Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is both everyone's political philosophy and nobody's. It is everybody's because everybody is in favor of making people happy, and everybody is willing to make tradeoffs to do so. I may not be willing to execute an innocent man to prevent a riot that will kill one hundred innocent men, but I am at least willing to spend limited highway funds on making safe the road that will save 100 lives instead of the road that will save just one life. Even if we add moral constraints, even if we add goals other than pleasure, even if we add goals other than happiness, the lessons of how to maximize utility retain some usefulness.

On the other hand, utilitarianism by itself has a fatal flaw: why should I want to maximize the happiness of other people? If happiness is all there is in life, and happiness is just feelings of pleasure and contentment, then I should maximize my own happiness, but why should I care about other people?

We must go back to why we are interested in political philosophy at all. How should I choose what is the best way to organize a country? I might do it for practical reasons--- if I were hired to do so, for example. Or I might choose the polity that would benefit me selfishly. That is not going to be important as a philosopher, though, or, usually, as a citizen. If I am purely selfish, I shouldn't bother with politics, unless I want to be a professional politician and make that my vocation, or unless it is useful to my career somehow otherwise. This could the case if I am a real estate developer for example-- I then will make more money, create more glorious projects, or achieve whatever my goal is better if I can influence the political process. Whether I am a builder or a politician, I will choose my political stance instrumentally. My goal will be self-benefit, but my stance is instrumental, so I will compromise and push for policies that not only will help me but which I can persuade other people to accept. Or, if I am a politician, I will be selling Policy as a product, and I will choose my stance so as to attract enough support to win office or to win promotion and appointment to a better job in government.

Or, it might be that I am choosing my political stance so as to impress other people whom I tell about it. I might want them to think I am tough, or kind, or imaginative, or conformist, or nonconformist.

But let's suppose you're philosophizing as a matter of theory. In fact, even the politician or builder may do this, if he finds it entertaining. What is your goal then?

It would not, I submit, be to maximize people's pleasure, as Bentham proposed. Rather, it would be to create a Best Society from your own point of view. You don't need to compromise and pay attention to other people--we're being theoretical here. You don't need to impress anybody. Think of it as if nobody will know what your political desires are, and that when the world sees them anonymously, it will adopt them instantly. You are the Founder, but you get no credit or blame for it. We might or might not want you to actually live in the society. If you do, you can't make yourself King--- taht is not interesting enough for the rest of us. But you can make the society good for your kind of person if you want, as a class.

What you choose will depend completely on your underlying beliefs. You need a Philosophy before you can do Political Philosophy on this grand scale. So if you believe in God, that is going to be important, though not, I think, decisive. If you believe in some some foreign god, that will matter too, and might even be decisive. If you believe in Allah, for example, you will want to live in a state in which Islam is the state religion.

Well, could you not have as your underlying Philosophy that you want to help make everybody happy? Or, more specifically, that you want to be a Benthamite, maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain? No, I argue.