Utilitarianism?
(Malik Speaking)

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Utilitarianism has always scared me because of its stress on achieving the "greatest happiness of the greatest number." In this country, maximizing the happiness of the greatest number could mean sacrificing the happiness of someone else. And I know whose happiness would get sacrificed. For all I know slavery did maximize the happiness of the greatest number, but it sure didn't help African Americans. John Rawls says that utilitarianism looks only at the aggregate and ignores the individual. He might just as well have said it looks at the majority and ignores the minority.

We need some way to protect the individual from the utilitarian calculus. Traditionally, that is done by establishing a set of individual rights that puts bounds on what can be justified on the basis of utility. I wonder, though, whether we need something more; perhaps a theory of group rights. So many of the problems in our society - especially problems of race and gender - seem to revolve around group membership and group oppression.

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