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| Utilitarianism |
| Vera
Speaking
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 Utilitarianism is an interesting theory. It was first clearly and forcefully stated in the 18th-century European Enlightenment -- and it is in some ways
typical of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment sought knowledge, and utilitarianism was supposed to provide moral knowledge.The most lasting achievements of the Enlightenment were scientific, and utilitarianism was an attempt to make morals scientific. This was true in at least two ways. First, it attempted to base its theory of the good on a science of the human mind. Bentham, for example, thought that he understood how the human mind worked. It responded to pleasure and pain. Pleasure was good. It was the only intrinsic good that human beings were able to recognize. Bentham thought this was a matter of careful observation, a scientific fact, not empty metaphysics or theology. Secondly, it attempted (as successful sciences often do) to reduce moral reasoning to careful calculations. If science could tell us about the consequences of certain acts, then we could calculate which act was the best. But has this actually worked? Can morality be scientific in either way that the utilitarians thought? I doubt it. |
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