- 上一篇：中美跨文化交际中的高低语境文化对比研究
- 下一篇：德语论文中德有关身体部位谚语的比较
This thesis aims to explore the destructive influence on humanity by utilitarianism philosophy in Victorian Age, and to reveal the darkness of utilitarian moral principle which oppresses human nature and fosters a distorted value. Through analyzing distorted characters, the thesis makes it clear that utilitarianism makes men lose much born humanity, i.e., imagination, innocence, amiability, etc. These analyses have realistic significance in modern life, because utilitarianism is also prevailing in our society. This thesis exposes some utilitarian phenomena in China’s educational system.
This thesis falls into four aspects. The first part is a brief introduction of Bentham’s philosophy of utilitarianism. It is an important theoretical foundation of the entire thesis. Through analyzing two typical utilitarians and related main characters in Hard Times, the second part is to explore how utilitarianism destroys human nature and leads to the tragedies of characters. In the third part, the thesis makes a reflection on utilitarian phenomena in real life. In the final analysis, the thesis comes to a conclusion about the research subject.
2 A Brief Survey of the Philosophy of Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism, a theory in ethics, holds that the proper course of action is to maximize utility, i.e., maximizing happiness and reducing suffering. As a philosophical school, it springs up during the period of the late 18th century and the early 19th century. Utilitarian philosophy is first put forward by Jeremy Bentham in 1780, the 18th century English political philosopher, and then improved by John Stuart Mill, a successor and developer of the philosophy.
2.1 The Historical Background and Origin of Utilitarianism
As early as 17th century, the basic idea of utilitarianism was recorded in Hobbes’ and Hume’s works. In moral philosophy, Bentham and Mill were, therefore, not innovators, for their predecessors already stated the Principle of Utilitarianism in its general form. What makes Bentham and Mill stand out as the two best-known utilitarians is that they proposed a complete set of the Philosophy of Utilitarianism, succeeding in connecting it with many problems of their time when Britain had become the most developed economy with the fastest pace in the development of capitalism after two industrial revolutions.
Thus, the Philosophy of Utilitarianism is a product under a specific historical background. On one hand, the industrial revolution, in terms of social structure, witnessed the triumph of a middle class composed of industrialists and businessmen, also called as the capitalist class, over a landed class composed of nobility and gentry. On the other hand, ordinary working people, the proletariat, found increased opportunities for employment in the new mills and factories, though these jobs were often under strict working conditions with long hours of labor and dominated by a pace set by machines. (Jiang, 2006:198) Therefore, the huge gap between the poor and the rich gave rise to a sharp conflict between the capitalist class and the working class. The capitalist class needed a theoretical basis to oppress the working class in an effective way when the latter complained their suffering and wanted to resist the harsh exploitation exerted by the former. It was under such social condition that the Philosophy of Utilitarianism came into being as a weapon of thought to defend capitalist production relations.
2.2 The Essence and Definition of Utilitarianism
“Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) was a British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. He is considered as the founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham became a leading theoretician in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of British welfarism.
Bentham’s ambition in life was to create a “Pannomion”, a complete utilitarian code of law. He not only proposed many legal and social reforms, but also expounded an underlying moral principle on which they should be based. “The fundamental axiom of utilitarianism is that the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”(Net 2)