The initial details about a teenage suicide a few blocks from my apartment last week were sketchy. It appears as I write, though, that the deceased was in a class about utilitarianism at Regis High School. That means the death was in my physical neighborhood and my philosophical neighborhood, inevitably making me wonder how culpable some faction I champion might be. Utilitarianism, like many philosophies, gets misunderstood and misrepresented both by its detractors and, on occasion, by its supporters.
Stated briefly, it’s the commonsensical and humane view that we should aim to make everyone happy, if possible. Not in a self-defeating or inherently contradictory way (such as by shooting people up with so much morphine they can’t feel pain but also can’t function and soon die) nor in a shallow way that makes the life of the person in question meaningless and psychologically irrelevant (such as by devoting decades to stroking the same soft piece of velvet over and over again without a coherent thought) but in a healthy, well-rounded way that among other things fosters the capacity for still more happiness in the future.
I think this philosophy is true and that other proposed moral systems are acceptable precisely to the degree that they too, deliberately or by happenstance, foster happiness in the long run. I’m not shocked when people mangle the message of utilitarianism, whether through ignorance, mischief, or some hazy combo, though to me, of course, it seems almost too straightforward to screw up.
Nonetheless, even an ostensibly intelligent pundit like Jonah Goldberg, for instance, has scornfully misstated utilitarianism’s core claim as the belief that you should do whatever makes you happy, regardless of the impact on others, which is almost the opposite of what the philosophy advises. I walk around all day hoping to maximize the world’s happiness, and smears from people like Goldberg are the thanks I get.
Apparently, whatever the deceased said about utilitarianism was so shocking and offensive that word got back to other students’ parents, who pressed the school administration to give the student a talking-to, one that he was waiting to get when he apparently decided to avoid the whole conversation by leaping out a window, probably not in the long term the utility-maximizing thing to do. That narrative was easy enough to believe, since a high school student in possession of a new, malleable philosophy might easily have mused aloud—as one should be permitted to do in a properly functioning classroom—about, say, whether utilitarianism should lead to executing the fat kid in the back of class whom no one likes if that seems as if it would result in greater collective happiness. Parents get upset about comments like that.
Now, like most utilitarians, I don’t think you should kill or even harm anyone if it can be avoided, since that sort of behavior quickly erodes the very rules and moral calculations through which we’re striving to boost happiness. But kids get things wrong, so I was prepared for at least fleeting and mild embarrassment on behalf of my creed (and if you think utilitarianism is embarrassing, try telling people you think the most efficient rule for fostering the greatest happiness in the greatest number of people is consistent property rights adherence, a.k.a. libertarianism, but that’s a topic for countless other columns—and for econ classes rather than ethics classes, since schools often insist on treating the topics separately in this early and primitive stage of civilization).
It’s not yet clear exactly what went on in the class in question, though. Was the kid being harried by parents for talking like a utilitarian at a Catholic high school or for being the one morally-traditionalistic kid at a liberal Jesuit-run high school, surrounded by shallow utilitarians of the most cynical and embarrassing sort, the kind who are always ready to begin the mass abortions for the tiniest gain in feminist careerism or green-light the total eradication of humanity for the sake of other species? (I’d bet some of the Effective Altruism movement’s members are de facto sociopaths despite the pleasant label and utilitarian rationale.) According to the conservative blog JusticeMoms, one associate headmaster at Regis wrote to faculty: “Under no circumstances discuss the classroom content with press or parents. Refer all inquiries to legal.”
Cryptic! Now that sounds like the Jesuits—perhaps out to hide unsettling sophistry from would-be defenders of timeless moral absolutes. But then, the whole political/cultural spectrum is lawyered up and armored against bad publicity and legal culpability these days, so who knows. And you thought the Dalton School a few blocks north was scandalous.
Well, without for a moment thinking we can or should make every classroom free of anxiety or controversy, I’ll simply wish all the kids there the best and hope they can learn and argue without being driven to their deaths by a mob, be it one that fancies itself utile or saintly.
I agree heartily with St. Thomas Aquinas that even God, if he existed and were omnipotent but were still bound by logic, could not create square circles, since that’s a contradiction. But I’d advise people, including teachers and children, to consider the subsidiary philosophy called “rule utilitarianism,” that is, the somewhat tension-resolving idea that maximum happiness is the thing to aim for morally but that we get there mainly by adhering to good, broadly-useful moral rules (such as “Thou shalt not kill”) rather than by picking whatever seems like the hedonistic or altruistic quickest path in the short term, which so easily gets complicated and leads to a hodgepodge of random policies or to hasty split-second decisions such as throwing oneself out a window.
New and better options will likely present themselves in the future, no matter your predicament. Stick around and see, even if that rule causes frustration in the short term.
—Todd Seavey is the author of Libertarianism for Beginners and is on X at @ToddSeavey