功利와 公利

Abstract

I think there is a strong possibility of misunderstanding the core of utilitarianism because of the everyday meaning of the language that utility itself has if we do not consider “whose” utility it is. Utility is often misunderstood as synonymous with “efficiency,” and this misunderstanding is understandable in the everyday sense of the language. Many misunder- standings about utilitarianism originated here. If you ask again whose utility it is, the meaning of ‘utility’ is definitely different. The objective of utilitarianism, “freedom from pain and pleasure,” focuses on the majority rather than the individual. It is the sum of everyone’s happiness put together. In other words, utility means “social utility”. I think about what it would be like if the official name of utility was public interest. This goes against the setting of the names of the advocates of utilitarianism, but I think it will be a name that reflects the claims of the advocates of utilitarianism. Public interest means public interest. The public good is the promotion of public pleasure and the elimination of public pain. Since the enhancement of pleasure and the elimination of pain are called the enhancement of happiness, the enhancement of the public interest refers to the enhancement of public happiness. Utilitarians such as Bentham and Mill advocated ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ to solve the structure of ‘minority vs. majority’, and promoted policies to protect the oppressed majority from the minority. It is my opinion that the help of utilitarianism is needed to solve the problem of ‘minority vs. majority’ reproduced by today’s capitalism. Regarding the problem of ‘the (oppressive) majority versus the (oppressed) minority’, a different approach is required, not utilitarianism, which is not a contra- diction in my utilitarianism. ‘Utilitarianism’ that seeks to solve multiple problems is by no means exclusive. It goes hand in hand with a theory that solves a small number of problems. Mill said that his theory has ‘multifacetedness’. Solutions are different for each problem area, but one theory cannot be correct in all areas. A solution in one area may be a wrong solution in another. Policies for the majority and policies for the minority can and should coexist. Communism is linked to other theories in relation to securing minority human rights and diversity.