Jon Williams
February 13 2001
Utilitarianism is a moral theory which distributes benefits and burdens in a society based on the goal of maximizing utility, defined as the satisfaction of desire. Historically, Utilitarianism has cut a broad swath across the intellectual landscape during more than a century of popular influence. John Rawls has developed a competing moral theory called Justice as Fairness, which yields significantly different insights into the proper structure of society than does Utilitarianism. This paper details three of Rawls's most convincing criticisms of Utilitarianism along with my comments as to the effectiveness of each argument. The criticisms include how Utilitarianism views the distribution of resources in a society, how the distinction between persons is treated, and what weight is given to the nature of desires being satisfied. Rawls argues in each case that Utilitarianism violates common-sense notions of justice. I offer my opinion on the force of each argument and ultimately agree with Rawls that Utilitarianism should be abandoned in favor of a justice-based theory like the one he espouses.
Utilitarianism does not take into account how benefits and burdens are distributed in a society. Rawls writes that it is rational for a moral theory that describes an entire society to seek to maximize some measurable quantity, whether it be happiness, satisfaction, or some other calculable value. Because Utilitarianism seeks to maximize the sum of utility over an entire society, it commits itself to prefer whichever distribution achieves maximum utility. Of course, it is possible that the distribution that maximizes utility in a given society may do so by distributing benefits and burdens in a way that seems to violate common notions of justice. For example, it may be the case that utility is maximal in a society which practices slavery. Utilitarianism would nonetheless deem that arrangement better than any other because it maximizes the good: namely, utility.
Rawls concludes that any theory that accepts an unjust distribution of benefits and burdens must be flawed. Specifically, Rawls writes that a society cannot view itself as some kind of super-person, able to shift benefits and burdens as it wishes in order to reach some greater good. While individual persons can choose to distribute their personal benefits and burdens at will, this principle does not transfer to the collection of persons we call a society. Restated, Rawls holds that the principle of utility may be rational when applied to a single person, but it cannot logically be extended to treat an entire society as a larger version of a single person.
I agree that there appears to be considerable hand-waving by Utilitarians over how to treat apparent violations of our precepts of justice. The response that principles of justice emerge after Utilitarian principles are employed seems flawed. If we hold that there exist truths of morality, and that we know some of those truths, notions of justice seem to be well-established independent of Utilitarianism. The Utilitarian inability to adequately explain our commitments to justice seems to be ripe for attack. Our convictions that the precepts of justice are real, substantial, and important for social decisions is a strong point of support for Rawls.
Utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons. This point is certainly related to Rawls's first objection, but the argument is developed differently. Rawls writes that the decision-making heuristic for Utilitarianism conflates the many diverse desire systems present in a society and imposes a single desire system by which to measure utility. The determination of maximal utility is made from the perspective of a single impartial spectator, or ``perfect legislator,'' who represents all the people in the society. In this way, a single system of desires and a single conception of the good operate to determine the correct allocation of benefits and burdens. Rawls asserts that Utilitarianism's use of an impartial spectator with these characteristics conflicts with common notions of justice. He holds that a theory of social choice cannot be gotten through what he calls ``rational prudence'' combined with the desires of the impartial spectator.
By use of the "perfect legislator," it seems as though a Utilitarian society must be biased on the side of some desire system. As a system by which benefits and burdens are allocated, Utilitarianism seems bound to take factors such as religion, sex, and class into account when making utility calculations. An inherent bias toward one desire system must exclude or at least give short shrift to some individuals on the basis of these morally irrelevant distinctions. Thus, distribution according to utility seems implausible and unfair. Additionally, Rawls can draw support on this point from the work of Kant. It seems as though Utilitarianism's ignorance of the distinctions between individuals may have the result of treating people as means rather than as ends.
Utilitarianism does not take into account the nature of the desires being satisfied. This final criticism of Utilitarianism seems especially strong. Since utility can be defined as the the satisfaction of desire, the best arrangement of society is that in which desire satisfaction is maximized. Ignoring concerns about how desires are to be quantified (for example, do very intense pleasures get heavier weighting?), there is a more striking qualitative problem with this view. Simply put, some people have evil desires which justice requires not be satisfied. Under Utilitarianism the desires of, say, sadists are lumped in with the desires of everyone else when an overall determination of utility is made. By espousing a system in which the satisfaction of all desires are maximized, Utilitarianism violates our precepts of justice.
This is, I think, one of the most compelling arguments against Utilitarianism. If it is argued that Utilitarianism can be refined to weight only those desires deemed acceptable to precepts of justice, the view is considerably weakened. Nitpicking over the value of individual desires mires Utilitarianism in the minutiae of assigning moral worth to every desire. Such a refinement of the view would really just be a concession to justice: an admission that the moral universe described by Utilitarianism is subject to the confines of justice. Rawls's objections combine to make us feel that something is fundamentally wrong with the Utilitarian view of society.
Fortunately, Rawls goes on to examine the heart of the conflict between Utilitarianism and his own view. Utilitarianism is a teleological theory, defining the right as that which maximizes the good, and defining the good as the satisfaction of desire, or utility. Rawls's view, Justice as Fairness, is a deontological theory in which the right is prior to the good. In other words, a thing can not be good if it is not first right. The tangle with Utilitarianism results both from how that theory identifies the good and with how it maximizes that which is deemed good. Rawls holds that if we reject Utilitarianism and work to develop a deeper understanding of what is right, such problems will evaporate. In the above arguments I have laid out his main arguments against Utilitarianism and detailed my support for their strengths. I find myself compelled to agree with Rawls that Utilitarianism is severely flawed and that a moral theory with Justice at its core deserves serious consideration.
Copyright Jon Williams, 2001. jcwilli3@eos.ncsu.edu