Does the end always justify the means?

Utilitarianism is a theory that states an action which brings about the greatest good for the greatest number of people, is morally right. Jeremy Bentham, who devised this theory, said that this principle will help you come to the decision of whether an action is good or bad. Bentham saw pleasure as the ultimate goal for ethics. His aim was to maximise pleasure and minimise pain. John Mills developed this theory focusing on maximising the general happiness. Taking Bentham’s and Mill’s statements of utilitarianism into consideration, it asserts that any action can be justified as long as it brings about more pleasure than pain. This tells us that sometimes the end does justify the means. The ‘end’ being the outcome of our actions and the ‘means’ being the actions taken in order to reach this result. This phrase refers to the morality of an action. It means that the morality of an action is based only on the outcome, not on the action itself. 

If we followed this idiom, we would be acting on the idea that if you need a specific outcome, the way we get there is not important. Can the benefits of something, as the final result, outweigh the harm caused during the process? This is what causes disputes on whether or not we can justify the means by the end. Utilitarianism suggests that an action is morally right if it brings about the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This suggests that the means (actions) are not important if the outcome produces the greatest good for the greatest number. We could say that this supports the idea that the ends do justify the means. However, in the process of reaching an aimed goal, there might be many damages produced, causing pain. Pain goes against the theory of utilitarianism as the idea is to minimise pain whilst maximising pleasure. Even if the outcome produces maximum happiness for many people, what happens to the people hurt in the process? There will always be a minority that are not satisfied as their needs are not met; which is a major flaw in the system of utilitarianism. 

There are many examples of this e.g. abortion. If a woman has fallen pregnant unintentionally for various reasons such as rape, it is not expected of her to keep the baby. It could be a very mentally challenging act if she was to give birth to, and raise the child. In this case, the blameless conclusion would be to abort this baby. However, the actions that cause the loss of the baby are seen as morally wrong. Therefore, just because the conclusion of a decision may be good, the actions that enabled this conclusion may not be so good.


AC