For a Kantian, there's only one appropriate response to the scenario Le Guin depicts in "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." Kant offered several, interrelated formulations of his categorical imperative—an absolute and binding moral principle—but the most relevant in this case is his insistence that we always treat others as an end in and of themselves. For Kant, this rule prohibits even actions that might seem morally harmless (if not obligatory) such as lying to spare someone's feelings or even lying in order to protect another person's life. When we lie to someone, Kant argues, we treat them as a tool to further our own agenda rather than as a person in their own right. That being the case, it's clear that a Kantian would never approve of neglecting and abusing a child for the benefit of society as a whole; the morally correct course of action would be to leave, if not to try to change the system entirely.For a utilitarian, the situation is potentially more complicated. An "act" utilitarian, who considers the morality of an action in isolation, might well embrace life in Omelas: if the child's suffering does in fact maximize the well being of society as a whole, an act utilitarian would consider it the morally correct choice. With that said, an act utilitarian might conclude that society isn't actually better off as a result of the child's mistreatment, either because the way in which we're measuring well-being is flawed (can we be sure that that one child's pain isn't greater than the net happiness of all of Omelas? Are we factoring in the unhappiness of those who grow disillusioned with the system and leave?), or because a different scenario might produce even greater overall happiness (how can we know with certainty that Omelas would not be just as well off without the child's suffering?). These are in fact two major criticisms leveled at utilitarianism: well-being is a difficult thing to quantify, and the fact that utilitarianism is concerned solely with results seems to imply that we must be able to predict consequences with absolute certainty—something we obviously can't do.Lastly, it's worth noting that not all utilitarians subscribe to pure "act" utilitarianism. "Rule" utilitarians, for instance, don't consider each action on its own terms but rather as part of a trend: an action is moral if it conforms to a broader rule that tends to produce the best results. In other words, if 50 societies are structured like Omelas, but in 49 of those societies the child's suffering does not maximize well being, it wouldn't matter that in Omelas it does: the child's treatment would still be considered wrong.
Le Guin wrote this story to critique the utilitarian philosophy that states that happiness is a calculus of pleasure and pain in which the goal must be to obtain the greatest happiness for the greatest number. A utilitarian would embrace Omelas and definitely live there. He would think of the society as a great success, as so many many people have achieved happiness, and only one person has to suffer for it. The cost/benefit ratio to a utilitarian would be splendid—and one person's misery a small price to pay.
A Kantian, on the other hand, would walk away in disgust. Morality is morality, according to Kant, and must be applied universally, which means in the same way to everybody. You do what is right, period, because it is right, and you don't sacrifice moral principles because it happens to be convenient. It is morally wrong to keep an innocent child in misery so that everyone else can be happy, and therefore it can't be tolerated. If the entire society has to fall apart as result of treating this one child ethically, so be it: a society that would do this to a child isn't based on a moral principles to begin with.
This is an interesting question, given that it actually gets to the heart of the stark differences dividing Utilitarian and Kantian ethical principles. For the Utilitarian, morality is ultimately a matter of calculus. For any particular action, one must weigh the suffering it creates against the happiness which results. In classical utilitarianism, the maxim is one by which you seek to cause maximal happiness for the least amount of suffering.
From that perspective, I would say that "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" represents a challenge to the heart of Utilitarian Reasoning. After all, what we have in this story is a utopian community founded upon the intense suffering of a single child. From a purely Utilitarian viewpoint, this would seem like a classic case by which we have maximized happiness for the group at the cost of a single person. From that perspective, I'd suggest it would be natural to expect a Utilitarian to stay, or at least to hold that staying is a moral decision.
That being said, things might be more complicated, given that a Utilitarian viewpoint ultimately rests upon how you weigh suffering against happiness. If you hold that it is more important to lower suffering than to raise happiness, you might well come to a condemnation of Omelas from those same consequentialist principles and say that the sheer intensity and brutality of that one person's suffering is so intense that the moral mathematics does not add up, rejecting Omelas on those grounds.
Now, Kant is interesting, because Kant very much holds the opposite view to the Utilitarians. If the Utilitarians are ends-oriented moral thinkers, the Kantian is a moral absolutist, who would hold that moral duties are universally binding, regardless of circumstance. To commit a small evil in the service of good is still to commit an evil and is thus a moral infringement.
Many discussions of Kant tend to revolve around one of his most famous moral formulations of a categorical imperative: we must never treat others or ourselves as a means to an end. If we apply this particular moral standard to the problem of Omelas, the answer becomes clear, because what is the child's suffering but a means to achieve the happiness of the community? This, from a Kantian perspective, amounts to an atrocity, and you can expect the Kantian to reject Omelas's reasoning.
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