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Student Essay on Williams' Attack on Utilitarianism

Source: cram.com

TL;DR

A student essay analyzes Bernard Williams' "A Critique of Utilitarianism," focusing on its attack on consequence-based morality.
Williams uses examples like Jim killing one villager to save 19 and George taking a chemical weapons job to highlight threats to personal integrity.
Utilitarianism demands actions that override individual moral commitments, making people responsible for harms they fail to prevent.

The story at a glance

This Cram.com essay, labeled as a final exam response, breaks down Bernard Williams' arguments in his 1973 essay "A Critique of Utilitarianism." Williams targets utilitarianism's core idea that right actions are those producing the best outcomes, using thought experiments involving characters named Jim and George. The piece is incomplete and shifts to Immanuel Kant's ideas on autonomy, but centers on Williams' no-named author. It appears online as a student paper hosted on an essay-sharing site.[[1]](https://www.cram.com/essay/Analysis-Of-Bernard-Williams-A-Critique-Of/F3Y87VXKGY3W)

Key points

Williams rejects utilitarianism's "negative responsibility," where people are accountable not just for their actions but for any bad outcomes they could have prevented (pp. 661, 663).
In Jim's case, utilitarianism requires killing one innocent villager to save 19 others, pitting overall good against personal moral integrity.
George's dilemma: he must accept a job in chemical/biological warfare research to support his family and block a worse candidate, or refuse and let harm continue indirectly.
Both examples show utilitarianism forcing choices that degrade the agent's integrity, as actions conflict with their own moral beliefs or projects.
The essay notes a trap: refusing the job harms via the replacement worker, but accepting compromises core values either way.
It briefly contrasts this with Kant's autonomy, where rational beings follow self-given moral laws out of respect, preserving dignity (p. 336).

Details and context

Williams' original critique, from Utilitarianism: For and Against with J.J.C. Smart, argues consequentialism like utilitarianism ignores the moral agent's character and projects, treating people as mere outcome-producers.[[2]](https://www.utilitarianism.com/utilitarianism-for-and-against.pdf) The student essay faithfully recaps this but cuts off mid-analysis, suggesting it's unfinished homework rather than polished work.

The Jim and George scenarios illustrate a key tension: utilitarianism sees no moral difference between direct acts and omissions if outcomes match, but this erodes what makes life one's own.

A utilitarian reply might say such integrity costs are worth aggregate happiness, yet Williams claims this makes tragedy impossible—every dilemma dissolves into neutral calculations.

Key quotes

"In 'A Critique of Utilitarianism', Bernard Williams argues against the fundamental characteristics of utilitarianism and believes that the notion of ends justifying the means are a way of representing the doctrine of negative responsibility which can lead to consequences from the choices we make/do not make (663)."[[1]](https://www.cram.com/essay/Analysis-Of-Bernard-Williams-A-Critique-Of/F3Y87VXKGY3W)
From Kant, quoted in essay: "The word ‘respect’ is the only suitable expression for the esteem that a rational being must necessarily feel for such lawgiving. Autonomy is thus the basis of the dignity of human nature and of every rational nature” (336).[[1]](https://www.cram.com/essay/Analysis-Of-Bernard-Williams-A-Critique-Of/F3Y87VXKGY3W)

Why it matters

Williams' ideas challenge ethical theories that prioritize numbers over personal moral depth, influencing debates on how philosophy should weigh individual lives against group benefits. For students or readers grappling with ethics, it underscores that real choices often force trade-offs between "doing good" and staying true to oneself, beyond abstract rules. Watch ongoing discussions in moral philosophy journals or applied ethics, like AI decision-making, where utilitarian logic resurfaces but faces similar integrity critiques.