I think I have a decent understanding but love learning more and new perspectives help. Also what are the opposing viewpoints/philosophies?
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I think John Stuart Mill’s essay on utilitarianism does a pretty good job summarizing and defending it. The most interesting perspective I’ve seen for it is that if everyone in a given society does something and society is made better by it (I.e. greatest happiness for greatest number of people), then that action is considered good. For example, not littering is good because society is generally made better if everyone disposed of their trash properly. Mill concludes his essay by essentially saying that you should do good things for the sake of doing good things because society is made better if everyone did that. For other reading, I would also recommend Mountains Beyond Mountains and Doing Good Better because I feel like they exemplify the philosophy on a micro and macro scale, respectively.
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