Foundations of Utilitarianism and Ethical Systems

Utilitarianism

Born in the Anglo world in modern times, Utilitarianism is a form of social hedonism. The goal of morality is to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest possible number of living beings.

Bentham's Arithmetic of Pleasures

Jeremy Bentham introduced an arithmetic of pleasures, which rests on two assumptions:

• The pleasure is susceptible of measurement.
• The pleasures of different individuals can be compared with each other to reach a total maximum of pleasure.

Mill's Refinement

Later, Mill rejects this, claiming that pleasures differ not only in quantity but also in quality, so that there are upper and lower pleasures. Mill's Utilitarianism has been described as idealistic, as it ensures that, given the wretched conditions of our world, the utilitarian doctrine may require a man to sacrifice his happiness for the common happiness.

Modern Distinctions in Utilitarianism

In recent times, an important distinction has prospered within utilitarianism:

• Act Utilitarianism: Requires the correct value of each action to be judged by its consequences.
• Rule Utilitarianism: Requires consideration of whether the action conforms to established rules and then assessing the moral goodness of those rules' consequences.

Other Ethical Frameworks

Ethics of Happiness

These materials are ethical, teleological, and relative. Their imperatives are hypothetical.

• Materials: Judge the content of the action or what it tells me I have to do.
• Teleological: Action's value is determined by the purposes for which it was obtained. All such systems feel there is an ultimate, most valuable end.
• Relative: They do not define what is inherently good or bad; they depend on the consequences that the event generates.
• Hypothetical Imperatives: They are conditional on achieving an end.

Ethics of Justice

These are formal, universal ethics based on categorical imperatives.

• Formal: The goodness or badness of an action does not depend on its content but on its form.
• Ethics: They determine that the action is good or bad in itself, regardless of its consequences.
• Universal: They believe it is possible to define moral goodness or evil absolutely.
• Categorical Imperatives: They are unconditioned by any end.

Citizens in Greco-Roman Antiquity

The term citizen comes from the Latin civis. In Roman law, the term civis was reserved only for those community members who met certain requirements. The rest of the population were not considered citizens and had fewer rights than those recognized.

Citizenship in Greece and Rome

In ancient Greece, the term polis was used to refer to citizens. In some Greek cities, citizens came to have a leading role because they could actively participate in the government of the polis through democracy.

Both in Greece and Rome, the citizen was someone who was recognized by a corpus of rights and duties. This highlighted, in particular, the duty to defend the city by wielding weapons if necessary.