"We should realize that from the moral point of view suffering and happiness must not be treated as symmetrical; that is to say, the promotion of happiness is in any case much less urgent than the rendering of help to those who suffer, and the attempt to prevent suffering."
Negative utilitarianism (NU) is a form of negative consequentialism that can be described as the view that people should minimize the total amount of aggregate suffering, or that they should minimize suffering and then, secondarily, maximize the total amount of happiness. It can be regarded as a version of utilitarianism that gives greater priority to reducing suffering than to increasing pleasure
"Being forced to endure torture rather than dreamless sleep, or an otherwise neutral state, would be a tragedy of a fundamentally different kind than being forced to “endure” a neutral state instead of a state of maximal bliss."
"For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moments human suffering?"
"Let us compare the callousness / compassion of classical utilitarianism and NU. / [I]magine if a magic genie offers me super-exponential growth in my bliss at the price of exponential growth in your agony and despair. If Im a classical utilitarian, then I am ethically bound to accept the genies offer. Each year, your torment gets unspeakably worse as my bliss becomes ever more wonderful. Indeed, the thought Im ethically doing the right thing increases my bliss even further! By generating so much net bliss, Im the most saintly person who ever existed! If you knew how incredibly superhumanly wonderful Im feeling, then youd realise that my super-bliss easily offsets your tortured despair. Your tortured despair is a trivial pinprick in comparison to my super-exponentially growing bliss! / Of course, as a real-life negative utilitarian, Id politely decline the genies offer. / But if you win me over to classical utilitarianism, Ill accept. / Which is the callous choice?"
"Ethical negative-utilitarianism is a value-system which challenges the moral symmetry of pleasure and pain. It doesnt question the value of enhancing the happiness of the already happy. Yet it attaches value in a distinctively moral sense of the term only to actions which tend to minimise or eliminate suffering. This is what matters above all else."
"That thousands had lived in happiness and joy would never do away with the anguish and death-agony of one individual; and just as little does my present well-being undo my previous sufferings. Therefore, were the evil in the world even a hundred times less than it is, its mere existence would still be sufficient to establish a truth that may be expressed in various ways, although always only somewhat indirectly, namely that we have not to be pleased but rather sorry about the existence of the world; that its non-existence would be preferable to its existence; that it is something which at bottom ought not to be, and so on."
"I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure. Both the greatest happiness principle of the Utilitarians and Kants principle, "Promote other peoples happiness...", seem to me (at least in their formulations) fundamentally wrong in this point, which is, however, not one for rational argument. [...] In my opinion [...] human suffering makes a direct moral appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway."