Utilitarianism

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Utilitarianism is known to be the principle of greatest happiness for greatest number of people. Utility is defined as the absence of pain and the pleasure itself which is the reason why it is also called the Greatest Happiness Principle. According to utility an action is considered to be of moral worth if they promote happiness; and it is regarded as wrong if the action increases the pain. Unhappiness means lack of pleasure and pain; and happiness is intended pleasure and absence of pain. According to utilitarianism the only ends which are desirable are pleasure and freedom from pain and are considered to be inherently good. With all these definitions arises a question that: Is life all about pleasure and pain? And if it is so, then can a person who just watches TV and eat junk food all day would be considered as a man of moral actions? Even though he never tries to do some noble actions and productive activities. The answer is no. According to utilitarianism, some pleasures are more desirable and valuable than others and a person must always choose the higher pleasure over the others. Utility is not simply a quantitative analysis of pleasure, rather there are various qualities of pleasure and only people who have wide range of experience can dictate which pleasure is of higher quality. A pleasure is considered to be of higher quality if people choose it over other pleasures, even if it is accompanied by some discomfort and even if the other pleasure is given in large quantity. For example, if a person finds pleasure in exercising, he would not trade that pleasure with something else (like watching TV) irrespective of how much tired the workout makes him. Another example is that a child would not trade his dessert cake for thousa... ... middle of paper ... ...who is least useful and least happiness producing. There are also some situations where it is unclear about what a utilitarian action would be. For example, what if there is a confliction between moral situations? Suppose a person promised someone to be somewhere at a certain time but on his way, he finds a someone who need his help. So should he keep the promise or help the person in need? In this case, rule of utilitarian does not say what to do. Therefore a person can choose whichever action he thinks will provide greater good for greater amount of people and would have to analyze the outcomes of each action thoroughly. Utilitarian theories suffers from the problem of making it morally justified to imprison, murder, deceit or torture individuals, even the innocent people. In order to achieve greater good, only total human good counts under utilitarian theories.

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