Locke and utilitarianism

If you order your cheap term paper from our custom writing service you will receive a perfectly written assignment on Locke and utilitarianism. What we need from you is to provide us with your detailed paper instructions for our experienced writers to follow all of your specific writing requirements. Specify your order details, state the exact number of pages required and our custom writing professionals will deliver the best quality Locke and utilitarianism paper right on time. Our staff of freelance writers includes over 120 experts proficient in Locke and utilitarianism, therefore you can rest assured that your assignment will be handled by only top rated specialists. Order your Locke and utilitarianism paper at affordable prices with cheap essay writing service! Utilitarianism is the ethical doctrine which essentially states that that which is good is that which brings about the most happiness to the most people. It is commonly understood as being the hypothesis that assesses and promotes moral actions on the basis of their outcome using the maxim, 'the greatest happiness for the greatest number." (Sterba, 1) In simpler terms when faced with a moral choice, the right thing to do- according to Utilitarianism - is that which results in the 'greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.' Originally developed as an ethical principle under Jeremy Bentham its original form met many challenges by its opponents. Attacked in every direction for anything from its lack of Christian principles to the selfishness that the pursuit of pleasure seems to promote it soon became clear that Bentham's form of Utilitarianism needed some serious touchups and ultimately it was John Stuart Mill who was up to the task. Nearly a generation after Bentham's theory was established , John Stuart Mill decided to defend the principle of Utility against its critics by refining its ideas and making them more practical to society. In particular, John Stuart Mill's powerful essay Utilitarianism endeavors to raise the Utilitarian ideal to a higher plane than that of the undisguised selfishness upon which Bentham rested it by, defending with fervor the utilitarian creed of the Greatest Happiness Principle holding that "actions are right as they tend to promote happiness and wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." (Sterba, 1)

One criticism, often posed against the hedonistic value theory held by Bentham, holds that the value of life is more than a balance of pleasure over pain and that it is base and demeaning to reduce the meaning of life to pleasure. Mill's Utilitarianism clears this up by establishing that because we are endowed with the ability for conscious thought human pleasures are much superior to animalistic ones they are not merely satisfied with physical pleasures, humans strive to achieve pleasures of the mind as well. Once people are made aware of their higher faculties they will never be happy to leave them uncultivated; thus happiness is a sign that we are exercising our higher faculties.

Mill prescribes how to differentiate between higher and lower quality pleasures by saying that a pleasure is of higher quality if people would choose it over a different pleasure even if it is accompanied by discomfort, and if they would not trade it for a greater amount of pleasure. (Sterba, 1) Moreover, Mill contends that once man has ascended to this high intellectual level, he desires to stay there, never descending to the lower level of existence from which he began

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." (Sterba, 1).

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Even though a person who uses higher faculties often suffers more in life (hence the common aphorism "ignorance is bliss"), he would never choose a lower existence, preferring instead to maintain his dignity. When making a moral judgment on an action, Utilitarianism thus takes into account not just the quantity, but also the quality of the pleasures resulting from it.

Another criticism that Mill cleverly responds to is the objection that happiness could not be the rational aim of human life both because it is both unattainable and possible to live without. Mill replies that it is an exaggeration to state that people cannot be happy. Although Mill acknowledges that while this may be true in theory - that men do not conduct their lives in total pursuit of happiness - they still need a gauge with which to measure morality. Happiness may not necessarily mean continuous rapture, for such intense experiences are momentary at best. Nevertheless, happiness to some may merely translate to being the avoidance of pain. In Utilitarianism, Mill noted, "Utility includes not solely the pursuit of happiness, but the prevention or mitigation of unhappiness" (Mill 11).

The pursuit of pleasure has also been condemned by critics as being little more than the promotion of one's own interests, with no regard to the happiness of others. Mill disputes this as being narrow-minded, clarifying that the pleasure principle which forms the foundation for Utilitarianism, "what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned." (Sterba, 18).

With this acknowledgement however, comes the criticism that people cannot possibly be motivated by something as satisfying the collective good of society. Mill responds to this by claiming that Utilitarianism has or can impose all the sanctions that other moral systems can. Mill notes that there exist both external and internal sanctions external sanctions existing externally to the human agent as an individual; i.e. peer pressure, the fear of disapproval, and the punishment of getting caught, internal sanctions stemming from one's consceince the feelings in one's own mind that create discomfort when one violates duty. Ultimately internal sanctions are more powerful that any external sanction. Because we all have social feelings on behalf of others, the unselfish wish for the good of all is often enough to move us to act morally. Even if others do not blame or punish me for doing wrong, I am likely to blame myself, and that bad feeling, according to Mill, is one of the consequent pains that I reasonably consider when deciding what to do.

John Stuart Mill therefore, not only argued in favor of the basic principles of Jeremy Bentham but also offered several significant improvements to the structure, meaning, and application of Utilitarianism as it originally was known. Utlimately Mill's version of Utilitarianism states that "pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends" justifying such claims and refuting objections to the theory through the axiom of reason.

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