Why Utilitarianism Fails as an Ethical Theory

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turn out to have real negative impacts on your life. On the flip side, sometimes what looks like a disaster in the moment can turn out to have extremely positive effects on our lives. I’ll give you an example: once, I crashed my parent’s car, without having insurance. In the moment, I thought this was the worst possible thing that could have ever happened to me in my entire life. However, the person that I crashed into, is now one of my best friends. Without that accident (one that I found completely disastrous in the moment), turned out to be one of the moments I am most thankful for in my life. Because without that moment, I would have never met my best friend. Profoundly invoking the metaphor “Every cloud has a silver lining”.

If all of this evidence wasn’t enough, Utilitarianism undermines common sense, and moral intuition, demanding acts that often don’t sit well with the average person’s conscience. Much like an arithmetic equation, Utilitarianism does not provide any room for morals. For example, if I cheat on my girlfriend with my principal in order to get an average of 95%, which would have “good” consequences for me and my girlfriend in the future (get into a good university, better job, more money to support her and the family etc.). My conscience tells me “Don’t do it! This is so wrong,” but Utilitarianism tells me “Good consequences= good actions”. If I was a true Utilitarian, I would have no choice but to do it.

Overall, Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that deceives it’s followers upon deeper inspection. It fails to be an ethical theory because it is inevitable to be arbitrary, it is contrary to human intuition, and does not provide the requirement of omniscience.

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