The Skeptic

In utilitarianism, happiness is held in the highest regard. As defined by John Stuart Mill, happiness is “pleasure, and the absence of pain” while unhappiness, or suffering, is “pain, and the privation of pleasure.” The principle of utilitarianism is founded on the idea that the ideal action is the one that brings the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people. Hence, an action that promotes happiness is right and an action that promotes suffering is wrong.

Now, suffering is the opposite of happiness, but the greatest happiness is not always equal to the least suffering. In fact, the action that brings about the greatest happiness could very well bring about the greatest suffering too. For example, consider a large-scale dance competition with an even bigger cash prize, like World of Dance. In this situation, there are five competitors in the running. Keep in mind this number is arbitrary; there could be more or less. All except one who plans to build a school that will provide one-hundred children with access to education, want to use the money to advance their own career. Fearing they will lose, the person that plans to build a school poisons the water of the other competitors to make them sick for their performances. The action of poisoning the water does technically bring about the greatest happiness because as a direct result, the person that plans to build the school wins the competition and provides access to education for one hundred children, all of whom feel great happiness because of the opportunity. Had anyone else won, they would have used their money to benefit themselves rather than the greater good. However, poisoning the other contestants also causes the most suffering as four people are now sick and feeling incredible defeat over missing out on the biggest opportunity of their life. As shown by this example, utilitarianism can be spun to justify suffering for the benefit of the greater good.

Yet if the action that brings about the greatest happiness does not also bring about the least suffering, is it fair to say that that action maximizes utility? No. If happiness is the highest priority, then one must take into account that part of increasing happiness is reducing the amount of suffering. Ideally there would be no suffering, but this is extremely unrealistic. Take for example hunger. According to the Food Aid Foundation, one out of nine people in the world, which is approximately 795 million, are malnourished because they do not have access to enough food to be healthy. There are so many hungry people in the world that if one were to focus solely on minimizing this suffering, they would be unable to bring about happiness to themself or others. There must be a balance. Hence, I propose that the ideal action is rather the one that promotes the greatest happiness only to the extent that it does not cause needless or avoidable suffering. It should never increase the overall amount of suffering, though it might not explicitly decrease it either.

Another limitation of utilitarianism that can prevent it from bringing about the greatest good is the issue of who is reaping the benefits of happiness-increasing actions. If the increase in happiness is only for people who are already happy, the increase is relative and does not impact the greater good. In order to truly impact the greater good, an action must increase the happiness of people in a state of suffering too as the real change is made when people transition from feeling more suffering to more happiness overall. So while the basis of utilitarianism is not fundamentally wrong, it requires adjustments both in terms of who is benefitting from happiness and how much suffering can be outweighed by that happiness to ensure that the ideal action does in fact benefit the greater good.