60. Social and Political Philosophy: Utilitarianism introduced

Social and Political: Next we have “Utilitarianism”. (Roughly, “Usefulness-ism”.)

The basic version: “x is justice if and only if x produces the best overall consequences for society”. No surprise, the theory is also known as “consequentialism”, because it focuses on consequences. That is, “results”. This theory helped overthrow the Royal verses Commoner law system that ruled England and her colonies. Formulated by Jeremy Bentham, who was not a “commoner”, he was able to convince a large part of royal society this was a better way than the old one; where royals enjoyed a set of laws that benefitted them far more than the different laws for commoners, and allowed Royals to abuse, even kill commoners, without penalty.

In this philoso-cast we will first quickly review Rawls and then move on to the question, “What is Utilitarianism?”

(By the way, Rawls’ Theory of Justice is meant, in part, to be an alternative to Utilitarianism.)