Utilitarianism

A detailed Summary of Utilitarianism


Utilitarianism cannot be described in one sentence. For one to understand utilitarianism completely you would have to describe it in an essay format. However, to describe it very briefly, it can be described as how every person should aim toward producing the greatest possible balance of good rather than bad. This goes for everyone that is affected by whatever action is taking place. Three major steps can be made to make sure that this happens. First, look at the state of the world after each action. Look, in particular, at the level of happiness of each person in the various situations. Next, take those levels of happiness and find some way to add them up. The third and final step is to compare the results. The one, which leads to the maximum total happiness, is the morally, right one. From this, you can go on to say that one whom fallows these views is known and a utilitarian. Utilitarianism can be broken down into two forms. Act utilitarianism and Rule utilitarianism. An act utilitarian believes in what actions will have the best consequences. A rule utilitarian determines the rightness of an act by first finding the best rule of conduct. Then the rule that has the best overall conseq


Libertarians believe in individual conscience and individual choice. They feel that each person makes his/her choices. However, those choices made do not affect the failure or success of other people. They think only negative rights are moral. Libertarians want individuals to take more control over their own lives. Because of that, libertarians would abolish the welfare system to make us richer and freer. Because they want us to make up are own decisions they would get rid of Social Security. They feel that it could not exist in a free society because there is an infringement on your liberty because you are required to pay the social security tax. This infringes on your liberty because you are required to pay it, you are not spending your money they way you want to spend it. Some libertarians believe that freedom is simply God's order, or more generally, that there is a natural order in the universe, and human beings have natural rights.Rawl has a theory of justice called the "Fairness" theory. Rawl thinks that we should accept the equal liberty principle and the difference principle. Rawl fallows what is known as the five conditions that define original position. The first one is the people i

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