The Impersonal Evil in Utilitarian and Republican Doctrines

How suffering is normalized by systems of power — and why we need more creative and just ethical alternatives

The Impersonal Evil in Utilitarian and Republican Doctrines

We live in societies structured by doctrines that, under the promise of common good or progress, often normalize suffering — including that of other species. In the name of efficiency, order, or profit, human and non-human lives are treated as numbers, resources, or acceptable collateral damage. But there are other possible paths.

1. The Republic and Utilitarianism: Roots of Justified Suffering

Modern republics inherit exclusionary models from Greco-Roman traditions, where only property-owning men had political voice. This structure still supports the belief that "humans are naturally bad" and must be controlled by rigid laws created by a distant elite.

Utilitarianism reinforces this idea by accepting the sacrifice of a few to "save many" — reducing life to a statistical variable.

2. Profit as Moral Imperative

Contemporary republican systems, especially when aligned with neoliberal policies, prioritize profit. Environmental destruction, healthcare precarity, and the suffering of vulnerable populations become "externalities."

Human and non-human lives are reduced to manageable data.

3. The Failure of Ethical Creativity

Faced with crises, we recycle exhausted formulas instead of searching for transformative solutions. We lack ethical imagination to change the structure.

Examples include "herd immunity" strategies during pandemics or carbon offsetting mechanisms that don’t address harm at the source.

4. What About Other Species?

Dominant ethics are anthropocentric: they treat other forms of life as raw materials. Animals, forests, rivers — all become inputs to exploit.

Philosophies such as ecocentrism or animal rights (Peter Singer) challenge this system of impersonal violence.

5. Real Democracy and Ethical Alternatives

As David Graeber and David Wengrow show in “The Dawn of Everything”, real and original democracy did not emerge from centralized powers but from the lived needs of beings within their territories.

Rules arose from local, collective experience. To reclaim this, we must turn to:

The ethics of care (Carol Gilligan)

  Deontological ethics (Kant)

  Ecosocialism: social and ecological justice beyond profit

Conclusion

Accepting suffering or death as “inevitable” often reflects a political choice and a failure of ethical imagination.

Breaking free from this "impersonal evil" requires:

 Questioning power structures that benefit the few at the expense of many

 Expanding the idea of citizenship to include marginalized voices — including non-human ones

 Investing in regenerative alternatives: clean energy, preventive health, ecological economies, and democratic processes rooted in territory and interdependence

“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is the rule.” — Walter Benjamin