What the report covers

The assignment asks how utilitarian ethics can be applied in social work, and where it fails. It is an ethics paper, not a methods manual and not a defense of cutting a service without argument.

Write the theory first, in Bentham's and Mill's terms, then test it on a short practice vignette.

The principle, act and rule

Bentham framed morality around the greatest happiness, with a calculus of pleasures and pains. Mill distinguished higher and lower pleasures and allowed rules that generally promote welfare. A student paper should not collapse those differences.

Act utilitarianism asks about this case. Rule utilitarianism asks about the rule we could publicly stand by. Social work often needs both questions, because one-off exceptions can erode trust.

Limits in the field

A utility sum can justify sacrificing one client to benefit many, or hiding information 'for their own good.' Professional codes, and rights-based and care-ethics objections, are there precisely to slow that move. Confidentiality, consent, and justice for the least advantaged are not automatic outputs of a happiness total.

Rawlsian and deontological critiques belong on the page if the course has used them, but they should be named, not used as a vague wave of the hand.

A fair vignette

Take a scarce-resource problem — one housing place, two applicants — and write a utilitarian recommendation, then the objection from fairness or consent, then what the local code would require you to document.

Sources

1. Mill, J. S. (1861/1998). Utilitarianism. Oxford University Press.
2. Bentham, J. (1789/1996). An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation. Oxford University Press.
3. National Association of Social Workers. NASW Code of Ethics, and the social work ethical code in the jurisdiction the paper discusses, for duties of respect and self-determination that can conflict with a simple utility calculus.

Last updated: November 13, 2026