Philosophical thought and political theory, within the context of the history of civil society, have undergone periods where one school of thought replaced another in relevance and use in public policy. For example, the philosophy of Descartes laid the ground-work for metaphysical skepticism that replaced the Aristotelian ideals of sensory empiricism and focused intellectual discourse on human reasoning and the sense of an inherent cognito within the capacities of the human consciousness. This lead to moral theorists like Francis Bacon and John Locke positing political theories based on Hobbesean ideals of the state of nature which resulted in theories dealing with humanity’s “natural rights”. Influential as this school of thought was, the results it yielded during the French revolution and subsequent “terror” lead many individuals to question and denounce the idea of natural rights and Kant’s ideas of morality. Instead of judging actions based on their morality in and of themselves, a school of thought emerged dealing solely with the consequential aspects of human action. This school of thought is called Utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham laid the groundwork for this philosophy in its purest form. His pupil, James Mill, went on to dogmatize Bentham’s theories and the “hard facts” style of utilitarianism became very prevalent in British politics. This philosophy argues for the importance of “utility” in public life, meaning that the moral focus in human life is to increase pleasure and decrease suffering as widely as possible. The rights of the individual and the minority become sacrificed for the highest possible happiness of the majority. However, as time moved on, many within the political and literary world began to question and denounce this school of thought. Charles Dickens, arguably the most important British literary figure of the nineteenth century, used his novels to expose the repugnance and the sheer ignorance of the suffering of the individual under this philosophy. He saw that Utilitarianism’s disregard for human empathy, human compassion and the human imagination caused many problems in society. Therefore, he sought to challenge Utilitarianism in his literature, and then offer some insight into alternative approaches to human life. Through the use of irony and fictional examples of human suffering in British society, Charles Dickens offers a strong counterpoint to Utilitarian views. Therefore, the task at hand remains to examine the origins of Utilitarianism along with its evolution over time and to understand why Dickens criticizes it the way he does through famous works like Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and Hard Times. When referring to the parish workhouse board in Oliver Twist, Dickens describes the members as “very sage, deep, philosophical men” (Dickens 13), so let’s take a look at some “deep” philosophers and examine how and why Dickens decided to criticize them.
An understanding of Bentham’s philosophy requires an understanding of the philosophical tradition that precedes him, that of humanity’s “Natural Rights”. The writings of John Locke, particularly his Second Treatise of Government, provide an excellent framework to clarify this philosophical idea. Locke begins from a hypothetical standpoint wherein humanity exists, but there exists no governing body that makes decisions. There exists no body that regulates the distribution of goods, the protection of one person from another, or a moral code that all people within a geographical area consent to. Locke, like Hobbes before him, calls this the “State of Nature”. The only laws that apply in the state include a person’s inalienable rights to their own life, their liberty to do as they wish, and their personal property. However, due to certain inconveniences inherent in the state of nature, Locke posits that people naturally choose to form a governing body to ensure that the “Laws of Nature” are adhered to, so the aforementioned rights are protected from violation. Therefore, an action is considered morally wrong when it violates an individual’s natural rights. For example, a person has ownership over their own body and all its contents, therefore their own body and life-force becomes their property. Therefore, murder violates a person’s inalienable right to their own life. Likewise, a person’s liberty cannot be restricted unless it violates another person’s rights. This philosophy became incredibly influential on the thinkers of the Enlightenment, including the German idealists like Kant and Hegel. The important assertion made here is that humanity naturally resolves to form a government for the protection of their natural rights, rather than by way of divine intervention, which constituted the divine right of kings theory followed before the Enlightenment.
In the late 1700’s however, Jeremy Bentham began to write philosophical works that separated him from this line of thinking and posited something different about the origin of morality. Bentham considered, since the “Laws of Nature” based themselves on a fictitious and hypothetical foundation “They could never be used as a basis of justification for something, since this would serve no more than reasoning from false premises would” (Harrison 77). Since the theory of Natural Law could be disregarded as nonsense, natural rights could likewise be dismissed as “simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts” (Harrison 78). Rather than rely on the rhetorical assertions of John Locke to create social and moral theories, he decided to focus on empirical reasoning within natural science in order to make the study of moral philosophy more like that of Newtonian physics (Crimmins 23).
Bentham’s philosophy of the “utility” draws on three important facets of human thought. First, he relies on empiricist epistemology. In simpler terms, this means that the knowledge we gain must derive itself from real and factual experience, rather than hypothetical situations posited by proponents of “Natural Law”. Secondly, he relies on materialist metaphysics, meaning he considers only what really exists in the material world and can be measured to be important when considering our surroundings. Finally, he relies on a nominalist science of meaning. This pertains to the end result of actions, rather than focusing on their preconceived intentions (Crimmins 28). Therefore, this leads to what many call a “hard facts” style of philosophy where the ends justify the means. This is often called consequentialism, meaning that an action should be judged based on its result, not its intention. Just as Newton set out to remove rhetorical superstition from the field of the natural sciences, Bentham aimed to remove such “superstitions” from the social sciences as well (Crimmins 23).
From this line of thinking emerges Bentham’s thought on government’s duty to preserve the utility of its citizens:
The legislator has a given end, that of promoting the general happiness, and has the task of so arranging law and other social institutions that each man following his own self interest will be led to do things which result in the greatest happiness for the people as a whole. The legislator has knowledge of the given end and knowledge of the human nature on which he has to work so that he can artificially create a system or an organization in which pursuit of self-interest leads to promotion of the general interest; in which there is a junction between interest and duty. (Harrison 167)
This outlines the government’s duty as the duty to promote the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people possible over a certain period of time. In order to give meaning to this “artificial institution,” Bentham applied what he calls “real entities”: pleasure and pain. He considers these a legitimate gauge of the utility because he believes these qualities can be measured and calculated in the same way Newton could calculate the force of an object by multiplying its mass by its acceleration. Therefore, a government achieves success by increasing the amount of pleasure enjoyed by the maximum number in a society and decreasing the amount of pain felt by that group over time. This philosophy of utility removes passion and intuition from the equation and in its place relies on cold mathematical reasoning in its place (Harrison 172). Bentham sees passion as a hindrance on ability for humans to reason correctly, and therefore removes the humanistic element praised by Kantian idealists and places humanity in a similar moral framework like that of other animals.
One item that many people can find alarming shows itself in Bentham’s pure dedication to pleasure for its own consequential sake:
The central point however, is, as he puts it for motives, that ‘with respect to goodness and badness, as it is with everything else that is not itself either pain or pleasure, so is it with motives. If they are good or bad, it is only on account of their effects: good on account of their tendency to produce pleasure, or avert pain: bad, on account of their tendency to produce pain, or avert pleasure’…Bentham is committed to a single, and rather primitive, kind of pleasure. No room seems to be left, for example, for a distinction between those ‘higher’ human pleasures and those ‘lower’ ones which are shared by animals. (Harrison 226-227).
The lack of distinction seems puzzling to the onlooker. Some forms of pleasure could potentially lead to pain. Bentham seems to gloss over this point in his theories on mischief and his distinctions between “alarm” and “danger.” An extremely important facet of Bentham’s theory comes with the effect on those in society who are left unhappy in the wake of utilitarian policy:
The greatest happiness, or the greatest happiness of the greatest number, therefore is not the same as the greatest happiness of everyone. The happiness of some individuals has to be sacrificed for the sake of the greater happiness of other individuals. The few, the minority, has to be sacrificed to the many, the majority. Hence the constant use of the formula, the greatest happiness of the greatest number. (Harrison 233)
This assertion entails that the suffering of a few in society can be mathematically justified by the calculated increase of happiness and pleasure enjoyed by that of the majority. With no room left for compassion, intuitive subjective reasoning, or compensation for those few, Bentham believes their sacrifice is a necessary one.
Even towards the end of his life, Bentham’s theories did not gain a lot of traction in the realm of public discourse until he found an ally with ties to the British government who could popularize his ideas. James Mill fit this role perfectly. Mill considers a legitimate government, “the adaptation of a means to an end” (Mazlish 79). Mill put the utilitarian values into an economic context: “He insists that government is required primarily because of economics, that is, because of scarcity, and the need of every man to work. In short, government exists to protect the fruits of labor” (Mazlish 79). This describes a similar position to that of Hobbes, who emphasizes human conflict arising out of competition over the control of scarce resources, and Adam Smith’s ideas of market economics providing a social context for this. James Mill’s theories on utilitarian economics held an extreme amount of clout in the nineteenth century:
Interest politics, based on the assumption that there existed a landed-, a middle-, and a working-class interest, dominated the theory of nineteenth-century parliamentary government. It allowed for rationality and calculation. It was unsentimental. In theory, it could offer a “scientific” basis for legislative action. Perhaps paradoxically, it could also offer a basis for compromise; after all, interests could be traded, just as could property (Mazlish 84).
This displays the utilitarian notion of public policy formed by pure calculation of measured interests and the balance of those interests to produce the utilitarian ideal of happiness spread over the largest group possible. This means that sentimental feelings and intuition are discarded as incompatible with rational thought:
In stressing abstract, calculable interests, Mill ignored the need of individuals for what today we would call “identity,” the confirmation of the individual’s sense of selfhood by his membership in the community. By stressing rationality and dismissing sentiment, Mill closed his eyes to the sort of emotional ties that underlie the whole fabric of government. (Mazlish 85)
This leads to the rights of the individual and their feeling of belonging becoming subordinate to the utility of the collective and perhaps even become unimportant. An example of utilitarian economic philosophy can be found in James Mill’s thoughts on birth control as a way of limiting the amount of people that would exist to consume the amount of resources created by the population. He claimed that irrational sexual desire and passion could be equated with the irrationality of spending rather than saving, and that having too many children could be considered similar to this (Mazlish 106). Therefore, instead of offering up the legality of contraception as a natural liberty that citizens have, it would actually serve an economic purpose to benefit all of society. He claimed that the natural limits made by prudence, poverty and infanticide were not enough to keep the economic problem of population growth in check. The abandoning of the individual moral consciousness and the sentimental began to be contrasted towards the middle of the century by the likes of Coleridge, Matthew Arnold, and even James’ own son John. However, it seems proper now having mentioned contrasting authors to turn our attention to the work of Charles Dickens and how his work pertains to the implications of utilitarianism.
Charles Dickens used the characters in his stories to brilliantly lampoon and question the social ethics of the nineteenth century. Through the use of powerful dialogue and interaction between one characters, Dickens has the ability to leave the reader appalled, laughing, and enlightened all at the same instant. Hard Times gives the reader a bleak, cold, and unsympathetic picture of a modern factory town. Within the context of this novel, we meet Thomas Gradgrind, a schoolmaster who exemplifies utilitarian ideals to near perfection:
Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir! (Dickens 9)
Facts indeed. Gradgrind exemplifies the utilitarian disdain for the sentimental and the disregard for all things not explained in materialistic terms. This stands in sharp contrast to the praise of the aesthetic qualities of nature and existence and favors only what can be calculated or measured. Likewise, he disregards certain human qualities: Gradgrind demands Sissy refer to herself as the formal Cecilia and her father’s profession as a surgeon and horse breaker rather than as a circus entertainer, he even reduces the children in the room to the level of machines by referring to them by number rather than by given name. To the reader (one would hope), this comes across as ridiculous and unnecessary; however these examples show the dogmatic nature of utilitarianism taken to its higher degrees. Gradgrind even restricts the freedoms of his own children to go beyond their studies of factual knowledge:
No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject, each little Gradgrind having at five years old dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles’s Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. (Dickens 17)
Two of his children, Thomas and Louisa, suffer particularly from their cold, “matter of fact” childhood. Unable to relate to or communicate well with others, they struggle to find a happy life and the results certainly don’t look very good. Louisa feels unable to love another person and only through communication with Sissy does she find a way to get in touch with her sensitivities. By the end of the novel, Gradgrind is forced to confront the coldness of his philosophy and its incompatibility with human life and much to his surprise, feels a change of heart beyond any pumping of blood.
Interestingly enough, we can point to a factual example of a similar occurrence. Even more interesting is that it involves James Mill and the rearing of his son, John. From an early age, John endured a vigorous education by his father, learning Latin and Greek at an early age and becoming very well read (Crisp 8). However, his cold upbringing and unbelievably heavy learning requirements lead him to a nervous breakdown at age 20. It was not hard facts and scientific or mathematical inquiry that brought him back to his sanity, but poetry. The works of William Wordsworth inspired him and helped him recover and regain a sense of his feelings that he had lost (Crisp 8). This adds validity to Dickens’ arguments in Hard Times, especially due to their validity being found in the family of James Mill, the man that morphed Jeremy Bentham’s theories into dogma.
Utilitarianism discards human compassion as a result of several fictitious superstitions and other forms of ‘nonsense’. Dickens displays this in a direct and appalling fashion with Ebenezer Scrooge, the main character in his famous story, A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge does what suits his business interests along with his own self-interest. Similarly to Gradgrind, he rejects the idea of sentimental feelings and this is displayed in his disliking of Christmas. When approached by two men collecting money for the poor, he claims that he already gives enough money through taxes to workhouses and prisons. However, the two men describe to Scrooge how these institutions clearly don’t do enough for those they house and that many would rather perish than go there. Scrooge gives the famous reply: “If they would rather die…they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population” (Dickens 21). This relates back to James Mill’s ideas of the necessity of population control and Adam Smith’s ideas concerning market economics and the competition of many people over fewer resources. The utilitarian answer is that if a minority of people dies, then it serves to better the collective by making more resources available. When Marley’s apparition comes to visit Scrooge and warn him of his possible fate, he describes what the cold fact based utilitarian leaves behind when only minding his or her own factual ‘business’:
““Business!” Cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”” (Dickens 33)
This slice of social commentary speaks for Dickens and what he valued as important to humanity and society, and the values that relying solely on utility does not account for. Even more powerful is the exchange between the ghost of Christmas Present and Scrooge at Bob Cratchit’s house at Christmas dinner. Having observed the warmth and caring attitudes of the family towards each other, especially those of Tiny Tim, Scrooge expresses hope that the sickly child will be spared of his ailments. Here, in a brilliant and poignant retort to utilitarian values, the ghost gives his reply:
If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race…will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population…if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child! (Dickens 69-70)
Dickens uses this point to show that human suffering cannot simply be measured into qualities that determine how the most number of people will benefit at the expense of an unlucky few. The utilitarian ethic disregards the fact that even though many people may benefit from a utilitarian society; many other kind, caring, generous, and innocent people may suffer at society’s expense, and this is morally wrong.
Perhaps Dickens’ best criticisms of Utilitarian thought emerge in his famous work, Oliver Twist. By taking the story of Oliver and his journeys through the society of London, Dickens offers specific examples of the problematic consequences of utilitarianism. In describing the parish home for orphans, Dickens describes the rationing of goods given to the children:
Without the inconvenience of too much food, or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female who received the culprits at and for consideration of sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week. Sevenpence-halfpenny’s worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence-halfpenny – quite enough to overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable…So, she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was originally provided for them…and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher. (Dickens 6)
By “inconvenience”, Dickens means a couple things. He uses the term ironically to display that the children don’t get enough food at all. He also uses the term to say how giving the children more food would cause an inconvenience to society on the whole, reducing its available resources. This includes the elderly woman who uses the stipends for herself, adding to her happiness. Even though the happiness of the children gets compromised in this respect, they at least have enough food to stay alive and as a result people like the elderly lady can embrace more happiness. The Beadle, Mr. Bumble, clearly enjoys the benefit of more resources as well: “Mr. Bumble sat himself down…and took a temperate dinner of steaks, oyster-sauce, and porter” (Dickens 140). Obviously Dickens found this all very disgusting and hoped that his readers would feel the same way. He brilliantly uses ironic, gleeful language to expose the repugnance of the Beadle and how certain people benefitted from the awful conditions endured by the most innocent category of human beings, children.
The descriptions of the workhouse and the process of feeding the Orphans their gruel also vividly describes the consequences and alarming ignorance present in utilitarianism. The children typically get fed small amounts of gruel to sustain themselves while working, however this putrid food obviously does not feed them well enough to be healthy by any stretch of the imagination: “Ladled the gruel at meal times; of which composition each boy had one porringer, and no more, - except on festive occasions, and then he had two ounces and a quart of break besides…Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months” (Dickens 14). Any child with properly functioning organs would become angry and discontented at this situation and any person with a grain of assertiveness in their personality would take it upon themselves to improve their situation. The famous scene where Oliver asks for more gruel shows the shocked reaction from the officials at the workhouse. Dickens clearly meant to show their amazement in order to invoke amazement from his readers: amazement that any person could be surprised that a child would need more than was given them. However, a purely dogmatic Utilitarian would respond saying how no child should get more than any other, because this causes a disparity of “happiness” among a greater amount of children, thereby disrupting the food-providing utility of the workhouse. Dickens meant to show this in order to reply to this view with the clear fact that in matters of human health and human suffering, one cannot simply try to reduce them to their mathematical and quantitative elements.
Perhaps then, Mr. Bumble would reply to Dickens with the example of Oliver assaulting Noah. Oliver stood up to Noah physically and verbally when Noah teased him about the origins of Oliver’s mother. Clearly not willing to stand for this insult to his dignity, Oliver ignites his spirit and attacks Noah. Mr. Bumble is called in to evaluate the situation and explain to the family why Oliver felt the need to do this. His evaluation comes across in such a quantitative and incorrect manner that Dickens nearly compels the compassionate reader to leap into the story themselves and correct the Beadle:
‘It’s not madness, ma’m,’ replied Mr. Bumble, after a few moments of deep meditation; “it’s meat.’ ‘What!’ exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry. “Meat, ma’am, meat,’ replied Bumble, with stern emphasis. ‘You’ve overfed him, ma’am. You’ve raised a artificial soul and spirit in him, ma’am, unbecoming a person of his condition, as the board, Mrs. Sowerberry, who are practical philosophers, will tell you. What have paupers to do with soul or spirit either? It’s quite enough that we let ‘em have live bodies. If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma’am, this would never have happened.’ (Dickens 53)
Mr. Bumble correctly states that a well-fed person would have the ability to rise up when cornered or insulted. Basically Dickens means to say through this incredibly frustrating chapter that the feeding of people, merely for the sake of keeping them in existence, reduces them to their most desperate and helpless nature, thereby destroying any observable element of their humanity. Apparently for Mr. Bumble and the utilitarian philosophers on the workhouse board, this horrific way of treating children serves a good purpose.
The first historical item I can call to mind upon reading this emerges in Stalin’s communes in Siberia. The NKVD would separate children from their parents and husbands from their wives, much like they were in British workhouses. Then they would feed the workers with just enough food to keep them alive, and nothing more. A similar observation could be made about the Russian gulags, or Nazi labor concentration camps like Dachau and Buchenwald. No person with functioning pre-frontal lobes could look at the abhorrent actions committed there and not oppose them. Yes, the removal of Jews from the Reich allowed more resources to become available for German citizens and the slave labor produced more good for the benefit of society. However, this does not take into account the deplorable amount of suffering inflicted on countless innocent lives at the same moment. Yes, perhaps the number of people who suffer does not exceed the amount of people who benefit and prosper. However, this in no way justifies their suffering. I believe Dickens meant to express the same idea with novels like Oliver Twist. The same feeling can be expressed about the London workhouses, built up ideologically by hard-fact philosophical ideas of Utilitarianism. Just because a large sum of people may somehow remain happier than the few who suffer, does not mean that those people deserve to suffer or that despicable ‘human beings’ like Mr. Bumble are entitled to cause this suffering. By doing away with the foundations of humanity’s natural rights, human discourse falls off a slippery slope that can result in madness and horrible atrocities. I think that brilliant men like Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, Hegel and Paine would be terrified by the implications of dogmatized utilitarian thought.
So, you may be asking me, “What does Dickens see as a positive alternative to Utilitarianism.” Like any work of literature, Dickens’ works contain both protagonists and antagonists. Therefore, many of his positive characters embody human qualities that fit what Dickens sees as a better way to live one’s life. Mr. Brownlow stands out among the adult characters in Oliver Twist due to his compassion, generosity and understanding. Even though he has made himself wealthy, he does not put on an air of pretentiousness and although he generously helps Oliver in his time of need, he still remains cognizant of the fact that he cannot give handouts to every orphan he sees. This implies a certain balance between realistic wisdom of humanity coupled with general compassion for that humanity. To display this sense of balance, perhaps the old gentlemen should speak for himself: “I have been deceived before, in the objects whom I have endeavored to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you, nevertheless, and more strongly interested in your behalf than I can well account for, even to myself.” (Dickens 108) Even after it appears that Oliver has betrayed him, he does not respond with cold malice or a desire to have Oliver prosecuted, and by the end of the novel this benevolence serves him well.
Rose Maylie fits a positive role extremely well in her kindness towards Oliver and in the care that she, Mrs. Maylie and Mr. Losberne give him. The imagery of the country and of Oliver’s activities there immediately stand opposed to the images the we receive in the workhouse or in Clerkenwell:
Every morning he went to a white-headed old gentlemen, who lived near the church, who taught him to read better and to write, and spoke so kindly, and took such pains, that Oliver could never try enough to please him. Then he would walk with Mrs. Maylie and Rose, and hear them talk of books, or perhaps sit near them in some shady place, and listen whilst the young lady read, which he could have done till it grew too dark to see the letters. (Dickens 262-263)
These tranquil and enlightening activities certainly made Oliver much happier than he’d ever been before. When I read this chapter relating to Oliver’s recovery, it reminds me of how John Stewart Mill used poetry and literature to recover from his rigorous childhood. Through his upbringing in the workhouse and the streets of London, Oliver had suffered the treatment of a society without compassion and without sympathy, and he recovered from this by finally being granted those thing. Bentham probably would scoff at me for using such an archetypal example, however, I believe this example in its purity shows what important items of human life are missing from utilitarian thought. Dickens also manages to create a strong comparative argument by the use of only one character: Ebenezer Scrooge. After his visit from the three ghosts, Ebenezer realizes how his cold and unfeeling attitudes have impacted his life negatively. He also realizes through the suffering of the Cratchit family that his attitudes and business practices have caused other people unnecessary pain. Therefore, he chooses to act more as a benevolent and understanding individual, giving Bob Cratchit a raise and sending the family a large turkey for Christmas. From an individual standpoint, these actions (I would argue) satisfy both a rational basis of economics and a compassionate benevolence. Scrooge can afford to be generous, so he uses this in ways that are in his best interest and don’t hurt him financially. Once again, the well-rounded balance between the two spheres seems to serve humanity in the best way possible. In addition to this, Scrooge also gives a large sum of money to charity, acknowledging the fact that the welfare system and poor laws are insufficient. Ironically, these actions probably benefit London’s utility, while showing the honorable qualities of human kindness and generosity. Scrooge also benefits from these actions with the fact that he can pass away without people waltzing through the stock market making snide jokes about him.
For the sake of contextualizing this argument into a modern picture, it may be reasonable to examine a more modern philosophical work and how it challenges Utilitarian thought. John Rawls’ Theory of Justice outlines many excellent points about government and the human condition. Although I find fault with his theories of distributive justice, I think his criticisms of Utilitarianism are well founded. He gives the utilitarian a certain amount of well-deserved leeway in certain passages, such as the following:
The merit of the classical view as formulated by Bentham, Edgeworth, and Sidgwick is that it clearly recognizes what is at stake, namely, the relative priority of the principles of justice and of the rights derived from those principles. (Rawls 33)
However, Rawls wisely points out that the utilitarian does not make the distinction between how justice serves society for the sake of pursuing the “good” (things that constitute the good life) and the “right”. He also makes the brilliant assertion pertaining to utilitarianism’s regard for a human being as a means rather than an end:
To regard persons as ends in themselves in the basic design of society is to agree to forgo those gains which do not contribute to their representative expectations. By contrast, to regard persons as means is to be prepared to impose upon them lower prospects of life for the sake of the higher expectations of others. (Rawls 180)
In relation to Oliver Twist, this means that an orphan should not be regarded as simply a means to an end. More specifically, in the interest of serving justice, society cannot simply regard Oliver as a means to achieve some end of productivity in the workhouse. Oliver rather, should be an end in himself and should not have such deplorable living conditions imposed on him simply so Mr. Bumble can gorge himself. Rawls also wisely point out that utilitarian thought does not account for the different interests of individuals by way of their empathy for others or the benefits of benevolence. A legislator should be able to strive for moral impartiality, but not cold moral impersonality.
In relation to my previous comments on Dachau and Buchenwald, I don’t mean to imply that Bentham would want to see people living in concentration camps. However, I do believe by judging human suffering and economic disparity purely based on quantitative analysis, one makes a potentially fatal error. Scrooge experiences a change of heart through witnessing the power of a person’s empathy for another. The fact that no one seems to feel empathy for him makes him realize his folly. Gradgrind realizes that the understanding exhibited by Sissy and others benefits human life in ways that pure factual analysis cannot match. Perhaps as a form of poetic justice, Dickens finally gives the reader a great deal of satisfaction by giving Mr. Bumble his due:
Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, deprived of their situations, were gradually reduced to great indigence and misery, and finally became paupers in the very same workhouse in which they had once lorded it over others. Mr. Bumble has been heard to say, that in this reverse and degradation he has not even spirits to be thankful for being separated from his wife. (Dickens 452)
In this staggering reversal of fortune, the Beadle finally experiences what the simple furthering of “the utility” does to degrade human life. He had no empathy for the children who suffered under him, so this empathy forces itself on him. The idea of the utility certainly has value in human society, certainly people should not act in a way that hurts society as a whole. I think that John Steward Mill’s harm principle makes up for this inequity. Society should allow individuals to live as they please, so long as they do not cause direct harm to others. This ties in with the Lockean idea that people should be permitted to act as they wish so long as they do not violate the natural rights of others. I firmly and fundamentally disagree with Bentham when he calls rights “nonsense upon stilts.” Even though the ideas of inalienable rights of life, liberty and property emerge from a hypothetical context, this does not take away from its legitimacy. If you remove human rights from the equation and rely on the positive utility of as many individuals as possible, certain atrocious acts of human ignorance and cruelty could be justified. Therefore, I believe disregarding these important rights dangerously puts humanity in a very precarious condition. I will grant Bentham one thing, passion used alone commonly yields poor results. However, logic alone potentially can lead to similarly undesirable ones. Through positive characters like Rose Maylie, Mr. Brownlow and (eventually) Ebenezer Scrooge, Dickens showed that knowledge of the greater good coupled with compassion and concern for your fellow citizens displays an ideal unattainable by purely following the pursuit of societal utility. Quantitative analysis serves a great purpose in physics, chemistry, biology, and the mathematics; however the empathetic and compassionate potential of human life to benefit that life makes using this form of analysis incompatible for formulating an ethical theory. Newton has his place in science, but that does not mean his forms of scientific inquiry should be applied to every situation. Besides, from what I’m told, he wasn’t the most charming person to be around anyway.
Works Cited and Consulted
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Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. London and New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.
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Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol and Other Stories. New York: Readers Digest, 1975.
Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Government. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980.
