Jeremy Bentham And Utilitarianism

1486 Words6 Pages
Deciding what is morally right and wrong has been a question for centuries. At first, most moral theories related to religion, but as time went on theories drifted to other concepts. Throughout the years many different philosophers have tried to develop different theories to prove what actions are moral or immoral. Each of these theories frequently bounce off of one another sometime sharing similarities, while other times completely contradicting each other. One of the first theories that separated from religion to explain morality is Utilitarianism. This theory was developed by Jeremy Bentham. Bentham argued that morality has nothing to do with pleasing god. He feels morality should be about manufacturing a world that has the greatest amount of happiest. At first glance this theory seems to be a wonderful idea, however throughout this paper I will argue that Utilitarianism is not a successful account of morality. I will explain the flaws with utilitarianism, such as not caring about actions, and not having bias to other individuals. Utilitarianism can be broken down into three different principles. The first principle explains that the motivation to get to the final result does not matter as long as one gets the conclusion that makes society the happiest. For instance, if person A persistently asks another individual (person B) to hang out for a while but person B keeps saying no. Till one day the person B needs help in a subject matter that this other individual excelled