Utilitarianism, as a moral system, is basically one in which one creates a moral and ethical system based not in each specific action having an essential moral component in and of itself, but in terms of defining the morality of an action by the ends that it is achieved. Moreover, in utilitarianism, morality is linked solely to the satisfaction of desires and thus represents a sort of ethical hedonism:
Utilitarianism is an approach to mortality that treats pleasure or desire-satisfaction as the element in human good and that regards the morality of actions as entirely dependent upon on consequences or results for human (or sentient) well-being.... most subsequent utilitarians discard religious traditions and social conventions in favor of treating human well-being or happiness as the touchstone for all moral evaluation
Honderich 890)
Although this is basically true of all utilitarian systems, it would be both overly simplistic and greatly inaccurate to assume, therefore, that all utilitarianism is the same. Indeed, there are different strains. While classical utilitarianism may hold for the necessity of maintaining and increasing the amount of happiness for the greatest number, other forms of utilitarianism might disagree. The classical utilitarian formation is problematic, because happiness is a vague and ill-defined term, because it can allow for individual barbarisms, and because it can justify systematic exclusion, such as racism. A better formulation of utilitarianism would be to suggest a scale by which one attempts simply to minimize suffering in all individuals. By employing this schema, we can avoid the problems that classical utilitarianism has altogether.
In the classical formulation of Utilitarianism, the idea is to...
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