This slim book was assigned reading in a philosophy course on ethics I took in college. It consists of two essays. J. J. Smart's "An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics" and Bernard William's "A Critique of Utilitarianism." I remember when I was first introduced in school to the subject of ethics, I was basically presented with two alternatives--Kant's Categorical Imperative and Utilitarianism. The case that sticks in my mind was the hypothetical, what if you could save a million lives by torturing to death one innocent? (Or to put it differently, would you allow a million lives to be lost rather than torture one human being.) Crudely put, a utilitarian would say, bring on the torture--the greatest good for the greatest number is what matters! While someone following Kant would say consequences do not matter--they are independent of right and wrong and we have to do right and damn the consequences. I found parts of each view appealing--and unappealing. I care about individual rights--and I care about consequences.
Eventually I'd find other ways of grounding ethics more congenial, but my point is Utilitarianism is one of the basic ethical options presented to people and is enormously influential--it shouldn't be ignored, however one might feel about it. And it deserves a more nuanced consideration than say, the caricature of it in Dicken's Hard Times, where it's presented as rigid and emotionally arid. Smart's defense presents many of the questions and problems with the philosophy: "Act-Utilitarianism and Rule-Utilitarianism" and "Average Happiness versus Total Happiness" among others. Still, Smart's arguments remind me why I find so much of Utilitarianism repugnant:
If it were known to be true, as a question of fact, that measures which caused misery and death to tens of millions today would result in saving from greater misery and death hundreds of millions in the future, and if this were the only way in which it could be done, then it would be right to cause these necessary atrocities.
Or as Lenin put it, "If you want to make an omelet, you must be willing to break a few eggs." Ah, so many millions of "eggs" broken by justifications of the sort above--and no tasty omelets.
So, in case you cannot guess, I do find Williams' arguments against Utilitarianism much more convincing and in that regard particularly the chapter "Integrity" that I think gets to the heart of a lot of my problems with Utilitarianism.
