te the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality" (Mill, 1986, p. 535).
Carritt explores problems with utilitarianism, dismissing first the claim that this school's adherents make an impossible suggestion when they tell us to measure pleasure and pain. Carritt says that such an argument could be made against any philosophy which draws a distinction between pleasure and pain, good and evil, etc. A more serious problem, even a "fatal" one, says Carritt, is that utilitarians "make no room for justice" (Carritt, 1986, p. 549). In other words, they did not clearly and specifically enough spell out the need for equitable rather than arbitrary distribution of happiness and pleasure among the people. The third problem, which Mill seems to have taken care of, was that utilitarianism did not distinguish between higher and lower pleasures.
The most striking criticism, however, is that utilitarianism fails to consider individual rights adequately, concentrating instead on the greatest pleasure for the greatest number. Carritt's example about hanging a framed and innocent man for a crime in which many citizens were engaging (and thus stopping the crime wave through fear) reveals a great flaw in utilitarianism with respect to justice and human rights: "If (utilitarianism) speaks of rights at all it could only say that all men have one and the same right, namely that all men should try to increase the total happiness. And this is a manifest misuse of language" (Carritt, 1
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