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A Refutation of Utilitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Tom Regan
Tom Regan*
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University
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Extract

Alleged refutations of utilitarianism are not uncommon, so it is unlikely that the title of the present essay will raise eye-brows. ‘Another paper about utility's failure to account for our duty to be just’ (thought with a yawn, as it were), is apt to be the prevailing reaction to the title's stated objective. This is understandable. For utilitarianism has been taken to task on just this score more than a score of times. And rightly so, I believe, though I shall not argue that point here. Here I intend to offer a refutation of utilitarianism which turns, not on the duty of justice, but on the value of friendship, a refutation which, so far as I am aware, has never previously been advanced in the not inconsiderable body of literature critical of that theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , June 1983 , pp. 141 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1983

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References

1 I consider some of the issues relating to the apparent clash between Justice and utility in my The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press 1983). Chapters VI and VII.

2 Cicero, De Amicitia (‘On Friendship’)

3 Moore, G.E. Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1903).Google Scholar Page references to this work are included in the body of the present essay.

4 ‘Moore's Conception of Beauty,’ unpublished M.A. Thesis (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. 1962)

5 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book IX, Chapter 5

6 Ibid.

7 I use the terms ‘duty’ and ‘obligation’ interchangeably.

8 Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Saunders, T. Bailey (New York: A.L. Burt n.d.), 142Google Scholar

9 Peter Singer has recently developed a version of utilitarianism which he refers to as ‘preference-utilitarianism.’ I believe what I say here, about the analysis of duty, is harmonious with what Singer believes. But I also think that preferenceutilitarianism, like the other varieties of utilitarianism, is refuted by the dilemma I pose in the present essay. See Singer, Peter Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1979).Google Scholar

10 See, e.g., Frankena, William Ethics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall 1963), 14.Google Scholar

11 I explore this matter at greater length in ‘Moore's Accounts of “Right”,’ Dialogue, 11 (1972).

12 Not only utilitarians are impaled by one or the other horn of this dilemma. Any consequentialist or partial consequentialist account of obligation must encounter the same problem. Thus, for example, Ross’ theory is subject to the same criticism.

13 I have benefitted from criticisms raised against an earlier draft of this essay by the members of the Philosophy Department of the University of Georgia and by my colleague, W.R. Carter.