Analysis Of Integrity Objection By Tennessee Williams

In his critique of Utilitarianism, Williams finds fault in the Utilitarian commitment to maximum utility in that it undermines the integrity of moral agents and denies people the projects and relationships they inherently value. Famously known as his “Integrity Objection”, this proposition is immediately very enticing in that it appeals to the idea of the invaluable and imperative nature of benevolence and compassion, versus the cold, impartial hand of Utilitarianism. That is not to say, however, that Utilitarians have been dealt a hefty criticism from which they have no defense. While Williams may be correct in claiming that abandoning commitments or devaluing personal relationships may be counterintuitive, a Utilitarian could argue that
In turn, Williams asserts that such a compromise of emotional engagements for maximum utility usurps one’s sense of self, consequently marring the distinction between one’s commitment and one’s identity: “(...) that criterion would eliminate any desire at all which was not blankly and in the most straightforward sense egoistic. Thus we should be reduced to frankly egoistic first-order projects, and- for all essential purposes- the one second-order utilitarian project of maximally satisfying first-order projects.”2Abandoning certain commitments for the sake of another project can be acceptable, but when forced to relinquish those which a person deeply values, Williams argues they are robbed of “a sense of one’s moral identity” or what he describes as one’s integrity.
Williams offers us two scenarios to further exemplify his theory: “Jim”, who is told by the edicts of utilitarianism to murder one innocent Amazon Indian in order to prevent twenty more being murdered, and “George”, a chemist who is (also by the parameters of
Utilitarianism) forced to take a job creating weapons of mass destruction, since the balance-sheet of utilities shows that if George refuses, a far younger, more