December 28, 2006
The main thrust of Utilitarianism is to increase the overall utility for a society. Utility is similar to happiness, so a decision or distributive scheme that would increase the societal level of happiness is better than a scheme that wouldn't--simple enough. Utilitarianism is political economy translated into the language of ethics.
I guess we can interpret the utilitarian tradition in Australia supporting democracy as a way of making the interest of government coincide with the general interest; they have argued for the greatest individual liberty compatible with an equal liberty for others on the ground that each individual is generally the best judge of his own welfare; and they have believed in the possibility and the desirability of progressive social change through peaceful political processes.
So how is the political understood in utilitarianism? As the harmony of individual interests? Is the political based on the consensus based on individual self-interest.Does utilitarianism as a public philosophy have a conception of the political as distinct from the ethical or the economic? If so, is it the convergence of individual and public interests? How does it view conflicts, antagonisms and relations of power? By reducing these to a rational process of assessing utility from the actions of private interests? Doesn't utilitarianism move between ethics and economics? Isn't the political absent in utilitarianism? Isn't the language of citizenship missing?
In modern democratic society division is constitutive and an integral part of the political culture of democracy.
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