Ethical philosophy I want
After carefully going through the ethical philosophies we looked at I found that I can identify myself with utilitarianism. Utilitarianism refers to how one come to choose an action or choice based on what is right and what is wrong. It refers that a person chooses something to be right if what is chosen brings or increases happiness to that person and to other people. Utilitarianism is against the idea of being selfish. Something is wrong if it brings pain to the person or if it causes pain to others. So with utilitarianism there is emphasis on the interests of others as much as there need for the person making the decision to benefit. On top of what have been said utilitarianism is also based on the principle of utility. The principle of utility states that a rational person does something that brings the most satisfaction or benefit.
In my life I like to do things that please not only me but others. I avoid things that are likely to bring displeasure to other people. As a religious person I grew with the idea of putting other people’s interests as much as mine. I do not like to do things that hurt other people. The question of utility to me is very important. I did Economics at high school, where we learned about the essence of maximising satisfaction. This satisfaction can be to me, to my family, to other people in the community or to my country
When you use utilitarianism, there are basic steps a person may take in making decisions or on choosing what one has to do or not to do. One needs to assess the level of benefits as compared to the level of harm. A person needs to find out various ways of doing a thing or to identify various options before one. One each of these options one needs to identify the benefits. Then the person must as well identify the costs or disadvantages of that action. One needs to find what outweighs the other the benefits or the harms. A person would choose an option that has the greatest benefits and the least negatives, and do that. An example of a dilemma I faced was of sending our children to a nearby school, which is very cheap but with poor education or sending the children to a school that is far away and expensive but with a very high quality of education for our children. The nearby school was cheaper, but that would pose a great disadvantage to our children since the education was very poor. I later decided to send the children to a far off school which was more expensive but with a good education for our children. The greatest benefit was having our children having good education. I made this decision at a company level. I am the one who decides where our children go. This is so because the company pays for transport and tuition. I wanted to meet the interest of our children, who will have a better future. I looked at the benefits and the costs; the benefits far outweigh the costs.
Another decision I made based on that ethical consideration was on introducing some employee projects in our company. As a senior person in the Human resources department I make a lot of final decisions. When I came to the company the employee welfare was very poor. I worked hard to improve the welfare of my employees. That meant that I had reduced bonus. In our company the more you reduce costs the higher the bonus you get at the end of the year. My boss wanted me to put measures to cut costs. However I found it hard for me to reduce costs so that we cut costs, yet the employees had poor facilities. Improving the welfare facilities reduced diseases and the death rate in that company. Previously many children used to die due to poor sanitation. So I found it better for me to better the lives of many people than having myself benefit at their own expenses.
One thing that made me to adopt such a utilitarian approach is that in my country some years back there was the political philosophy of socialism. Yes socialism may be bad but it assists many people to have good life styles. Most of my education comes about because of assistance from other people, since my family was very poor. May be that is one of the philosophy that was adopted by the founders of the University of the People, in a bid to assist many other people like myself.
Having said the above, I am happy to use the utilitarianism philosophy in my life.
Reference
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism http://www.utilitarianism.com/mil1.htm http://webs.wofford.edu/kaycd/ethics/util.htm http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/cavalier/80130/part2/sect9.html http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practising/decision/calculating.html