Assess the strengths and weaknesses of a utilitarian argument for the abolition of the death penalty
Assess the strengths and weaknesses of a utilitarian argument for the abolition of the death penalty.
A different way of looking 'objectively' at morality is Utilitarianism. Both founders of Utilitarianism were child prodigies. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) could read Latin and Greek when he was five years old and graduated from Oxford at 16. J.S. Mill (1806-1873) could speak fluent Greek at the age of three and was helping his father to write economics when he was 14. Both men were radical empiricists. They thought that knowledge had to come from the senses and not just be invented by the mind. They were also fiercely democratic, anti-establishment, anti-monarchist, and anti-imperialist.
Bentham decided to make the law and morality 'scientific' in the same way that sociology and psychology claim to make the study of human beings 'scientific'. He began, as moral philosophers often do, with his own definition of human nature. Human beings are 'under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure'. For Bentham, laws should be passed only if they maximize pleasure and minimize pain for the majority of people.
A different way of looking 'objectively' at morality is Utilitarianism. Both founders of Utilitarianism were child prodigies. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) could read Latin and Greek when he was five years old and graduated from Oxford at 16. J.S. Mill (1806-1873) could speak fluent Greek at the age of three and was helping his father to write economics when he was 14. Both men were radical empiricists. They thought that knowledge had to come from the senses and not just be invented by the mind. They were also fiercely democratic, anti-establishment, anti-monarchist, and anti-imperialist.
Bentham decided to make the law and morality 'scientific' in the same way that sociology and psychology claim to make the study of human beings 'scientific'. He began, as moral philosophers often do, with his own definition of human nature. Human beings are 'under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure'. For Bentham, laws should be passed only if they maximize pleasure and minimize pain for the majority of people.