An Assessment of the Classical Utilitarian Approach to Moral Responsibility towards Others

Utilitarianism is a normative ethical theory that mainly focuses on public good. In this research, we deploy the method of philosophical analysis with an emphasis on the views of Bentham and Mill to provide an account of the utilitarian approach to moral responsibility. With the rejection of entitlement in moral responsibility, utilitarianism takes the origin of responsibility to lie in pleasures and pains. In its evaluations, it focuses on consequences of actions and takes the scope of responsibility to be general. We believe that responsibility is unclear in utilitarian terms, for example as to the instrumental deployment of moral values, inattentiveness to the agent’s motivation, inattentiveness to prior commitments because of the Utilitarian Principle which is a posterior principle, relativism, the predicament of naturalism, and inattentiveness to permanent afterlife pleasures, which are ignored in non-religious theories.