I found Bentham’s untilitarian ideas to be very interesting,
and I’ve often seen those ideas reflected in modern political speech. The idea
that government should work for the pleasure of the people, rather than merely for the
protection of their rights, is quite prevalent, especially in Western Europe. Bentham strikes me as Epicurus
born without health issues, and gifted with some added gumption.
Bentham
said that pleasure or happiness is good, and pain is bad. “Of all possible
states of affairs, that one is best which involves the greatest balance of
pleasure over pain.” This seems simple, but large questions arise, and, at
least in Russell’s synopsis, aren’t answered. How is
pleasure to be discerned? Is a parent’s difficult sacrifice for their child
therefore bad? Or does it count as good because of the child’s resulting
pleasure? What if a parents works overtime to be able to afford healthy food
for their child. Most children get more pleasure out of cheap mac and cheese
than they do for broccoli and kale. However, we’d agree that the parent is
doing something good in helping their child.
Besides the
difficulty of quantifying pleasure, can it be qualified? In class today our
professor mentioned that some people called Betham’s “a pig’s philosophy,” that
if people enjoyed wallowing in mud, then he would consider that to be good. We
all have different tastes when it comes to pleasure; I love chocolate and
books, another might prefer taco bell and football, but we could get the same
amount of pleasure from both. But is pleasure ever curtailed by any morality?
“One state of affairs is better than another if it involves a greater balance
of pleasure over pain, or a smaller balance of pain over pleasure.” What is
there to stop, say, rape from occurring? Who qualifies the pleasure verses
pain? What if the amounts of pain and pleasure were equal; would
that then mean that the sum of the event would be zero, and then neither good
nor bad?
Bentham is
very interesting, but I feel that I’d need a lot more details on these
questions before I could endorse utilitarianism.
(H1) I believe utilitarianism looks more at what's best overall for the greatest number of people rather than what brings the most people pleasure. At least that's what I believe the current interpretation of utilitarianism is. Keeping this in mind, I feel utilitarianism is a good idea, though keeping this in mind, what might be best for the greatest number of people might be bad for others, whic in turn raises moral quandaries.
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