Utilitarianism :: Philosophy essays

Utilitarianism    This was written in responce to the following questions:    What is the principle of utility? Do you regard it as an adequate basis for judging the progress of society or the desirability of different social institutions? What are its virtues and limitations? How would a utilitarian aproach to judging society differ from a more traditional moral approach?    The principle of utility was Jeremy Bentham's idea on how society progresses through maintaining the greatest happiness / good for the greatest number of people. The ideology utilitarianism, was later formed by John Mill who offered the phrase and an explanation with regards to its moral implications. It sounds logical for a society to want the greatest happiness or good for itself. In general we regard individuals who are well (cultured) and who do not do (bad things) to be happy and we respect them for it. However, that depends on what we see (cultured) and (bad things) to mean.    We have already seen that the idea of what is morally correct and the notions of what is (more morally correct) are philosophical, sociological and theological problems that almost every philosopher has tried to answer; and all come up with varying responses. Everyone sees murder as being wrong and as being an act that could not bring happiness or good. However, this does not account for those who like to kill. They are part of society, so does their happiness not matter? Now if you had a population of murderers or even people who did not necessarily kill but liked seeing others kill/killed (maybe on TV or the movies), does their happiness still show a society of progress? I would hope not. To this Mill would say that I was probably right, but that people would not choose to live like that. Instead they would opt for a moral happiness. They would look for the (higher) levels of happiness like knowledge and culture. I would then reply that he has either left our human nature or his timeline for people moving towards a (higher) level of happiness is insane.    I do believe that utilitarianism is the means by which we live; in general people do whatever they want as long as it brings them happiness (at least what they think is happiness). The fact is that we cannot truly equate happiness to being (good) so we cannot use it as means of judging progress.