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Utilitarianism And John Stuart Mill's Analysis

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Utilitarianism was brought about by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. The basic premise of this idea of Utilitarianism is to promote the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people. John Stuart Mill wrote an entire book on Utilitarianism. In this book, he refers to Utilitarianism and the idea of utility as the “Greatest Happiness Principle” (Mill, 2007, p. 6). Mill says that the “Greatest Happiness Principle holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to promote the reverse of happiness” (Mill, 2007, p. 6). According to Mill, when an action makes a person happy, it is a good action. The opposite is true that when an action makes a person unhappy, the action is wrong. …show more content…

When the person dies, all pain and suffering he or she was feeling ends. There are a lot of moral issues that come along with the idea of euthanasia. It seems as though a lot of humans today view euthanasia as a selfish way out, similar to the views on suicide. In James Rachels’ book, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, he says that euthanasia goes against “the dominant moral tradition in our culture. That tradition is Christianity” (2012, p. 100). Euthanasia is seen by most people in the United States as …show more content…

Peter Singer is defending voluntary euthanasia by saying that if the patient is suffering, euthanasia is justified by the idea of Utilitarianism (Singer, 1993). When a person is euthanized per his or her choice, that person is ending up happy. It would be wrong of anyone to withhold the death the suffering, pain filled, and unhappy patient so desperately wants. The quote from this essay, “death is a benefit for the one killed” (Singer, 1993) pretty perfectly sums up why euthanasia can be supported by

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