This study will examine Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics in an attempt to devise an alternative approach to ethics using both philosophical schools. The study will first discuss the problems facing both schools.
There was a basic dispute about a problem of utilitarianism which emerged from within the school itself. Bentham was accused by Mill of having devised a system which was grounded in the lower or physical pleasures. The intricate system of measurement suggested by Bentham is indicative of the materialistic nature of his philosophy. Bentham suggested that the pleasure or pain upon which the ethics of an act and its consequences were to be based and assessed could be accurately measured by considering seven elements: "its intensity, its duration, its certainty or uncertainty, its propinquity or remoteness, its fecundity, its purity, its extent" (Bentham, 1986, p. 529).
Bentham himself acknowledged the absurdity of his system when he concluded that "It is not to be expected that this process should be strictly pursued previously to every moral judgment" (Bentham, 1986, p. 530).
Mill sought to correct Bentham's errors by emphasizing the quality of the pleasure being sought: "It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that . . . the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone" (Mill, 1986, p. 533).
So Mill composed a system of ethical thought in which the most moral act was that which, out of a series of choices, gave the most and highest pleasure to the greatest number of people. At the same time, Mill clearly invoked a religious principle underlying utilitarianism as he saw it, or at least drew distinct connections between utilitarianism and Christian ethics, when he wrote that "To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbor as yourself, constitu...