Brave New World And The Utilitarian Society

Brave New World, the masterpiece of French writer Aldous Leonard Huxley, ranked as one of the world-recognized and classical dystopian literature work in the20th century, which has far-reaching impact both at home and abroad.Interpreting Brave New World from the literature ethics perspective, this paper employs specific principle of Unitarianism to make a detailed analysis of the text. And based on this, some reflections of the utilitarianism’s influence on the modern society will be present. Bentham firstly systematically proposes utilitarianism doctrine, from that time on, there are a large number of scholars expounding and developing this doctrine from various aspects. In order to avoid the theoretical basis jumble, the thesis only uses the classical utilitarianism as the theoretical foundation, represented by Bentham and Mill. The classical utilitarian ethnics stressed people’s natural instinct to pursue happiness and avoid suffering and advocate "utility" as the moral foundation. And the standard to judge an action is according to its tendency to augment or cause misfortune. Bentham treats all happiness equal, but Mill amends it and distinguishes the pleasures. He argues that intellectual and moral pleasures (higher pleasures) are superior to more physical forms of pleasure (lower pleasures).Besides the introduction and conclusion part, the thesis is divided into four chapters, and the highlight part is the chapter four and chapter five. Chapter one respectively introduces the utilitarianism doctrine of Bentham and Mill. Though Mill is a strong supporter of Bentham, he still made some amendment to Bentham’s idea. Chapter two introduces the background of the novel and the general plot of the Brave New World. The highlight part chapter three includes three fractions. The first fraction analyzes the characteristics of the new world; and points out that all measures in the World State are to guarantee people’s happiness from the utilitarian principle of avoiding pains and seeking pleasures. The second fraction analyzes four main characters Linda, Lenina, Bernard, Helmholtz in the book and makes corresponding explain from the related Unitarian principle. The third fraction analyzes the personality of John, who came from the savage, and from the perspective of Mill’s higher pleasures and lower pleasures, this part points out that John attaches importance to the spiritual pleasures. The fourth fraction analyzes the conflicts between John and the people in the World State. The setting conditions makes the people in the World State pay much attention to the material enjoyments, but John pursuits spiritual life. That’s the reason why conflicts appear. Chapter four analyze the influence of utilitarianism on politics, economy and other aspects of the society and points out that in the utilitarian society, people not only should lay emphasis on reasonable material comforts, but also should pay attention to the construction of spiritual life.Conclusion part points out that in the new world, people enjoy all sorts of comforts brought by science and technology, but it is not necessarily true happiness. John, who was called as the barbarian, his spiritual pursuit, is worthy of praising highly. Although people in the modern society gradually lost in materialistic world, the pursuit of spirit will become the soul of a real harmoniously brave new world.