Moral judgement from utilitarianism's point of view and my own - Essay Example

In this case, utilitarian reasoning will definitely through many people into confusion and they will find themselves in dilemmas when they are supposed to make decisions especially decisions concerning human life. Here is a case where a runway trolley is just about to kill five people. However, the runway trolley can be sidetracked using a switch and in this situation it will only kill one person and save the rest. As a person making the decision, what is the right thing to do? Because utilitarian theory suggests that, our decision must maximize the overall good, then the switch must be switched in order to kill one person and save the five.

However, the big question is whether this is morally right addition to this, utilitarian theory requires that we put the interest of the group first and not the individual. This is because individuals possess a different degree of pleasure and pain. The moral rule for utilitarian are more general than ones specific moral judgment and it`s cannot be equated with any of the ethical principles since it will results to the greatest happiness only to greatest number of people but fails to consider the welfare and happiness of the minority.

However, utilitarianism still demands and does all that is required to save the greatest number of lives in the runway trolley incident. It`s better to save and salvage the lives of more people than to only save one live. This will definitely cause lesser pain as far as the number of people that were to be affected by this runway trolley tragedy is concerned. When the runway trolley is sidetracked using a switch and so it kills one person the utilitarianism argument is achieved in full force which, in this case, is the morally right thing to do.

However, according to my own point of view, I slightly differ with the utilitarian point of view. While utilitarianism advocates for maximizing the good for the majority, I strongly feel the need and good for the minority can supersede the majority`s need for good. If the son of God was a utilitarian, it would have been worthless for Him to look for the lost sheep and bring it back home. Besides, if the father of the prodigal son in the bible was also a utilitarian, he would have not considered and get bothered bringing his son back home.

Well my point is that utilitarianism only does what it takes to scarify the good of the minority in favor for the good of majority which is, in my opinion, is against my belief as a Christian and strong follower of Jesus and His teachings. In the runway trolley incident, they would have not sidetracked the runway trolley using a switch to kill the individual but instead they would have left nature and fate to dictate the finally ending of the tragedy. Although utilitarianism will make many people happy, I will have acted in the interest of many people but what makes other people happy is not what makes me happy.

Our degree of happiness is different. Therefore, my own point of view concerning this incident was to let the runway trolley kill whoever it will kill and spare whoever it will spare. This was the moral thing to do in this case according to my moral rule even though the utilitarianism reasoning and advocacy does not require and demands that . Even though the utilitarian point of view requires that pleasure be sought and therefore in this case, it will be