Utilitarianism is a philosophy that is designed to determine whether a given action is right or wrong. It centres around the principle of utility, which states that an action is right if it tends to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. It can also be phrased to define a right action to be the one that minimises suffering for the greatest number of people. Effectively, according to this philosophy, an action is correct if the resulting benefits outweigh the harmful effects. Utilitarianism is often viewed as a political philosophy that entails a democratic government as a political institution, and utilitarian arguments are most commonly used where a decision affects a large number of people.

Utopian philiosophy such as the theory of personal heaven can be viewed as a form of utilitarianism. The main difference is that a Utopian philosophy sets an ultimate idealistic goal whereas ordinary utilitarian arguments focus on the results of a given action. Utilitarian arguments accept the status quo, and determine how improvements can be made in a single action. Potentially, if all actions are made on a utilitarian basis, many improvements could be made, but an ultimate Utopian goal might never be achieved.

An example of a utilitarian argument is as follows. In the UK, there have been doubts about the safety of a vaccine designed to protect people from being infected with measles, mumps or rubella (the MMR vaccine). However, further research has suggested that the vaccine is safe. Due to the safety concerns, too few children have been vaccinated, meaning that the population is at risk from these diseases. Levels of immunisation need to increase from 85% to 95% to give protection against an epidemic. The Fabian Society has proposed a utilitarian argument to solve this problem. They suggest that children should be denied a place at school and that child benefits should be taken away from parents unless their children are vaccinated. Effectively, they propose that parents should be very strongly encouraged to consent to their children having the MMR vaccine to reduce the potential suffering of the population.

This argument takes into consideration that children do not have the free choice to decide whether or not to be vaccinated, because their parents make this choice on their behalf. Normally, parents can be relied upon to act in the selfish interests of their children, but the health scare surrounding the MMR vaccine has meant that some parents have decided that it is in the best interests of their children not to allow them to have the vaccine. In doing so, they may be putting their own children and other unvaccinated children at risk from infection. The utilitarian argument is therefore acting to protect children who are not old enough to make an informed decision about vaccination.

In my opinion, this argument is in line with loving your neighbour as yourself given the current structure of society. This does not mean that the current structure of society is the best one, or that this utilitarian argument is ideal. In my opinion, the main failing of the principle of utility is that it can be used to select the lesser of two evils without attempting to address the underlying issues of why there are only two evils to choose between.