Recognizing the truth: Human action beyond utilitarianism

Abstract

After having made explicit and analyzed the utilitarian assumptions present in economic science, Chap. 4 presents Rosmini’s critical arguments on the former and, at the same time, tries to show the author’s own positive formulation of human action. Rosmini’s main criticism aims at the anthropological core of utilitarianism, which conceives human action as a behavior always oriented towards some kind of ‘maximization of utility.’ According to our author, the problem of this utilitarian formulation lies on it being based on a partial and distorted observation of human condition. In order to refute it, Rosmini adopts a fundamentally phenomenological point of view that leads him to carry out a meticulous observation of the phenomena observable in the different stages of human development from childhood to adulthood. The chapter presents part of this phenomenological description and the different arguments raised by Rosmini to support his conviction of the existence in human beings of ‘personal’ capacities for free objective value judgments, moral recognition and happiness different from ‘natural’ capacities limited to satisfy physical or psychical subjective and utilitarian needs or pleasures.