Utilitarianism

Where do you draw the line on what is right? Ethical theories are something that have been tossed around between people for years. The dispute over what is right or wrong is endless and has many ways of reaching an answer. Each of these theories that arise has both its benefits and drawbacks. No one theory can be perfect and fit everyone's needs. For a theory to be successful it needs to have supporters. For it to have supporters people need to believe in it. For people to believe in it, it needs to benefit them in some way. This paper will discuss the properties of utilitarianism and the benefits it has on society. It will also compare utilitarianism to egoism, Kantian ethics, intuitionism and affirmative action. Utilitarianism's overall purpose is to serve the greater majority and this paper sets out to prove that. This paper will discuss many major points in utilitarianism such as: it links happiness and morality, it conforms to meet the needs of different situations, requires situation outcomes to be fair, and forces us to take in ideas or not only ours but the people around us. This paper will also discuss some of the criticisms about this theory. These criticisms include: taking too much time to reach a decision, calculations to a decision can lead to unforeseeable consequences, population size is too big to put this theory into effect and the distribution of wealth, money or other goods may not be even. To start we should get a feel for what exactly utilitarianism is. In a simple definition it is promoting the greater good for the majority. This definition does not give the theory as a whole, justice in defining it but as you read this paper you'll get a better understanding on just how good utilitarianism is. Before we defend this theory against other theories out there we should get a better understanding of what the utilitarianism theory all entails. First, this theory promotes the greater good for the majority. For example if