For example, a country which respects the human rights to life and liberty is likely to be happier than one which permits the abuse of the weak. Rule utilitarianism tries to simplify the decision-making process and protect against people misusing the felicific calculus to justify selfish decisions in the 'heat of the moment' by adopting some rules, which though based on general utility, do not take account of the particular situation. First amongst the preference utilitarians was RM Hare, who also proposed so-called 'two-level utilitarianism' that is, a compromise between the extremes of act utilitarianism (choosing the course of action that will generate the most pleasure) and rule utilitarianism (considering the consequences of consistently following a rule regarding what action to take) that were being discussed at the time he wrote.
Some of the most well known can be described as 'preference utilitarianism', which seeks to overcome the difficulty of defining pleasure by arguing that we should just seek to act in the interests (whatever they may be) of the majority. Act utilitarianism vs rule utilitarianismĭuring the twentieth century many different versions of utilitarianism have been proposed.
