Limits of utilitarianism

There are a number of problems with utilitarianism:

• If there is a conflict between individual happiness and universal happiness, what modes of reflection are to be used to settle the conflict? Hobbes in particular drew attention to the fact that interest of one person may be injurious to others. Locke took recourse to division of labor for mutual exchange.

• There are situations in which there are conflicts between principles which supposedly lead to happiness.

• As suggested by G.E.Moore, there are many different things that are good and pleasure is only one of them. In the Indian tradition, there are three cardinal values: truth, consciousness and beauty. One may add other values such as love and knowledge to them.

• There may be no way to determine consequences of an act or rule. And in case we know the consequences the value of total consequences may not be determined. There may be observable, finite consequences on some individuals, in the short run, but there may be infinite indeterminate consequences on the universe, in the long run.

• The choice of using average or total happiness of society as an indicator is no simple choice.

• How does one decide about the supreme principle if there is a conflict between secondary principles such as trust and truth?

• What makes people happy or unhappy may not be the same thing as what they want or do not want to do.

• There is a famous argument against negative utilitarians that from the point of view of minimizing total suffering of mankind it is better to destroy the planet (having the possibility of nuclear weapons) than making people suffer for a long time containing a great deal more suffering, certainly more than the suffering of death.

• Utilitarianism is often inconsistent with human rights and fundamental rights. It also says that there are no absolute rules.

• It has also been said that if you consider the whole universe consisting of infinite number of people all of whom have their own pleasures and pains, there may be no net effect of any action on the sum of happiness of all.

In his famous work Capital, Marx rejected utilitarianism by making two claims: (a) There is no originality in the Bentham’s ideas and he only reproduced the idea of human spirit found in 18th century French philosophers; and (b) Utilitarianism makes no sense without assuming a fixed form of human nature while the fact is that human nature is dynamic and modified by historical epochs.