Human Right Considerations in The Utilitarian Philosophies by John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham'

While utilitarianism may seem like an appealing model to ensure the well-being of society, a closer inspection of the utilitarian arguments provided by the utilitarianism pioneer, Jeremy Bentham, reveals that in practice, the theory would destroy individual rights and liberty. In fact, the tendency of Bentham's utilitarianism to discount and even disregard individual affliction or the suffering of a minority due to its shortsighted concept of happiness is another reason why it is detriment to the preservation of individual rights and liberty. Although Mill's approach to utilitarianism accommodates individual rights more than Bentham's does, it is still unable to reconcile respect for individual rights with the ultimate utilitarian aim of maximizing general happiness, in spite of instituting a hierarchy of lower and higher pleasures.

Jeremy Bentham's endorsement of strengthening individual rights through legal institutions would be a misleading metric to assess his consideration for natural rights. Bentham despises natural rights, calling them "anarchical fallacies". This is due to Bentham's belief that no realistic government can operate with the overarching scope of natural rights, therefore deeming that rights are only "real" when they are legally and specifically documented in laws. However, the implementation of Bentham's utilitarianism would absolutely discredit that notion of rights, since the prevailing principle of maximizing general happiness even at the expense of individual happiness would certainly not be able to enumerate what rights an individual are entitled to under a utilitarian government. The list can go on and on, and varies on a case-by-case basis. Some utilitarian enthusiasts may argue that few would object to torturing a prime terrorist suspect in order to extract valuable intelligence during a period of intense terrorist activity alert, but who would readily give his or her consent nowadays to reinstate slavery for the purpose of significantly lowering production costs and allowing the free population more time to do with as they see fit? Of course we would oppose to slavery today, because it is an aversion to us. But to be historically objective requires us to acknowledge that not all societies have seen slavery as a condemnable institution, and supporters of slavery in the past had resorted to utilitarianism to make their case. How can a normative, moral theory like utilitarianism claim to promote happiness and pleasure, and at the same time accept institutions like slavery? The distinction between the majority and the minority in society is also vague. If utilitarianism states that the preferences adopted by the majority are always the most optimal in maximizing happiness, then it would fail to reconcile that with the fact that African slaves in the West Indies had once outnumbered white settlers in the 1700; no African slave would have preferred to remain in bondage, so the majority preference in this case would be abolitionism. Yet that certainly did not occur. In cases like slavery, the happiness that utilitarianism generates probably has an instant value, but not a permanent value, one that can sustain general happiness in the long run. Our aversion to slavery today, and the reason that it has been abolished, is due to our understanding that slavery in the long run is not really that preferable. In other words, society would be better off and more happily in the long run without slavery. Bentham also believed that calculating and measuring pleasure and pain (and consequently the general happiness) is central to the goal of utilitarianism and a plausible proposition. The only way to achieve that ambitious proposition is to introduce a single scale to weigh all preferences, and thus a single unit. The concepts of pleasure, pain, and preferences are all innately abstract and immeasurable; to assign them a specific, numerical value is absurd. The example of pricing human life proves just that. Cost-benefit analysis is the manifestation of utilitarianism. The moment a human life is tied to a price tag, the more vulnerable it becomes to the machinations of utilitarian calculations. Hence the low regard for human life that has been well exhibited in cases such as the Ford Pinto fiasco.

John Stuart Mill recognized the shortcomings in Bentham's utilitarianism and offered a more tenable version. He began by acknowledging that it is rather too difficult, if not unthinkable, to quantify the elements of utilitarianism, namely pleasure, pain and preferences. Utilitarianism, Mill claimed, is capable of incorporating individual rights in its philosophy. According to Mill, the only way to achieve maximum happiness for the society in the long run is through respecting individual rights, although this seems more like a departure from the form of utilitarianism Bentham proposed. Respecting individual rights may not produce the "instant happiness" effect, but guarantees a more "sustainable" and permanent kind of happiness. Mill also pointed out that in contrary to Bentham's implication of a single currency to measure preference, there should be a "hierarchy of pleasures" that addresses the differences in quality among preferences. While it is possible to say that the hierarchy of pleasures is a decided improvement from Bentham's single currency, it remains unclear how this hierarchy can reconcile itself with respecting individual rights. A hierarchy of pleasures seems to be in contradiction with the notion that respecting individual rights leads to the greatest long-term happiness, since there is no promise that the highest pleasures are the ones that will not infringe on individual rights. That is unless the higher a pleasure is in the hierarchy, then the nobler and more moral it must be, a prerequisite that seemingly can only apply to a utopia.

The legacy of both Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill lies in the great utilitarian ideas that they have expounded, but not in the practicality of those ideas, especially with regard to the place of individual rights in them. As individuals of a politically-compacted society, we must not remain subject to the pleasures of any other person, much less a majority of persons, unless we elect do so at our own peril. That is the beauty of individual rights, which is not found in Bentham's deliberation. Mill's attempt to correct this ignorance of individual rights is reflected in his argument that respecting those rights is the optimal method to maximize general happiness in the long run. But he too was unable to harmonize that with a hierarchy of pleasures without straying from utilitarianism itself. Utilitarianism continues to inform us in decision-making every day, but it is not an ideal model for societies that embrace the respect of individual rights.