DO ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS? UNDERSTANDING THE UTILITARIAN RESPONSE

Abstract

We all pursue happiness. However, in this pursuit we sometimes we get involved so much that we breach the principles of morality. We have often heard people saying “The end justifies the means”. But if we take this sentence to be our guiding principle, we may have to exonerate not just Hitler but all the perpetrators of wrongful acts. For what they were seeking was their own happiness. Philosophically speaking one school of thought that maintains such a stance is known by the name Consequentialism. Consequentialism claims that the morality of an action is determined solely by its consequences. But a philosophical mind would resent such a thought for no justification could presumably be used to condone massacre, murder, robbery, cheating and even lying, if the consequences were felt to be good enough. In this paper I wish to defend this seemingly horrendous doctrine of ends justifying the means. For this purpose, I discuss a popular and very influential thinker John Stuart Mill whose utilitarianism is an offshoot of consequentialism and therefore not too far from the view that moral rightness of an action is evaluated solely by its consequences. However, there is a twist as Mill introduces an overarching principle, a criterion for making such evaluations and it is ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people’ along with making qualitative distinctions in happiness. This qualification makes Mill’s Utilitarianism more in tune with our common-sense intuition.