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Of all the Starfleet officers we see, Spock is the one who consistently evaluates moral decisions using this utilitarian “needs of the many” criterion. Spock also goes so far as to hijack the Enterprise and commit mutiny for the sake of Christopher Pike. And in ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’, he decides that the needs of the future Federation outweigh the needs of Edith Keeler and of Jim Kirk. Spock does decide in ‘The Galileo Seven’ that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few: he decides that three crew members need to be sacrificed in order to save four crew members. That’s not in line with the utilitarian philosophy espoused by Spock in ‘The Wrath of Khan’. They stand up for the underdog and the downtrodden against “the man”. Even fans of this episode acknowledge that this is an example of Star Trek stepping into a morally grey area.īut, overall, as shown above, Starfleet officers consistently put the needs of individuals and minorities ahead of the needs of society and larger groups. There are times when someone decides that the needs of the many do outweigh the needs of the few or the one.įor example, there’s the famous episode ‘In The Pale Moonlight’, where Captain Benjamin Sisko and Garak decide that the needs of the Federation outweigh the needs of Senator Vreenak and his family. He says “I do not believe it is justifiable to sacrifice one life form for another”. In ‘The Quality of Life’, Data defends the rights of the exocomps to exist, even though they were built as tools to work for Federation terraformers. In ‘I, Borg’, Picard decides he can not use a single Borg to effect genocide against the whole Borg collective, even though that would benefit the Federation and other possible future victims of the Borg. In ‘The Outcast’, Riker fights for an individual’s right to differ from the norms of her society. Picard tell the colony leader, “If you force them to stay, you will be suppressing their human rights.” The colony leaders replies “If even a handful leave, the damage to this society will be devastating.” Picard gives the dissidents asylum anyway. ‘The Masterpiece Society’ is a society of genetically engineered people, all serving essential purposes to the total society. They kidnap children from the Enterprise to serve their culture’s needs – and Picard fights to regain those children. In ‘When the Bough Breaks’, the Aldeans are dying out and need new children.

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In the very first episode of TNG, ‘Encounter at Farpoint’, Picard and his crew free a being who was trapped by the Bandi to serve their purposes. Moving forward to Captain Picard’s mission, we see more examples of balancing the interests of an individual or minority against a majority: In ‘Metamorphosis’, when Zefram Cochrane asks Kirk to keep his location secret, even though many people would like to know where he is, Kirk agrees to help Cochrane. In ‘The Devil in the Dark’, Kirk protects the mother Horta and her children against the interests of the Federation, which is mining her home and killing her eggs. There aren’t many occasions in Captain Kirk’s mission where he’s forced to balance the interests of a minority against those of a majority but, when they do occur, he favours the minority: It’s clear that Spock is enunciating his own version of a utilitarian philosophy when he says this.īut what about Starfleet in general? Do other Starfleet officers subscribe to this utilitarian philosophy?

We can hear distinct echoes of this utilitarianism in Spock’s statement about “the needs of the many” five centuries later. Simplistically, if we make two people happier at the cost of making one person sad, we have increased utility and that is therefore a moral action. Nett utility is measured by taking the total increase in well-being and deducting any decrease in well-being. The goal of utilitarianism is to maximise “utility”, which is usually defined as the well-being of sentient beings.

An early Human utilitarian philosopher, Francis Hutcheson, writing in 1725, defined a moral action as one “which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.

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Spock says this twice in ‘The Wrath of Khan’: the first time, he is justifying his decision to hand command of the Enterprise to Kirk the second time, he is explaining his decision to sacrifice his life to save a ship full of cadets and his friends. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.