Persons, Selves, and Utilitarianism

Abstract

A common objection to utilitarianism is that maximizing the total or the average net happiness fails to take sufficient account of the separateness of persons.' In one guise, this is of course the Rawlsian complaint against utilitarianism. Rawls claims that the utilitarian approach extends to society as a whole the principle of rational prudence for one person.2 This approach can best be characterized as that of an impartial, sympathetic spectator who imaginatively identifies with each and every member of society, thus conflating all their desires within one experience, which in turn makes it possible to treat the internal ordering of the community as though it were much the same problem as that of maximizing an individual's desire satisfaction. Thus, it allow's a society to balance the satisfactions and dissatisfactions, the gains and losses, of different individuals as if they together formed one individual seeking the greatest balance of satisfaction. The problem, naturally, is that a society is not like a person. Adopting this approach amounts to treating the different identities of persons as if they were of no more importance, for the ordering of society, than the different stages of an individual's life are for its prudent ordering. But a society is composed of distinct persons, each with a life to lead, a point of view, and so on. As distinct systems of ends, persons cannot simply be cashed out asjust so many containers for valuable experiences, since the boundaries between individuals are of more than merely derivative importance and indeed define the very object of moral concern. Derek Parfit has long been identified with a somewhat unusualand admittedly speculative-response to such objections to utilitarianism. His suggestion is that the utilitarian approach derive, not from the conflation of persons, but from their (partial) disintegration. It may rest upon the view that a person's life is less deeply integrated than we mostly think. Utilitarians may be treating benefits and burdens, not as if they