Kantian ethics states that we ought to treat rational beings as ends in themselves, rather than means to something else. Utilitarianism is the principle that we ought to perform the act that produces the maximize utility. So upon first inspection, we may be misguided to conclude that while a Kantian would clearly respect moral rights of other humans simply for his principle of ends, a utilitarian would not if by not doing so, an agreed-upon utility is maximized. In the following paragraphs, I will argue that this position is false with 2 reasons.
To say that utilitarianism is just a naive calculation of utility is a coarse understanding of its philosophy. Utilitarianism can be divided into two branches: act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism says that we ought to perform the act that maximizes utility, while rule utilitarianism says that we ought to follow the rules that maximizes utility, even if it deprecates the net utility in certain cases. Imagine a special case where by depriving another person of his belongings, you will somehow get a big surge of euphoria. Though in this case an act utilitarian may calmly consider the utility of performing the act of looting, a rule utilitarian will not--- because there is likely to be a rule in place that says "do not loot". If anyone is to question the assumption that there will be rules in place that respect justice and moral rights for rule utilitarians to follow, I shall use the empirical evidence of every orderly society to convince that the respect to justice and moral rights will generally generate more wealth, happiness and utility in all. Hence, even a utilitarian will respect moral rights.
But let us take a step back and hold on to our suspicion of utilitarians. Let us first answer the question of where justice comes from. My second reason argues that utilitarianism not only respects justice and moral rights, but also is the very place where these good things derives from. Where does justice come from? Not so long ago, it was thought just to kill and enslave people because of their race. What we take to be the very absoluteness of justice, may not have been so absolute after all. The reason why we moved away from that abhorrent phase of humanity, is that we realized that the old discriminatory version of justice really does not make sense--- since every one is no more and no less than one unit of utility, it is unfair to prioritize the happiness of one group over the other. Hence we thrived towards equality, moral rights of everyone, and our current version of justice. Utilitarian not only respects justice and moral rights, but also leads it to the right direction, which is the direction we intuitively understand nowadays.
To conclude, just like Kantian ethics, utilitarianism can also explain justice and moral rights.
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