This thesis analyzes different critiques of the utilitarian philosophy of development and will try to establish the merits of these critiques. The rejection of this philosophy will open up space for a positive view of development that can account for freedom, particularity or cultural difference and which is not a subjection to an “inhuman objectivity”.This discussion compares the liberal view of “development as freedom” and the view of Christian ethics, as it is represented in the Catholic Church’s Social Teaching, in order to get to a understanding of the underlying philosophical issues and to give us a vantage point for a critical appraisal of both philosophies. A part of this thesis presents a critique of a neo-Nietzchean, post-structuralist attack on development.