Overview

“The greatest good for the greatest number.” It sounds simple and fair. But what if killing one innocent person saves five? Utilitarianism forces us to do the math.

Core Idea

Consequentialism: The morality of an action depends only on its consequences. Intentions don’t matter. Rules don’t matter. Only the result matters.

Formal Definition (if applicable)

Principle of Utility: Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. (John Stuart Mill).

Intuition

You are a doctor with 5 patients who need organs (heart, lungs, kidneys). A healthy traveler walks in. A strict utilitarian might say: Kill the traveler to save the 5. (Most people recoil at this).

Examples

  • Triage: Saving the people who are most likely to survive, not necessarily the sickest.
  • Animal Rights: Jeremy Bentham argued that because animals can suffer, their pain counts in the calculus. “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
  • Effective Altruism: Using evidence to do the most good possible (e.g., donating to malaria nets instead of the opera).

Common Misconceptions

  • “It’s selfish.” (No, you must count everyone’s happiness equally, including strangers.)
  • “It’s just hedonism.” (Mill distinguished between “higher pleasures” like poetry and “lower pleasures” like eating.)
  • Act Utilitarianism: Calculate the utility of each individual act.
  • Rule Utilitarianism: Follow rules that generally maximize utility (e.g., “Don’t kill”) because breaking them causes chaos.
  • Negative Utilitarianism: Focus on minimizing suffering rather than maximizing happiness.

Applications

  • Public Policy: Cost-benefit analysis.
  • Economics: Welfare economics.
  • Bioethics: Allocation of scarce resources.

Criticism / Limitations

It can justify terrible things (slavery, torture) if the math works out. It’s also demanding (you should give away all your money until you are as poor as the people you are helping).

Further Reading

  • Mill, Utilitarianism
  • Singer, The Life You Can Save