Utilitarianism and the Virtues

Abstract

It is remarkable how utilitarianism tends to haunt even those of us who will not believe in it. It is as if we for ever feel that it must be right, although we insist that it is wrong. T.M. Scanlon hits the nail on the head when he observes, in his article 'Contractualism and Utilitarianism', that the theory occupies a central place in the moral philosophy of our time in spite of the fact that, as he puts it, 'the implications of act utilitarianism are wildly at variance with firmly held moral convictions, while rule utilitarianism strikes most people as an unstable compromise.'1 He suggests that what we need to break this spell is to find a better alternative to utilitarian theories and I am sure that that is right. But what I want to do is to approach the business of exorcism more directly. Obviously something drives us towards utilitarianism, and must it not be an assumption or thought which is in some way mistaken? For otherwise why is the theory unacceptable? We must be going wrong somewhere and should find out where it is. I want to argue that what is most radically wrong with utilitarianism is its consequentialism, but I also want to suggest that its consequentialist element is one of the main reasons why utilitarianism seems so compelling. I need therefore to say something about the relation between the two theory descriptions 'utilitarian' and 'consequentialist'. Consequentialism in its most general form simply says that it is by 'total outcome', that is by the whole formed by an action and its consequences, that what is done is judged right or wrong. A consequentialist theory of ethics is one which first identifies certain states of affairs as good states of affairs and then says that the rightness or goodness of actions (or of other subjects of moral judgment) consists in their positive productive relationship to these states of affairs. Utilitarianism, as it is usually defined, consists of consequentialism together with the identification of the best state of affairs with the state of affairs in which there is most happiness, most pleasure, or the maximum satisfaction of desire. Strictly speaking utilitarianism -taken here as welfare utilitarianism -is left behind when the distribution of welfare is taken in itself to affect the goodness of states of affairs; or when anything other than welfare is allowed as part of the good. But it is of course possible also to count a theory as utilitarian if right