Philosophers are sometimes criticized for theorizing too much about reality and the ideas we use to define them and paying little attention to investigating the nature of what makes us truly happy.
This is a misguided accusation for two reasons. The first is that it is not the task of philosophers to study the habits that can contribute to making large groups of people happy; That is the function of scientists. The second is that there is at least one philosophical current that puts happiness at the center of its area of interest. Its name is utilitarianism
Closely related to hedonism, utilitarianism is a theory from the ethical branch of philosophy according to which morally good behaviors are those whose consequences produce happiness. In this way, there are two basic elements that define utilitarianism: its way of relating the good to the happiness of individuals and its consequentialism.
This last property means that, contrary to what happens with some philosophical doctrines that identify the good with the good intentions that someone has when acting, Utilitarianism identifies the consequences of actions as the aspect that must be examined when judging whether an action is good or bad
Bentham’s Happiness Calculus
Examining the goodness or badness of acts by focusing on the intentions we have may seem easy when it comes to evaluating the degree to which we are morally good or not. At the end of the day, we just have to ask ourselves if with our actions we were seeking to harm someone or rather to benefit someone.
From the perspective of utilitarianism, however, seeing whether we stick to good or evil is not so easy, because the clear reference that is our intentions is lost, an area in which each of us are our only judges. We begin to have the need to develop a way to “measure” the happiness generated by our actions. This enterprise was undertaken in its most literal form by one of the fathers of utilitarianism, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham who believed that utility can be evaluated quantitatively as is done with any element that can be identified in time and space.
This hedonistic calculation was an effort to create a systematic way of objectively establishing the level of happiness that results from our actions, and therefore was completely in line with utilitarian philosophy. It included certain measures to weigh the duration and intensity of the positive and pleasant sensations experienced and to do the same with painful experiences. However, claims to objectify the level of happiness of an action can easily be questioned. In the end, there is no single and unquestionable criterion about the degree of importance that must be given to each “variable” of the level of happiness; Some people will be more interested in the duration of these, others in their intensity, others in the degree of probability with which it will bring more pleasant consequences, etc.
John Stuart Mill and utilitarianism
John Stuart Mill He is considered one of the most influential thinkers in the theoretical development of liberalism, and was also an enthusiastic defender of utilitarianism. Stuart Mill was concerned with solving a specific problem: the way in which the interests of the individual can clash with those of other people in the search for happiness. These types of conflicts can appear very easily due to the fact that happiness and the pleasure associated with it can only be experienced individually, and not socially, but at the same time human beings need to live in society to have certain guarantees of survival.
That’s why Stuart Mill relates the concept of happiness with that of justice It makes sense that he did it this way, because justice can be understood as a system of maintaining a framework of healthy relationships in which each individual is guaranteed protection against certain attacks (turned into infractions) while continuing to enjoy freedom to pursue your own goals.
The types of happiness
If for Bentham happiness was basically a question of quantity, John Stuart Mill established a qualitative difference between different types of happiness
Thus, according to him, happiness of an intellectual nature is better than that which is based on the satisfaction produced by the stimulation of the senses. However, as psychologists and neuroscientists would verify years later, it is not easy to delimit these two types of pleasure.
The beginning of the greatest happiness
John Stuart Mill did something else for the utilitarianism with which he had come into contact through Bentham: he added definition to the type of happiness that should be pursued from this ethical approach. In this way, if until then it was understood that utilitarianism was the pursuit of happiness that is the result of the consequences of actions, Stuart Mill specified the issue of who should experience that happiness: as many people as possible
This idea is what is called the beginning of the greatest happiness: we must act so that our actions produce the greatest amount of happiness in the greatest number of people possible, an idea that is a bit similar to the model of morality proposed decades before by the philosopher Immanuel Kant
Is utilitarianism useful as a philosophical reference through which to structure our way of living? The easy answer to this question is that discovering this depends on oneself and the degree of happiness that the implementation of this form of ethics generates in us.
However, there is something that can be granted to utilitarianism as a generalizable philosophy; Today there are a greater number of researchers willing to carry out studies on the lifestyle habits that are associated with happiness, which means that this philosophical theory can offer somewhat clearer behavioral guidelines than 100 years ago.
