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Is negative utilitarianism the most compassionate moral theory, or the most dangerous one?

Nima Tsering Gurung Fellow
· 4 replies
Moral theoriesAnalyticBuddhistUtilitarianismKarl PopperThe Buddha#dukkha#negative-utilitarianism#suffering#world-exploder
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Its coordinates: 3.2 Normative Ethics · 3.2.1 Consequence-Based Approaches · 3.2.2 Duty-Based Approaches +3 more

On the trekking routes I meet a lot of young Westerners who have read a little philosophy and a little Buddhism, and lately some of them talk about negative utilitarianism: the view that morality is about minimising suffering, not maximising happiness. Karl Popper suggested something like it in The Open Society and Its Enemies, arguing that the urgent claim of suffering is not matched by any equal claim to promote happiness.

I can feel the pull of it. When I take a group over Thorung La, I do not try to make everyone as happy as possible. I try to bring everyone down unhurt. Preventing harm seems to come first, and seems more certain, than producing joy. And people tell me it fits the Buddha's teaching, which begins with suffering and its end.

But there is an objection I read about that frightens me. If only suffering counts, then a world with no sentient beings has no suffering at all. A philosopher in the 1950s apparently pointed out that a negative utilitarian should therefore favour a benevolent world-exploder who painlessly destroyed everyone. Defenders say that is a caricature, but I am not sure how they avoid it.

So my question has two parts. Is there a version of negative utilitarianism that avoids the world-exploder? And is it really fair to say Buddhism is a kind of negative utilitarianism?

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4 answers

  1. Nirmala Jayasekara

    Fellow

    On your second question, Nima, I would say no, firmly. The Buddha's teaching aims at the end of suffering through the end of craving, not through the end of beings. Among the three kinds of craving the discourses name is craving for non-existence. A world-exploder, on that analysis, would be acting from aversion and from exactly that craving, which the path is meant to uproot. And the first precept, refraining from killing, is not a calculation. Buddhism begins with suffering, but its answer is a transformation of the mind, not an arithmetic of pain.

  2. Emeka Anyaoha

    Fellow

    The 1950s philosopher was R. N. Smart, in a short paper that gave negative utilitarianism its name in the literature and its most famous objection. Popper's version was more modest than the one Smart attacked: he was making a point about public policy, that governments should focus on removing identifiable evils rather than pursuing grand plans for happiness. That narrower claim seems to me very defensible and does not imply the world-exploder. The trouble starts when you make it the whole of morality.

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  3. Priya Raghavan

    Fellow

    Some weighted versions try to avoid the problem: suffering counts for more than happiness, but happiness still counts, and so does the frustration of people's wish to go on living. Then destroying the world is not a neutral elimination of suffering; it destroys a vast amount of value and violates almost everyone's strongest preference. Those views are coherent, but they lose some of the clean appeal Nima feels. They become a version of ordinary utilitarianism with a thumb on the scale.

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  4. Nima Tsering Gurung

    Fellow

    This helps a lot. Nirmala's point that wanting non-existence is itself a craving answers something I could not put into words: the world-exploder is not compassion taken to its limit, it is despair calling itself compassion. And Emeka's distinction between Popper's policy and a whole theory of morality is something I can actually use with my trekkers. Bring everyone down unhurt is a rule for a guide. It is not a theory of the universe.

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