The Concept Of Utilitarianism Philosophy
John Stuart mill is a classic example of a utilitarian. Now, what is utilitarianism? A utilitarian believes that the morality of an action is solely dependent on its results. A good action will always yield the best possible outcome and improve the well being. Only the happiness at the end is intrinsically valuable. “Intrinsically” means that it’s good and valuable within itself.
Our actions are only good when they produce the overall greatest balance between happiness and misery. For example, the Batman and the Joker story. Should Batman kill the Joker? Regardless of what the Joker does, there are some lines that good people do not cross, and for Batman, killing definitely falls on the wrong side of that line. Though, Joker is never going to stop killing, Batman will have him thrown into the arkum but, we all know he’ll get out again as always and start killing. Won’t that be a little bit of Batman’s fault? If you have the ability to stop a killer, but you don’t, are you morally pure because you didn’t do anything dirty or are you morally dirty because you refused to do what needs to be done.
Like Kant, Utilitarians agree that a moral theory should apply equally to everyone, but they thought that the way to do it was to ground it in something very intuitive, perhaps the primal desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. While on the other hand, David Hume’s philosophy is based on a single powerful observation, that the key thing we need to get right in life is feeling rather than rationality.
Hume insisted that whatever we aim for, reason is the slave of passion. We are more inspired by our feelings then by any of the comparatively feeble results of logic and analysis. What Hume didn’t believe however that all feelings are rational, acceptable or equal, and that’s where he firmly believed in the education of the passions. People have to learn to be more benevolent, patient, peaceful, and more peace with themselves, and not fearing others, but to be taught these things they need an education system that addresses feelings rather then rationality.
From this comparison we can see that John Start Mill is a classic example of a utilitarian, who believes that an action’s morality depends on the rationality of its result, on the controversy, David Hume thought that our actions are right when they are based more on our feelings rather then rationality.
