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12. Utilitarianism—A System of Tolerance
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CHAPTER 12 Utilitarianism-A System of Tolerance Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.1 Thus Bentham opened his introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation . The principle that he so confidently placed beyond question was an unusual sort of principle, certainly if it were meant to serve as the foundation of a moral system. It simply approved or disapproved of every action "according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question."2 As happiness, according to Bentham, was the sum of pleasures, the principle of utility was nothing but an injunction to maximize pleasure. Since Bentham himself emphasized that this was what every man anyway tried to do, the principle of utility did not impose anything on anyone. At most, it was a counsel of prudence. It told men to count alternatives and future consequences against the immediate satisfaction before them, to make certain that they were not sacrificing a 1. Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles ofMorals and Legislation, ed. byW. Harrison (Oxford, 1948), p. 125. 2. Ibid. p. 126. Utilitarianism-A System of Tolerance 143 greater to a lesser pleasure, but nothing more. It did not even sanction hedonism , for Bentham made it plain that when he advocated maximizing pleasure , he did not mean by pleasure anything more than the satisfaction of whatever desires one might feel. His list of pleasures included fourteen varieties , ranging from pleasures of sense to those of wealth, malevolence, and piety,1 and if any were excluded, it was an oversight, for Bentham meant his list to be exhaustive. Yet it was precisely this lack of ethical content that made the principle of utility, or, as he later called it, the greatest happiness principle, so appealing to Bentham. As a result of its emptiness, it was perfectly objective. It was the only sort of moral principle that could satisfy his desire to prevent any man from imposing his judgement on another. For he was acutely aware of the paradox that once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, we go on to make them the objects not only of our pity and of our wisdom but ultimately of our coercion. The moral foundation of Bentham's system was not the principle of utility but his conviction that to deny a normal adult the right to determine his own life was to treat him as a child and to derogate from his dignity as a rational being. He felt strongly that to reason about the happiness of other men "otherwise than with a reference to their own desires and feelings"2 was at the least absurd. Nothing but folly and impertinence impelled one man to direct another man's view of his interests, to decide for him what constituted pleasure and pain. For it was quite impossible to understand other men sufficiently well to know what their interests or needs were. Men did not react in the same way to the same circumstances: "In the same mind such and such causes of pain or pleasure will produce more pain or pleasure than such or such other causes of pain or pleasure: and this proportion will in different minds be different."3 The predilection to do good to others could be even more dangerous than direct attempts to tyrannize over them. No one was more objectionable to Bentham than the philanthropic fanatic who, inspired only by kindness, produced endless misery...