1. Lesson 5- Ideal and negative utilitarianism

2. Discussion
Which form of utilitarianism do you think is best to make moral decisions?
Why is it better than other forms?

3. Ideal utilitarianism
A Utilitarian theory which denies that the sole object of moral concern is the maximising of pleasure or happiness.
In G.E. Moore’s version of Ideal Utilitarianism in Principia Ethica 1903, it is aesthetic experiences and relations of friendship that have intrinsic value, and therefore ought to be sought and promoted.
Consciousness of pain, hatred or contempt of what is good or beautiful, and the love, admiration or enjoyment of what is evil or ugly are the three things that have intrinsic disvalue and should therefore be shunned and prevented.

4. Ideal utilitarianism
It was Hastings Rashdall ( ) in The Theory of Good and Evil (1907) who first used ‘ideal utilitarianism’ for non-hedonistic utilitarianism of this kind.

5. Negative utilitarianism
The term Negative Utilitarianism was coined by Sir Karl Popper.
The concept of negative utilitarianism was foreshadowed earlier e.g. in the work of Edmund Gurney ( ).
It has obvious affinity with Buddhism.
However, it has been argued that Negative Utilitarianism could lead to mass euthanasia, although this implication has been disputed.

6. Popper’s ‘negative utilitarian’ principle is that we should act to minimise suffering rather than maximise pleasure.
Classical utilitarian philosophers such as Sidgwick had explicitly argued for the moral symmetry of happiness and suffering.
Complications aside, they supposed that increases in happiness, and reductions in suffering, are essentially of equal value when of equal magnitude.

7. Popper disagreed.
He believed that the practical consequences of the supposed moral symmetry were also dangerous.
“Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle: the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.”

8. “I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure.
Both the greatest happiness principle of the Utilitarians and Kant’s principle, promote other people’s happiness..., [and] seem to me (at least in their formulations) fundamentally wrong in this point, which is, however, not one for rational argument....
In my opinion... human suffering makes a direct moral appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway.”
Karl Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1952)

9. Popper believed that by acting to minimise suffering, we avoid the terrible risks of ‘utopianism’, by which he had in mind the communist and fascist dictatorships of the twentieth century.
“Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.”
A staunch advocate of the ‘open society’, Popper defended ‘piecemeal social engineering’ rather than grandiose state planning.