Tyranny of the Majority

The ‘tyranny of the majority’ criticism is that actions which exploit or abuse an individual or minority can be justified if their suffering is outweighed by the happiness experienced by a larger group. This is a problem because it seems that utilitarianism ignores the (assumed) rights of an individual, which undermines our basic intuitions about fairness and justice.

Consider the following two examples which seem to show that the exploitation of an individual can be justified on utilitarian grounds (because doing so maximises pleasure for the greatest amount).

 

First, imagine a small town in panic after a young girl is murdered. The police have no leads and fear is spreading across the community. They are under extreme pressure to catch the killer so they decide to blame Trevor, an innocent man, for the crime. They reason that they are justified in falsely imprisoning Trevor since his suffering will be outweighed by the happiness experienced by the town now that they believe the killer has been caught.

 

Second, imagine a surgeon who has five patients, each of whom will die if they do not receive an appropriate organ transplant - a heart, two kidneys, a liver, and lungs. The surgeon then has a routine appointment with Pam, a healthy patient, who happens to be a perfect match as a donor for all five patients. The surgeon decides to kill Pam in order to save the lives of the five others. She reasons that her action is justified because the happiness secured by saving the life of five people outweighs the suffering experienced by Pam.

 

In both cases we can see that actions that may have been wrong before, framing an innocent person and committing murder, are now ‘right’ because they benefit a larger number of people. However, to many people it seems unacceptable for a moral theory to allow this because of the belief that individual rights should be protected regardless of the consequences.

 

One way the utilitarian might reply to the ‘tyranny of the majority’ criticism would be to say that such actions cannot actually be justified by utilitarianism. In reality, there would be a major scandal if people found out that a surgeon had killed one of their patients. People would be too scared to go to the doctor and become ill and die as a result. Similarly, the townsfolk would no longer trust law enforcement if they found out that Trevor had been falsely accused. Other people might be murdered if the real killer remains free. So on reflection, falsely accusing Trevor and killing Pam do not actually produce the best consequences and so would not be justified according to utilitarianism.