IS BENTHAM’S THE BEST APPROACH TO HAPPINESS?

ByZara

Jeremy Bentham was the first utilitarian, creating this approach to move away from the common obedience to the Bible and fixed moral rules of the period. His ethical theory focuses on pain and pleasure as the Master of Human beings and the fact that our instinctive goal is to avoid pain and seek out pleasure. Therefore, it is the pursuit of happiness that motivates us, instead of God or human reason as others may suggest. Bentham developed a principle of utility: the extent to which an act produces “benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness”, as well as preventing “mischief, pain, evil or unhappiness”.

Bentham presents his principle of utility as a democratic principle, and he views his utilitarianism as a process for weighing up alternatives to actions. Regarding this, he suggests a ‘Hedonic Calculus’, which uses certain criteria to calculate the balance of pleasure versus pain that an action brings. These criteria are Fecundity, Intensity, Propinquity, Purity, Duration, Extent and Certainty, and mean that his theory is one of ‘quantitative pleasure’ as it questions ‘how much’ pleasure is brought about by a decision. The Hedonic Calculus ties in with the principles that we associate with utilitarianism today: rules cannot benefit the minority and cause pain for the majority. These principles supposedly ensure that individual benefit is not prioritized over the pleasure of the majority.

Although this approach is favorable in Bentham’s perspective, this core idea of utilitarianism is often countered with the argument that his theory is not always effective as it does not address the issue of the rights of the minority which may be ignored to have the maximum pleasure for the majority. Thus, Bentham’s utilitarianism can be seen as ignoring the problems of injustices which utilitarianism produces.

Bentham’s Hedonic Calculus is very straight forward and easy to use, and it reiterates the convincing argument that morality is linked to the pursuit of pleasure. However, the Hedonic Calculus has been criticized by those who argue that accurately predicting the future is difficult and it may not always be appropriate to simplify pleasure in this way through this approach because pleasure is complex.

Those who disagree with some of Bentham’s ideas but agree with the general principles of utilitarianism may find that the ethical theory of John Stuart Mill is the best approach to happiness. Mill tackles the questions that often arise when discussing utilitarianism by adding certain rules surrounding happiness and deciding that pleasure cannot be oversimplified in the way that for example, Bentham does.

Similarly, to Bentham, Mill’s ethical theory argues that what makes an action good is the balance of happiness over unhappiness which it produces. However, unlike Bentham, Mill ensured to address the issue of justice by arguing that happiness could only be maximized if there were certain rules such as having higher and lower pleasures. Mill’s ethical theory based on utilitarianism focuses on qualitative pleasure and therefore distinguishes between higher pleasures such as music, art and poetry, and lower pleasures such as food and drink. To Mill, higher pleasures are always more valuable than lower pleasures. However, it is also important to note that with Mills theory, he is assuming that everyone will find higher pleasures to be more valuable or ‘happiness-producing’ than lower pleasures. In reality, this distinction can be subjective, and so making this universal claim may not be accurate.

Overall, having considered both the utilitarian theories of Bentham and Mill, I believe that Mill’s ethical theory is a better argument as it shows understanding that not all situations can be simplified into the box of traditional utilitarianism.