Utilitarianism: a philosophy centered on happiness

Philosophers are sometimes criticized for theorizing too much about reality and the ideas we use to define them and pay little attention to investigating the nature of what makes us really happy.

This is a misleading accusation for two reasons. The first is that it is not the task of philosophers to study the habits that can contribute to making large groups of people happy; that is the role of scientists. The second is that there is at least one philosophical current that puts happiness at the center of its field of interest. Its name is utilitarianism.

What is utilitarianism?

Closely related to hedonism, utilitarianism is a theory of the ethical branch of philosophy according to which morally good behaviors are those whose consequences produce happiness. Thus, there are two basic elements that define utilitarianism: its way of relating the good to the happiness of individuals and its consequentialism.

This last property means that, contrary to what happens with some philosophical doctrines that identify the good with the good intentions that someone has when acting,

utilitarianism identifies the consequences of actions as the aspect that must be examined when judging whether an action is good or bad.

Bentham's Happiness Calculation

Examining the good or bad of actions by focusing on our intentions can seem easy when assessing the degree to which we are morally good or not. At the end of the day, we only have to ask ourselves if with our actions we were looking to harm someone or rather to benefit someone.

From the perspective of utilitarianism, however, seeing whether we stick to good or evil is not so easy, because it is loses the clear reference that are our intentions, an area in which each of us is our only judges. We begin to have the need to develop a way of "measuring" the happiness that our actions generate. This enterprise was undertaken in its most literal form by one of the fathers of utilitarianism, the English philosopher Jeremy bentham, who believed that utility can be quantitatively evaluated just as it is done with any element that can be identified in time and space.

This hedonistic calculation was an effort to create a systematic way of objectively establishing the level of happiness resulting from our actions, and therefore fully conformed to the philosophy utilitarian. It included certain measures to weigh the duration and intensity of the positive and pleasant sensations that are experienced and to do the same with the painful experiences. However, the claims to objectify the happiness level of an action can be easily questioned. At the end of the day, there is no single and unquestionable criterion about the degree of importance to be given to each “variable” of the level of happiness; some people will be more interested in the duration of these, others its intensity, others the degree of probability with which it will lead to more pleasant consequences, etc.

John Stuart Mill and utilitarianism

John stuart mill he is considered one of the most influential thinkers in the theoretical development of liberalism, and was also an enthusiastic defender of utilitarianism. Stuart Mill was concerned with solving a specific problem: the way in which the interests of the individual can collide with those of other people in the pursuit of happiness. This type of conflict can appear very easily due to the fact that the happiness and pleasure associated with it can only be experienced individually, and not socially, but at the same time human beings need to live in society to have certain guarantees of survival.

That is why Stuart Mill he relates the concept of happiness to that of justice. It makes sense that he did it this way, because justice can be understood as a system of maintaining a framework of healthy relationships in which each individual is guaranteed protection against certain attacks (turned into offenses) while still enjoying the freedom to pursue his own objectives.

The types of happiness

If for Bentham happiness was basically a question of quantity, John Stuart Mill established a qualitative difference between different types of happiness.

Thus, according to him, happiness of an intellectual nature is better than that based on the satisfaction produced by the stimulation of the senses. However, as psychologists and neuroscientists would see years later, it is not easy to delimit these two kinds of pleasure.

The principle of the greatest happiness

John Stuart Mill did more for the utilitarianism with which he had come into contact through Bentham: added definition to the type of happiness that should be pursued from this approach ethical. Thus, if until then it was understood that utilitarianism was the pursuit of happiness that is the result of the consequences of actions, Stuart Mill specified the theme of who to experience that happiness: as many people as possible.

This idea is what is called the principle of the greatest happiness: we must act in such a way that our actions produce the greatest amount of happiness in the greatest number as many people as possible, an idea that somewhat resembles the model of morality that he proposed decades before the philosopher Immanuel Kant.

Utilitarianism as a philosophy of life

Is utilitarianism useful as a philosophical reference through which to structure our way of life? The easy answer to this question is that discovering this depends on oneself and the degree of happiness that the implementation of this form of ethics generates in us.

However, there is something that can be granted to utilitarianism as a generalizable philosophy; Nowadays there are a greater number of researchers willing to carry out studies about the lifestyle habits that are associated with happiness, which means that this philosophical theory may offer somewhat clearer patterns of behavior than it did 100 years.