One of the final exam essays I wrote for Money, Markets, and Morals on Kant, Aristotle, and Bentham. The essay concerns the differences between utilitarianism and Kantianism, which are irreconcilable due to a fundamental difference in approaching morality.
On what grounds do Kant and Aristotle reject Benthamite utilitarianism? Can utilitarianism be successfully defended against Kantian and Aristotelean objections?
For bars and pubs around the world, dwarf tossing is good entertainment and good business. The sport itself is very self descriptive—participants compete to see how far they can toss a dwarf. Onlookers and bystanders drink and enjoy the merry event. From a purely economic standpoint, dwarf tossing is a mutually beneficial exchange. Dwarfs voluntarily get thrown and are compensated fairly; some dwarfs say that dwarf tossing is more lucrative than their alternatives . But not everyone sees dwarf tossing as an exchange that should be allowed, even if no one participating is made worse off by the exchange (at least in utilitarian terms). Critics charge that allowing such activities to occur is immoral, citing harms to the dignity and moral character of the community at large. At the heart of contentious debates surrounding economic issues such as dwarf tossing and organ selling lies involved discussions of ethics and moral frameworks. This paper addresses Bentham’s utilitarianism, the system of ethics that underpins modern economic thinking and defenses of dwarf tossing, and the challenges brought against it by Kantian and Aristotelian ethics. This paper will demonstrate that the moral frameworks presented by Bentham, Aristotle and Kant disagree about the basic premises on which to base moral judgments.
The foundations of economics rely in part on a Benthamite conception of good. Bentham presents a seemingly simple, uninvolved calculus to judge the moral righteousness of an action. Utilitarianism assumes that pain and pleasure are the sole governors of moral decision-making . It follows from these assumptions that decisions that result in the most amount of happiness are morally superior, regardless of the “nature” of those decisions. Utilitarianism is an attractive moral framework because it does not ask its believers to make moral judgment on pleasure based on the source from where it was derived; rather it treats all happiness as a common currency, regardless of whether that happiness was generated from volunteering at a soup kitchen or playing video games. This same concept informs arguments in favor of free market capitalism. Every exchange in the free market is assumed to make both parties better off. Indeed, the buyer has decided that it is better for her to exchange her money for the good; she will derive more utility from the good than the money. Similarly, the seller has decided that the money she receives represents more utility than the good that she is selling. As such, every market decision maximizes the net utility in the system. However, Bentham’s seemingly nonjudgmental moral framework receives fire from those that are critical of the assumptions that are made. Those same critics would likely take issue with the commodification of some goods or services, such as dwarf tossing.
The Aristotelian school of value ethics finds Bentham’s calculus too simplistic. Whereas Bentham treats all pleasure equally, differing in quantity only, Aristotle believes that pleasures have a qualitative difference. According to Aristotle, “[P]leasures differ in kind; for those derived from noble sources are different from those derived from base sources, and one cannot get the pleasure of the just man without being just, nor that of the musical man without being musical, and so on.” But Aristotelian ethics does not just distinguish between better and worse pleasures, it rejects the idea that pleasure is the universal currency with which to determine morality. According to Aristotle, “And there are many things we should be keen about even if they brought no pleasure, e.g. seeing, remembering, knowing, possessing the virtues. If pleasures necessarily do accompany these, that makes no odds; we should choose these even if no pleasure resulted. It seems to be clear, then, that neither is pleasure the good nor is all pleasure desirable, and that some pleasures are desirable in themselves, differing in kind or in their sources from the others.” This is in direct confrontation with Bentham’s assumptions. Aristotle would judge an action’s morality based on whether or not those actions promoted virtue. Furthermore, the pleasure derived from an action does not necessarily correspond to whether that action was morally justified.
Applying an Aristotelian perspective to dwarf tossing, it would seem that the moral standing of dwarf tossing is determined by whether dwarf tossing promotes virtue. While it is difficult to discern the exact purpose of a dwarf, it is not difficult to imagine that the true purpose of a dwarf is not to be thrown. Similarly, objections could be made about the virtue of the participants. The dwarf tossers might not be promoting their own virtues by partaking in such events. As such, according to an Aristotelian ethics system, it is unlikely that dwarf tossing would be considered a virtuous pursuit.
Like Aristotle, Kant expresses dissatisfaction with the basic premises rooting utilitarianism. According to Kant, results are impossible to predict when making an action. Therefore, decisions cannot be right or wrong based on their consequences . In his deontological moral system, Kant bases actions’ moral standings on a set of universal, absolute moral standards as well as the intent behind the actions. An action can be moral or immoral without knowing what consequences resulted from the action. One of the universal maxims that Kant identifies concerns the treatment of other people. Kant believes that treating people and other moral actors as means and not ends in the decision calculus is fundamentally wrong.
This perspective means that approaching dwarf tossing from the Kantian perspective is no more favorable than an Aristotelian. Kantian morality places exceedingly high demands on participants in dwarf tossing. Not only does the dwarf have to treat their body as an end and not as a means, so too must participants and onlookers. Otherwise, the dwarf’s dignity is not respected as an end, making dwarf tossing an immoral activity. It is likely that those who subscribe to Kantian ethics would believe that few actual occurrences of dwarf tossing would meet these high standards.
As demonstrated in the considerations of dwarf tossing, the Aristotelian and the Kantian approaches to morality are vastly different from Bentham’s. Bentham ignores the actions and only addresses the consequences. Kant looks only at the actions and ignores the consequences. Aristotle looks at the actions and considers the consequences those actions have on a person’s virtue as well as what those actions say about a person’s character. The first principles that each philosopher assumes are fundamentally irreconcilable. Changing utilitarianism so that its core premises are no longer viewed to be correct would completely alter its essence. However, it might be possible for utilitarians to reach the same conclusions despite starting at different premises by factoring in varying qualities of pleasures. This is something that Mill attempts to do in his revision of Bentham’s utilitarianism. Unfortunately, despite Mill’s attempts defend utilitarianism from similar contentions, at the very center of the disagreement is a disagreement about first principles. The very nature of the disagreement means that a satisfying conclusion may never be reached.