Utilitarianism is a school of philosophical thought which states that whatever can be done to achieve the highest amount of good for the most people should be done. In other words, this principle is most concerned with maximizing utility, or that which produces happiness (or pleasure) and prevents unhappiness (suffering or pain). Put another way, a true proponent of utilitarianism believes that the highest cause of justice and morality in an individual and in society is to put the goal of highest amounts of pleasure and lowest amounts of pain ahead of everything else. Most people might agree that, on the surface, utilitarianism sounds pretty good. Why wouldn’t someone, a policy maker or an ordinary person, aim towards making the most people …show more content…
If maximizing utility for the greatest number of people is the highest concern of a governing body, that body can justify overriding individuals’ rights, rights that most people would consider inalienable (such as the right to life). For example, if many people can benefit from the suffering of one person, utilitarianism demands that person’s suffering whether they will it or not. Consider the historical killing of Christians for entertainment in ancient Rome by having them fed to lions. From a utilitarian perspective, this act is justified because it brings happiness to many people at the cost of a few lives. The objection to utilitarianism on the grounds of preserving individual rights states that this is wrong. The other main objection to utilitarianism has to do with measuring “utility” on a common scale. On the face of it, utilitarianism is appealing precisely because it doesn’t assign more value to certain things that might make one person happy over other things that make another person happy. However, critics of utilitarianism argue that this simply cannot or should not be done. “How does one assign value to a human life?” they ask, by way of