According John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism is the ultimate theory in not only ethics, but for life in general. However, being that the utilitarian theory is extreme, there are many critics of it. One of the arguments that Mill comes under fire for is that utilitarianism is a cold and unsympathizing theory that does not take into account past actions, or the character of the person.
To this Mill responds that one could make this argument against any theory of morality. In other words, no theory judges an action to be good or bad based on the person doing them. He then goes on to say that just because somebody does do a good action still does not make them a good person and vice versa.
I feel that this argument is a poor one. Suppose a child, or a handicapped person, or even somebody that was simply incapable of knowing what right from wrong performs an action that decreases overall happiness. It would make no difference who it was: whether it was the 3 year old or the 30 year old, both actions would be just as wrong, and this just doesn’t seem right. If a person does something wrong and KNOWS that it is wrong, it seems that it is worse than someone who did the same action NOT KNOWING that it was wrong. To make a claim that there isn’t a single moral theory in the entire world that is capable of making this distinction is just as extreme as the theory of utilitarianism itself.
