John Stuart Mill’s Principle of Utility states that the greatest happiness for the greatest number should be seeked. Utilitarianism is touted as one more of the most widespread ethical view in the North American society.
History has it that utilitarianism simply means that the more people that are ‘happy’ at the end of the day, the better it is. The question that raised a couple of eyebrows was what entailed ‘happiness’? That led to the later modification of utilitarianism’s goal: an achievement of values with intrinsic worth, such as friendship, self-fulfillment, knowledge and health. And subsequently, the notion of right and wrong is then derived from the sum of these values generated for the masses.
The norm of utility guides society on two counts: first to produce the greatest possible balance of good versus evil, and to distribute this balance as widely as possible, hence giving you the sum notion of ‘greatest good for greatest number of people.’
However, there was one interesting thing I noted in my ethics textbook. In pointing out issues with the principle of utilitarianism, the author mentioned that happiness is ‘an end that few wishes to contradict.’ As an example, the author raised this: in a society of ten people, nine sadists cannot justly persecute the tenth person even though it yields the greatest happiness.
Isn’t such a statement presupposing a certain moral standard in the society already? And on what basis is this moral standard founded upon? In the true spirit of utilitarianism, how does one define ‘good’ when talking about the greatest ‘goodness’ for the masses? Is this ‘goodness’ an absolute term, or is it just a relative measure to what our conscience can live with?
