Utilitarianism and the Challenge of Justice

J. J. C. Smart in Defense of Utilitarianism

The brief 1973 text Utilitarianism: For and Against offers a nice primer on the key insights and criticisms of this moral account. J. J. C. Smart provides a succinct and unapologetic defense of utilitarian morality, while Bernard Williams highlights how several of its ramifications are so unattractive as to be fatal. This essay focuses on a particular tension between utilitarianism and justice: that of maximizing happiness versus owing people what they are due. From the standpoint of liberty, a focus on justice is necessary for assuring that we respect one another as separate rights holders. A single-minded focus on maximizing happiness, by contrast, risks sacrificing some for the sake of others. Although such utilitarian views are not, strictly speaking, collectivist—each individual counts equally—their focus on promoting aggregate happiness means they do not treat any individual as equally inviolable.

Smart contends that proofs of utilitarianism, or any moral theory, are neither necessary nor possible. Morality only makes sense among a community of those who feel generalized benevolence for all humans (and perhaps all sentient beings). Utilitarian views make the most sense in light of this ultimate attitude, shared by most. Those lacking this attitude are hard-hearted or stubbornly committed to unfounded traditional views. Smart doesn’t deny that utilitarianism is controversial, only that other moral views are even more controversial. Natural law accounts rely on contestable metaphysical or religious premises that many of us lack good reason to accept. Deontological views—which stress obeying certain duties even if they don’t generate the best outcomes—sometimes prescribe actions which lead to avoidable human misery. This is mere “rule worship” according to Smart.

Following rules even when they don’t maximize happiness, or when they bring about horrible outcomes, is irrational. If a rule generally, but not always, brings about the best outcomes, then it should only be followed when we expect it to bring about the best outcomes. There are only rules of thumb, not unconditional directives. The most sensible point of morality is maximizing happiness, not following rules for their own sake. Note that this view presumes we follow rules as calculations or tactics aimed at goals, and not as internalized norms of conduct, or reflections of our conceptions of ourselves and each other as separate agents with beliefs, values, and plans of their own. More on this below.

According to Smart, utilitarian morality is clear, free of mystery, and flexible as it is based on circumstances. Most importantly, perhaps, it reflects an ultimate attitude of benevolence shared by most of us. We care about good things, so why not care about bringing as much good as possible into existence? Utilitarianism can’t be proven as the true and correct view, but Smart thinks that once we remove superstition, muddled thought, or mindless obedience to tradition that most good-hearted people will endorse utilitarianism as consistent and able to overcome common objections. Such residual morality is also impartial. No one’s happiness is more important—and so to be weighed more—than any other person’s. Smart has nothing to say to those who don’t have an ultimate attitude of generalized benevolence. Tempting as the notion might be, we can’t reason ourselves or each other into acceptance of utilitarianism if we don’t already have benevolent attitudes.

Smart doesn’t shy away from acknowledging that utilitarianism and justice may sometimes conflict, at least in theory. He considers a scenario where a sheriff must frame an innocent man for capital murder to prevent riots that would kill hundreds of townsfolk. While many would argue that this abhorrent consequence still gives us no decisive reason to kill the innocent man, Smart sticks to his guns: “However unhappy about it he may be, the utilitarian must admit that he draws the consequence that he might find himself in circumstances where he ought to be unjust.”¹ Justice may not reduce to the question of what maximizes happiness, but if the two come into conflict, so much the worse for justice. Smart hopes, on utilitarian grounds, of course, that cases like this are only logically, not actually, possible. A world where strategic killing is a possibility would likely be less happy, all else equal, than a world where such killing is unnecessary.

Smart acknowledges that utilitarianism won’t always give us easy or attractive answers, if any moral view always could. But this dissatisfaction stems from moral approaches that assume we should use particular feelings as tests of general ones. He argues the opposite: “In ethics we should test particular feelings by general attitudes.” The ultimate attitude of generalized benevolence is a moral candidate that fares better than alternatives, even if it doesn’t always leave us satisfied: “Perhaps indeed it is too much to hope that there is any possible ethical system which will appeal to all sides of our nature and to all our moods.”²

After all, deontological views have their problems too when they uphold that sometimes avoidable misery ought not to be avoided for the sake of obeying a duty. Smart invites us to consider which is worse: breaking a promise that would save hundreds of lives or letting hundreds die to keep that promise. The latter sounds, at best, like moral self-indulgence deaf to the human needs that motivate a search for ethical guidance in the first place.

Individual rights may exist in Smart's ethical system, but only as rules of thumb when they are consistent with maximizing expected happiness. This leaves the consistency of respecting rights with promoting overall happiness as a, well, happy accident of circumstances. Whether individual freedom and overall happiness go together is a contingent matter always subject to change.

Bernard Williams Against Utilitarianism

Bernard Williams explores more deeply than Smart the tensions between utilitarianism and justice. Williams begins by observing that only states of affairs—not actions themselves—have intrinsic value on the utilitarian view. This leads to several implausible ramifications: an unusual account of moral responsibility, the dismissal of integrity as a key ethical component, and disregard for standard features of justice such as equity and fairness.

First, utilitarian accounts uphold “negative” responsibility by making no moral distinction between doing and allowing, between one’s actions versus others’ actions playing a role in a chain of events. I am just as responsible for allowing bad and preventable states of affairs created by others than if I alone had created them. Williams relates a story that articulates tensions in the utilitarian account of negative responsibility. Jim accidentally wanders into a politically restless village where a dictatorial captain is about to have his soldier Pedro kill twenty Indians and make an example of them to protesters. The captain invites Jim, as an honorary visitor, to kill just one Indian instead. If he accepts, the other nineteen will be released unharmed.

Utilitarianism insists that Jim should shoot the one Indian to save the others. The Indians themselves also likely insist on the same, since their survival odds have suddenly gone from 0% to 95%. Perhaps shooting one is also the right decision on many non-utilitarian views, but the utilitarian view suggests that this is the obviously correct decision because it maximizes utility in the moment, full stop. Utilitarian views cut off other possible considerations one might weigh before deciding. One such consideration is that each individual has a special responsibility for what he does, as opposed to what others do, which expresses a chief component of integrity.

Utilitarians might counter that Jim’s hesitation (let alone refusal) to shoot the one Indian indicates, not integrity, but mere self-indulgent squeamishness. But what if reluctance is an indication of his moral commitments that shooting the Indian would be wrong on grounds independent of utility? Perhaps he believes that he is taking a life that belongs to God, or he is treating the victim as a mere means rather than respecting him as an end in himself? Smart may claim that Jim’s beliefs rest on shaky metaphysical grounds, but they are nonetheless Jim’s views, and perhaps his considered ones. While he need not hold that others must share such beliefs, he so far lacks decisive reason to revise his beliefs on the matter.

Furthermore, it is not as though Jim’s refusal would thereby allow inevitable harm to befall the twenty Indians. His refusal after all doesn’t make Pedro shoot any Indians. That responsibility lies with Pedro and (even more so) the captain ordering the killings. Why treat Jim as if he were a comparably responsible agent while Pedro and the captain are treated as if they were necessary causal chains lacking their own moral agency to avoid decreasing utility? Telling Jim “you leave me with no alternative” is a lie because of course one alternative is not to kill anyone in the first place. Why should Jim be just as responsible for a situation caused by the captain and Pedro? The Indians would stay alive but for the actions of these two. Shouldn’t they be more, or even totally, responsible for threatening to kill the Indians and so putting Jim in this situation? It appears the utilitarian view, in its myopic focus on states of affairs rather than actions, must say “no.” This is odd.

Dismissing integrity is the second implausible feature of utilitarianism. Our everyday lives involve personal commitments to values, norms, and principles, many of which are not themselves about maximizing utility. Utilitarian views can’t coherently describe the relations between a person’s projects and his actions when it insists that he be ready to abandon them at a moment’s notice. As Williams observes, “utilitarianism would do well then to acknowledge the evident fact that among the things that make people happy is not only making other people happy, but being taken up or involved in any of a vast range of . . . commitments.” One can be committed to such things “as a person, a cause, an institution, a career, one’s own genius, or the pursuit of danger.”³

These observations also suggest that people are not merely pursuing happiness as some agreeable sensation or experience detached from the actions which may produce such experiences. Rather, they are pursuing the very commitments which (often but not always) make them happy. One must believe in other things “for there to be anywhere that happiness can come from.”⁴ Utilitarian views must acknowledge these commitments as key sources of the very happiness utilitarians look to maximize, but this introduces a problem. Once they acknowledge the central role of commitments to happiness, utilitarians must still counsel every person at every moment to be ready to abandon these commitments if the utilitarian calculus calls for it. Again, this is because they only regard states of affairs (such as overall happiness) as intrinsically valuable. Actions which reflect such commitments are not intrinsically valuable and thus are expendable on this view.

Williams asks, “How can a man, as a utilitarian agent, come to regard as one satisfaction among others, and a dispensable one, a project or attitude round which he has built his life, just because someone else’s projects have so structured the causal scene that that is how the utilitarian sum comes out?” It is absurd “to demand of such a man . . . that he should just step aside from his own project and decision and acknowledge the decision which utilitarian calculation requires. It is to alienate him in a real sense from his actions and the source of his action in his own convictions.”⁵ That would surely be an unfair expectation for us, if anything is.

Jim may decide to shoot the one Indian to save the others, not because he is now a devoted utilitarian, but because he estimates that it’s the least bad option in his situation. He may surmise that the captain and Pedro have little concern for human life and so appealing to their mercy would be fruitless. He may be a devoted humanitarian who judges that the least bad way to protect human rights is to minimize their violation when he has no power to prevent their violation altogether. But this doesn’t mean his decision to kill should be obvious and automatic, or his initial hesitation squeamish, as it would seem to be through a utilitarian lens.

A final implausible upshot of utilitarianism, implicit until now, concerns its disregard of key elements of justice construed more broadly. Williams implies that this is best seen when extending its demands from personal morality to the social and political realm: “A system of social decision which is indifferent to issues of justice or equity certainly has less to worry about than one that is not indifferent to those considerations.” But the “simplicity that utilitarianism can acquire from neglecting these demands is not itself an argument for saying that the demands should not be made.”⁶ While Smart, to his credit, confronts the fact that justice and utilitarianism conflict, Williams doesn’t conclude that the tie always goes to utilitarianism.

The simplicity of a moral theory is no virtue if the tradeoff provides insufficient consideration to other moral factors. Utilitarianism, at least in Smart’s version, has little to say about distributive issues. Consider Society (1), where most utility is had by a few ultra-wealthy kleptocrats, while the rest of the population lives in impoverished misery toiling for these elites. Compare this with Society (2), which contains the same amount of total utility distributed more evenly across the population. Even the worst-off people have prospects for a decent life. A view focused only on aggregate utility would be indifferent between (1) and (2), which is bizarre since most of us obviously prefer society (2).

Smart might object that the above example, while logically possible, is not realistic. Stipulation aside, Society (1) would likely not have as much total utility as (2) because the misery of the masses outweighs the happiness of an ultra-rich few. Perhaps, but Williams contends that this misses the point. The objection to an inequitable state “is not contingent on the worse-off persons being discontented; on the contrary, their being worse-off provides a ground for their being discontented, and it is a startlingly complacent and conservative conclusion that it must actually be better if, things being inequitable, people are not discontented.”⁷

By reducing morality to maximizing utility, views like Smart’s oversimplify clearly good reasons people have to recognize rights in themselves and others not to be treated in certain ways. For instance, the massive inequality of Society (1) may reflect, not natural inequities, but a lack of universal property rights. The impoverished masses should then feel indignant that the kleptocrats are violating their rights to pursue their own happiness. Whereas utilitarian views like Smart’s seem fine with a situation where the masses were delusional and content that such was their lot in life, Williams implies that tensions between morality and justice shouldn’t be “resolved” through confused mental states and crossed fingers.

Williams's critique of Smart's utilitarianism is not by itself a defense of classical liberalism. Critiques can reflect a range of views, including those which place heavy emphasis on individuals having equal positive rights to some resources or outcomes. Skeptics like Williams may still endorse heavy state intervention and redistribution in the name of their non-utilitarian conception of justice. Still, such critiques gesture toward accounts that defend social morality in the name of protecting or respecting individuals, not demanding that they be ready to sacrifice themselves to satisfy a ledger. Classical liberal and libertarian views comprise a set of such accounts, perhaps most consistently of any.