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Examples Of Utilitarianism In The Dark Knight

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One of my favorite movies The Dark Knight relates directly to the philosophy of utilitarianism. The theory of utilitarianism focuses on how to increase the amount of happiness in a society. In addition, utilitarianism seeks to distribute happiness to the most people in a society (Pojman and Vaughn 191). In the movie The Dark Knight the characters make important moral choices and utilitarianism can be used to understand the motives of the characters. There is a bigger picture to The Dark Knight instead of just being an action movie because of how the character’s decisions in the movie can be compared to utilitarian principles based on whether the characters make the right moral decisions. The utilitarian philosophers Jeremy Bentham and …show more content…

In addition, he was concerned with distributing the most happiness to the most people while decreasing the unhappiness (Pojman and Vaughn 191-192). John Stuart Mill believed that the quality of happiness is more important than the quantity of it. In fact, he puts happiness into different categories based on the emotions it relates to (Pojman and Vaughn 192). The heroes in the movie best represent the utilitarian ideas of Bentham and Mill. There are two important characters in The Dark Knight. The hero of the movie is Batman while the villain is the Joker ( Chris Nolan, The Dark Knight). What is significant is how the characters have different moral views on killing. The Joker is depicted as insane, ruthless and has the desire to bring chaos to the city of Gotham (Batman Wikia The Joker). What makes the Joker important is that he acts amoral. Amoral means that a person does not believe in a system of morals (Stein and Urdang 49). There are a few scenes in the movie which help to describe the Joker as amoral. In the first scene of the movie the Joker orders his men to kill each other. In an additional, scene he is shown

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