Utilitarianism Essay -- criticisms of utilitarianism

This essay will present the key features of Utilitarianism and identify the problems of Utilitarianism to the extent to which they make Utilitarianism unacceptable. Jeremy Bentham founded Utilitarianism. He lived at a time of great change. With revolutions in France and America, demands were being made for human rights and greater democracy. Bentham worked on legal reform. Utilitarianism is associated with the principle of utility. Utility means the amount of satisfaction or pleasure that somebody gains from consuming a commodity, product, or service, i.e.; useful. The hedonic calculus, which is his system for measuring how good or bad a consequence is: At the time Bentham put forward the theory it was instrumental. It changed the way society was run and the way society now thinks for the better. It dramatically made changes to the poverty in Britain positively. Theories that are interested in the ends are known as teleological. Telos is Greek for the end. Therefore teleological means that the ends justify the means, utilitarianism follows this rule. Utilitarianism is the greatest goodness for the greatest number of people. The rightness of actions depends on their utility, and the utility is measured by the consequences, simply meaning the greatest good by moral actions. If the consequences are good, then the moral actions are not as relevant. A positive example is â€Å"Lucy wins the lottery. Instead of keeping it all to herself, Lucy decides to share it out with some of her friends, because she thinks it will make them happy.† Lucy is doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people and is doing it using goodness ... ...people’s common agreement about what is pleasure and what is pain. There are problems concerning what some people would consider pleasurable and what others would consider not pleasurable. Problems arise such as taste in music, hobbies and beliefs. In conclusion Utilitarianism has its political benefits, but is not clear enough with some aspects. It doesn’t show what is unacceptable in utilitarianism. Utilitarianism doesn’t have the flexibility of considering individual circumstances and moral values have no consideration in this theory. Utilitarianism is focused on quantity rather than quality. It seems rather a simple theory ‘the greatest good, for the greatest number of people’, however when you delve into the theory it becomes rather too complicated. For people to live by a theory it needs to be simple and clear.