Utilitarianism states that an act is right or wrong if it has the best balance of pleasure over pain among the available acts. This theory was developed by Jeremy Bentham, he believed that we need to be most worried about how much pleasure and/or pain our actions cause. In addition, J.S. Mill developed a highly influential version of Utilitarianism after breaking away from Jeremy Bentham, who was his teacher. Mill’s Utilitarianism is focused around the greatest happiness principle which states that actions are right to the extent that they tend to promote happiness and wrong to the extent that they tend to promote the opposite. Happiness is defined as pleasure and the absence of pain. Bentham and Mill’s theories of Utilitarianism can be exemplified in trolley problem one, the passive approach.
Kant’s theory of value states that the only intrinsically good thing is the “Good Will”, which is the will of an agent doing their duty for the sake of duty. For example, things that seem good like wit, money, or intelligence, are only good to the extent that they bring us other things. Kant stresses right action, the action done from duty without self-interest, and goodness, which is based on motivation and intention. One of Kant’s ideas was that of the categorical imperative, in which you act as though you maxim might become a universal law. There are two forms of the categorical imperative, the formula of the universal law and the law of humanity. The form that most fits the trolley