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Justice- What’s the Right Thing to Do?by: Michael J. Sandel

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Justice- What’s the right thing to do?By: Michael J. Sandel | Chapter 2: Utilitarianism |

Bentham's explanation of Utilitarianism is “the right thing to do is whatever will maximize utility.” (Sandel p.g.34) which means that the right thing to is always whatever produces the greatest amount of happiness and whatever is necessary to prevent unhappiness. Suppose you are walking and someone stops you to take a poll; they ask you if you rather have an animal center where you can pet animals, or if you would have a school for special children. Which would you choose? Most people would choose the school because there are children involved, but according to Bentham and his theory, there should be an animal center because it is what makes people happy. In our scenario, what makes people happy are animals therefore he would say to build a pet center because the people would be the happiest, hence maximizing utility.

There is an objection in Bentham’s theory in his example of “the city of happiness”. In this example there is a girl in which she is locked away, where she should stay forever. In the city just outside of her home everyone is living a happy, joyous and life. In this room, the little girl is sad and miserable all the time, but because of her misery, the city can be happy. Is it wrong to have the girl locked up to maximize happiness throughout the city? Sandel goes to say “It would be wrong to violate the rights of an innocent child, even for the sake of the happiness of the multitude”. (Sandel pg. 41) On the other hand we have the example where it is justifiable to torture a man to give out information of a bomb that can kill thousands of people. In this example Utility is acceptable, but if the “terrorist” is not willing to speak up, where utilitarianism draws the line is having to torture the family so they can talk. If there are thousands of lives at

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