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    Utilitarianism

    Uploaded by

    Suzanne Garan
    This lesson came from ethics

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Utilitarianism

    Uploaded by

    Suzanne Garan
    4 views5 pages
    This lesson came from ethics

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

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    This lesson came from ethics

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    4 views5 pages

    Utilitarianism

    Uploaded by

    Suzanne Garan
    This lesson came from ethics

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 5

    Utilitarianism, in normative ethics, a tradition stemming from the

    late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and economists


    Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill according to which an action
    is right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it tends to
    produce the reverse of happiness—not just the happiness of the
    performer of the action but also that of everyone affected by it.
    Such a theory is in opposition to egoism, the view that a person
    should pursue his own self-interest, even at the expense of others,
    and to any ethical theory that regards some acts or types of acts as
    right or wrong independently of their consequences (see
    deontological ethics). Utilitarianism also differs from ethical
    theories that make the rightness or wrongness of an act dependent
    upon the motive of the agent, for, according to the utilitarian, it is
    possible for the right thing to be done from a bad motive.
    Utilitarians may, however, distinguish the aptness of praising or
    blaming an agent from whether the act was right.
    Utilitarianism
    Utilitarianism is one of the best known and most influential moral theories. Like
    other forms of consequentialism, its core idea is that whether actions are moral
    right or wrong depends on their effects. More specifically ,the only effects of
    actions that are relevant are the good and bad results that they produce. A key
    point in this article concerns the distinction between individual actions and types
    of actions.
    Utilitarianism believe that the purpose of morality is to make life better by
    increasing the amount of good things(such as pleasure and happiness)in the
    world and decreasing the amount of bad things(such as pain and
    unhappiness).They reject moral codes or systems that consist of commands or
    taboos that are based on customs,traditions,or orders given by leaders or
    supernatural beings.Instead,utilitarians think that what makes a morality be true
    or justifiable is its positive contribution to human beings(and perhaps non-
    human).
    Utilitarianism The best action is the one that leads to the
    greatest amount of happiness for the
    § Is an ethical theory that greatest number of people.
    determines right from
    wrong by focusing on
    outcomes.It is a form of
    consequentialism.
    § Utilitarianism holds that
    the most ethical choice is
    the one that will produce
    the greatest good for the
    greatest number.

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