Negative utilitarianism

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The negative utilitarianism is an ethical theory, like other variants of utilitarianism judged moral actions based on their consequences. In contrast to classical or positive utilitarianism, which put the maximization of happiness in the foreground, in negative utilitarianism the minimization of suffering is given greater weight. An action is considered morally right if it leads to less suffering than alternative courses of action. Other goals and goods (such as the maximization of happiness in classical utilitarianism) have no or only secondary importance.

Types of negative utilitarianism

There are many different types of negative utilitarianism. These differ, among other things, in the weight they assign to positive experiences (happiness) compared to negative experiences (suffering). Strong variants of negative utilitarianism only consider suffering as ethically relevant, while weak forms of negative utilitarianism also assign a certain weight to positive experiences, but suffering is seen as more important. A distinction is also made between versions that focus on negative experiences (suffering) and negative preferential utilitarianism or anti-frustrationism , in which violated preferences form the basis. In contrast to classical preferential utilitarianism , in negative preferential utilitarianism the goal is to minimize the number of violated preferences, while the fulfillment of preferences is assigned no or a lower positive value.

Another possible view is that in practice it is often easier to help those individuals who are worst off and therefore reducing suffering is a higher priority. Increasing happiness can be very difficult, while eliminating or reducing suffering can be a concrete and actionable political goal. This is known as priorityism .

Suffering is an intense quantity, such as the concentration of a substance, and not an extensive quantity , such as an amount of substance. Intensive quantities are not additive, extensive quantities are. Therefore, a person with severe suffering has ethical precedence over a large number of people with weak suffering, although the latter would, in purely mathematical terms, come to a larger total amount of suffering. It could also be said that this greater amount of suffering is shared among a greater number of people, so that for each person the intensity of suffering is less.

Web links

literature

  • Karl Popper : The open society and its enemies . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1992.
  • Arthur Kaufmann : Negative utilitarianism: An attempt on the bonum commune., CH Beck Verlag, 2004

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arrhenius, Gustaf; Bykvist, Krister (1995). "Future Generations and Interpersonal Compensations Moral Aspects of Energy Use". Uppsala Prints and Preprints in Philosophy 21. Page 115: “Our point of departure was the firm intuition that unhappiness and suffering have greater weight than happiness. By taking this stand we revealed ourselves as members of the negative utilitarian family. "
  2. ^ Ord, Toby (2013). "Why I'm Not a Negative Utilitarian": “NU [negative utilitarianism] comes in several flavors, which I will outline later, but the basic thrust is that an act is morally right if and only if it leads to less suffering than any available alternative. Unlike Classical Utilitarianism, positive experiences such as pleasure or happiness are either given no weight, or at least a lot less weight. ”
  3. ↑ Negative Utilitarianism FAQ 2015