Utilitarianism for Dummies

Well, as a non-philosophy major who is attempting to stay afloat in this class of seemingly philosophically-gifted people, I am going to try to make sense of utilitarianism because, as I see it, this is something that (and yes, we said this in class) seems to actually apply to everyone's daily lives in today's modern world. In every sense. Whether we realize it or not. Granted, "justice" is supposed to apply to our daily lives as well ; ) ... but utilitarianism moreso than even the categorical imperative seems to be something that people do automatically, whether or not they can quote Kant or Mill.

Here is my reasoning for this. I believe that the categorical imperative is a great idea--and definitely a concrete way to define justice. Just like "treat others the way you want to be treated" and other cliches tend to idealize situations (because there is no way that we always treat others the way we want to be treated...everyone has those days), the categorical imperative states that humans should apply the maxim of their decisions to a universal law in order for it to be just. Therefore, lying to save someone or lying to not hurt someone's feelings is STILL unjust, though in some cases like Anne Frank, not necessarily immoral. (Please, class-- feel free to correct me if I'm wrong... I'm really trying to make sense of this all!) So we all pretty much agreed that while Kant would say that this is unjust, we all would still lie to save Anne Frank.

It is in applying utilitarianism to the Frank situation, however, that I believe utilitarianism comes to play when explaining why I would house her (or be a part of something like the Underground Railroad). Without any particular philosopher’s help, I would probably say, first of all, that I was helping Anne or slaves because I believe it is the just or right thing to do. If I successfully saved them, it would make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside…so YES I did do it to, in some twisted way, appeal to my own happiness as a human being. And if I didn’t help, I’d probably feel like a pretty rotten person for a pretty long while. Correct me if I'm wrong-- but isn't this utilitarianism?

In other daily situations, I believe that we all are utilitarian in that we do what appeals to our "happiness factor," in both small and big ways, or lower and higher pleasures. We hold the door open for the person behind us because of the joy we get when the person smiles and says "thank you" or because we think it is the right/nice thing to do... just like we feel bad when we slam the door in someone's face. If someone doesn't feel bad about doing that, then they are appealing to their own happiness by not paying attention to others and only to their self, and it obviously doesn't affect them in the slightest sense. We eat when we're hungry, help others out when they ask us a favor, volunteer at various places like hospitals (whether that's because we have the urge to help or because we want to boost our resume)... any and all of these situations appeal ultimately to our happiness as a person or we wouldn't do it in the first place.

Unfortunately, I don't really know where I'm going with this. What I do know is that even though we may NOT know the exact consequences of what is to come, we act in a way that we THINK the consequences will turn out well. There are times when people have good intentions and act utilitarially (so not a word... but work with me here!) like say your roommate does your laundry for you and accidentally turns all your white clothes pink. The consequences: not so good, not so happy, not the goal. But the intentions were to act in a utilitarian way, and I think that it's how I live my life and how most people live theirs.