Utilitarians emphasize the role of sympathy in thinking about morality, this is important to take into consideration because it is right to acknowledge the reality of strong human compassion. We cannot separate ourselves from the feelings that drive our behavior, even if it reason that drives our thinking. One could argue that we need both sympathy and reason to dictate our morals, however, I believe we don’t need both but we have both. Morals can be derived from reason alone, they will always be considered rational and true. Yet our human passions can deter us from following this rational morality and therefore create the necessity for morals derived from reason, but implemented with human consideration. It can therefore be said that reason is the dictator of morality but sympathy that makes it humanly intrinsic. Hume had similar views and claimed that reason doesn’t motivate moral action: “Abstract reasoning therefore, never influences any of our actions, but only as it directs our judgement concerning cause and effects…” (Hume, p. 51) through this it can be argued that to establish a morality one need only use reason but to put morality to use we must consider sympathy and emotion as key components.
In considering the opposing characteristics of Mill’s argument to Kant’s, one must recognize that Kant does not deny the existence or, the importance of sympathy and emotion as dictators for moral conscience. He does however, impress upon us that it is the refusal to act on those sentiments that guides us toward the proper moral principles. He establishes that an immoral act is not reasonable because it doesn’t comply with the categorical imperatives he sets forth. I don’t wish to dispute that any immoral act violates Kant’s categorical imperatives, however I think that acting on those sentiments does not deem us immoral or irrational. This discordance between belief and behavior is driven by the strength of our passions and emotions, making us follow our instincts and not a morality derived from reason. Aristotle dealt with this problem under the term akrasia, which can be defined as “behavior that goes against reason as a result of emotion” (Plato Stanford Encyclopedia, Web). It can be stated simply that if you know what the right thing to do is, and decide to do the wrong thing, then it cannot be said that it is reason that drives our behavior. Hume would agree with this and stated similarly: “Whatever is incapable of being true or false cannot be an object of our reason…our passions and actions, complete in themselves, are not susceptible of being original facts and realities and can therefore not be pronounced true or false and be either contrary or conformable to reason” (Hume, p. 53)
Mill’s ideas on utilitarianism should factor into our morality in that it looks to maximize the ‘good’, practice putting others before yourself and incorporates human emotion into the morals that dictate our behavior. It can be noted that often our morals strongly correlate with common sense. It is generally accepted that there are things we have an affinity for and things we have an aversion for, such as pleasure and pain. Through these commonsensical truths we derive morals, for example murder is immoral and social harmony is desirable. Although there may be people with conflicting beliefs and moral principles, utilitarianism looks at the greatest good for the greatest amount of people to be the overarching determinant of morality. Mill defines utility as “actions that are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Mill, p. 90). A certain benefit to a utilitarian point of view is that it does not draw the strict line between rational and irrational that Kant so strongly ties to reason. He claimed that “An action is right if it conforms to a moral rule that any agent must follow if he or she is to act rationally” (Kant, p. 81). The utilitarian view is favorable because it not only allows for the interference of sentiment, but also creates an understanding for certain cases and the flexibility with which we judge certain actions.
The problem with utilitarianism is that it requires you to choose happiness for all, over individual happiness, where we once again meet the belief-behavior discordance. For this reason, we can claim that utilitarianism opposes personal autonomy and asks us to choose happiness over our morality, which in itself poses moral questions. Mill acknowledges this in saying that: “The utilitarian morality does recognize the power of sacrificing one’s own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice itself is a good…unless it increases the sum total of happiness” (Mill, p. 92)
I agree with the claim that we need both sympathy and reason in order to derive our morality, with emphasis on the difference between thinking about our moral principles and acting on those moral principles. I would argue that Kant is right in claiming that reason dictates our morality however, that emotion and sympathy cannot be excluded from the equation in considering the course of action that puts our morality in action.