Y Safle

Utilitarianism is the philosophy that says the moral worth of an action is determined by its utility only, and the utility is defined in terms of the greatest good for the greatest number.

For instance, if we see people in poverty, and they cannot afford to eat, then we are morally obliged to give them money or help them out of poverty, because it is in their best interests that we do so. So far so good.

But an objection to utilitarianism is that if a single man with no immediate family walks into a hospital where there is a man needing a heart transplant, another needing a liver transplant, another needing a kidney transplant, then we should kill the single man and harvest his organs. The greatest utility comes from the sacrifice of the one man to cure the three.

A utilitarian might reply that in the real world such could not happen, because a hospital that acted in such a way would quickly fall into disuse as no sensible person would darken its doors. But this, to me, is little more than a kind of special pleading. The problem with utilitarianism as a philosophy lies entirely within the assumption that our innate sense of morality must be ignored.

You see, a utilitarian will point to emotional and instinctive responses to moral questions and argue that these are evolutionary vestiges that may not be appropriate in the modern context. They will say we must ignore the emotional response that cries out that it is simply wrong to kill a man to harvest his organs. Moral choices are reduced to a simple economy of utility.

So should we invade a country to remove a despotic dictator? The utilitarian must say yes - if the end result will be in the interests of more people than the number of whom it is against their interests.

There is no place for the belief that we have some innate worth beyond being beans to be counted in the weighing up of utility.

But if we, each of us, matter to God. If we bear his image then we are more than carriers of organs (or self interests or whatever). As bearers of his image we have worth that cannot be measured in this simplistic manner.