Chapter ǴǺ: Rights, Contract, and Utility in Policy Espousal ȃȈȀšŠŕŘŕŠōŞŕōŚŕşř šŚŐőŞ ōŠŠōŏŗ
Utilitarianism is routinely caricatured and scorned nowadays, and some
versions do deserve scorn. It is said to be lowbrow, crass, and subversive of
personal rights. Ļe Benthamites, says Joseph Schumpeter (ȀȈȄȃ, pp.ȀȂȂ,
ȃǿȆ–ȃǿȇ), created “the shallowest of all conceivable philosophies of life.”
Ļat assessment might well apply if utilitarianism really did recom-
mend that people spend their lives pursuing immediate pleasure. Ļe util-
itarianism defended in this paper, however, concerns the appraisal of social
arrangements—policy espousal, as Philbrook (ȀȈȄȂ) would say.
Jeffrie G. Murphy (ȀȈȆȆ, p.ȁȂȁ) criticized a version that he attributed,
wrongly, to John Stuart Mill:
Ļis theory is so obviously morally bankrupt that very few contemporary
moral philosophers take it at all seriously.... [It] fails to pay attention to
... importantautonomyvalues ... and thus fails to articulate a satisfactory
conception ofjusticeorrespect for persons.It does not ... rule out the
sacrifice of personsforthe general good.Walter Grinder (ȀȈȆȇ, pp.Ȉ–Ȁǿ) bewails “the tired and woefully prag-
matic doctrines of end-state utilitarianism—the cursed Benthamism in all
its permutations, that has proved the bane of liberty’s existence for almost
ȁǿǿyears. During theȀȈth century, utilitarianism almost single handedly
short-circuited the great classical liberal revolution.” Frank S. Meyer (ȀȈȅȁ,
pp.Ȁ–ȁ,Ȃȁ–ȂȂ) perceived a fatal flaw in the philosophical underpinnings
of utilitarianism. Nineteenth-century liberalism “deserted its heritage of
defense of freedom of the person” and “denied the validity of moral ends
firmly based on the constitution of being. Ļereby, with this denial of an
ultimate sanction for the inviolability of the person, liberalism destroyed
the very foundations of its defense of the person as primary in political and
social matters.” To utilitarians, “Human beings considered as the objects of
operations are no more nor less than objects. Kant’s imperative is reversed.
Our humanitarians of the welfare society take as their maxim: treat no
person as an end, but only as a means to arrive at a general good.”
Ļe criterion of the greatest sum of the utilities of individuals is collec-
tivistic, as John Rawls says; it regards individuals as processing stations for
converting goods and services and experiences into increments to aggre-
gate social utility. Ļe ideal utilitarian legislator, in allocating rights and
duties and scarce means of satisfaction, makes decisions similar to those of
a maximizing entrepreneur or consumer; his correct decision is essentially