarded as not fully human. She further elaborates that this approach is Aristotelian in theory.
Nussbaum tackles this issue by questioning whether that woman in another culture (and in regards to that cultures norms) “upon due consideration, and with the full range of capabilities at her disposal, she makes that norm her own.” When humans are provided with the right educational and material support, they can become fully capable of major human functions. The capability approach questions if a women possesses the capabilities. If so, and she still clings to a tradition that we may see as wrong or hurtful, then we must let her live that