Philosophy Now Forum

Utilitarian principle of the Greater Good.
The Utilitarian principle of the Greater Good is not Holistic Altruism.
It can be used to justify all and any perceived benefit to the nation or world as a whole, or people in the mass, where this outweighs mere local harm and benefit. It can therefore ruin the whole world piecemeal by slow degrees. A tribe of Amerindians may be displaced so as to be dispersed and lost in the mass of humanity, if not exterminated. The natural world may be dissected and lost. On a globalised scale of mass humanity, no community or nation may survive, other than as a piece of geography or random fraction of the whole. The ethic of our world today has become based on the individual in the mass. The Greater Good, in a perverse form, may be what we have in China today. At best it is the well meaning face of tyranny. What may be described as Trumpian individualism, is not concerned for the other person. The Greater Good as a top-down ethic cannot work rationally in the socially chaotic world of today, it merely inflicts the chaos on every region, nation, and community. The good of the world needs to be created community and nation by nation.

The Greater Good in the utilitarian system may be positive in some ways but the danger is, it has the potential to promote extreme evil disguised as 'good'.
In some cases, the intention may be for the greater 'good' but due to subjectivity, deception, bias or ignorance of what 'good' should be the consequences turned out to be evil.

Nevertheless, the idea of the 'greater good' could still be useful for a moral and ethical system if 'good' is defined and established as good per se, i.e. with fool proof features that do not hide any potential evil elements.

For example if the 'greater good' is to be comprised of the moral ought like 'no human ought to kill another human' where could evil creep into such a maxim.

Whatever fool proof moral oughts are to included within the 'greater good' they must be verified and justified empirically and philosophically as Justified True Moral Beliefs, i.e. moral facts.

RWStanding wrote: ↑Tue Nov 17, 2020 12:04 pmWhat may be described as Trumpian individualism, is not concerned for the other person.

I think that here, ideology veers from reality.

Trumpian individualism is about making deals, not wars. Without concern for customer, client, associate, co-worker, family or neighbor, the individualist cannot make deals.

Concern is at the root of all Trump policies. This is why, after orchestrating one of the greatest, if not the greatest, economic recoveries in history, he made the humane decision to shut down that economy and plunge the nation into further debt to sustain life of the population, knowing this would be temporary, confident that his economic policies would revive the economy, as they have been doing. He did everything in his power to help people, within the rules of federalism.

The error lies in conflating competition with unconcern. Think of a sporting match between two teams. Each team has great concern for the other team, as each Trumpian individualist has for the other. Without the other team there is no sporting match, there is no deal.

When everyone sweeps their own step and protects their own health the greater good is served.