Rights Vs Utilitarianism Essay

Rights and Utilitarianism are in some ways connected to one another, however, they mostly differ. Rights are akin to laws, which occurs after an event as to prevent the event from happening again and to protect individuals. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, is a philosophical idea that focuses solely on the consequences of an event and whether the consequences bring harm or benefits to the people who are affected and involved in the said event. Because both these concepts relate to an event, it shows they are somewhat intertwined. Furthermore, both rights and utilitarianism end in whether an action is ethical or not. However, the process of determining whether an action is or is not ethical is what draws the line between these two concepts. The idea of rights

For example, the idea of sacrificing one child to save many lives is considered a grey area kind of topic because morally, most would say there is no need to sacrifice the life of the child and there are other ways to solve the problem and the child has a right to live. Yet, they fail to realize they are avoiding the situation at hand by bringing in a third-party idea. Contrary to this, utilitarianism states that it is ethical to sacrifice the child because the consequences would bring more benefits. Many lives would be saved, the family of those individuals who were saved would be grateful, and so on. Although there are benefits, the downside to this is that the family of the child would mourn and the public may also see that it was morally wrong, consequently creating laws to prevent this kind of situation from occurring again. Another example is the current hate crime against Muslims and African Americans. These people all have rights, such as freedom of speech and so on, yet they are treated unfairly and deemed a lower