Egoism Vs Utilitarianism

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“Do consequences make an action right?” Many of our decisions, choices and actions of our everyday life are made knowing that for every decision there is a consequence. Human beings for the most part try to make a decision based on what they feel will produce a better outcome but how do people know if the decision made was a good or a bad one? The following two theories which are ethical egoism and utilitarianism primarily focus on the consequences of an action and whether or not it is ethical one. For example, ethical egoism’s morality is defined based on the impact of action only on themselves (pg. 438). In other words, egoists are mostly concern with their own self rather than everyone else’s greater good and only cares for actions that …show more content…
Among ethical egoism and utilitarianism, I feel that ethical egoism focus on actions that promotes better chances of improvement, and the overall efforts of a individual. According to egoism theory, egoist argue that acting on self- interests is best because a individual knows his/herself the most which can bring the greatest pleasure (pg. 438) According to philosopher Harry Browne, “everyone is selfish” and people should not feel bad for seeking their own happiness before someone else (pg. 15).Not only that but being self-interest can also help become more responsible because you are thinking of yourself first before anybody else. Ethical egoism also helps prevent people from doing things that will harm their long-term self-interest. For example, a egoists will prefer to not …show more content…
In this theory, utilitarian’s believe that the only relevant actions are those that produce more good than that to bad consequences (pg. 441). For example, if you see a group of people who fell off a boat and are currently struggling to stay afloat. First, as a utilitarian you would think of a solution that will best help as many people as possible. Second, you would act upon a moral action that will most likely have a positive consequence which in this case would be calling the police and helping anyway you can to save as much people. In addition, utilitarian’s also believe that the purpose of morality is to make life better by increasing the amount of good things like happiness and minimizing the bad things like pain. According to Jeremy Bentham an advocate for the utilitarian theory, “the greatest good” is considered to be the one that would bring the most benefits to society. Bentham defined good consequences in terms of pleasure and pain (pg. 442). Bentham and John Stuart Mill both argued that our actions should be measure based on its intensity, length and which consequence produces the most pleasure and less pain using his hedonistic calculus
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