Developed utilitarian thought with an account of liberty and kinds of pleasure.
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Utilitarianism ↗On Liberty ↗John Stuart MillEthicAtlas explanation · paraphrase
Developed utilitarian thought with an account of liberty and kinds of pleasure.
Mill developed utilitarianism while arguing that pleasures can differ in quality as well as quantity. His appeal to the judgments of people acquainted with both kinds of experience complicates a simple pleasure tally. The atlas connects him to the question of what a fuller account of human well-being should recognize.
Mill connects questions about welfare with liberty and the conditions of human development. The value of a life cannot be captured simply by counting pleasant moments without examining their character. Freedom also allows people to form judgments, pursue projects, and learn from different ways of living. These themes raise a problem for utilitarian interpretation: how can a commitment to overall welfare explain strong protection for individual freedom when interference appears locally beneficial?
The distinction between higher and lower pleasures raises concerns about elitism, expertise, and consistency with hedonism. A preference for one activity might reflect status or opportunity rather than its quality. Reading Mill involves examining the reasons for the distinction, not assuming that a familiar cultural hierarchy automatically determines whose enjoyment matters.
Consider an imaginary community deciding whether to forbid an unpopular but harmless form of artistic expression. Immediate discomfort among onlookers is one consequence, while the effects on experimentation and independence are others. A Mill-inspired discussion asks how those interests should be understood and whether public dislike supplies an adequate reason for coercion. It must also explain how liberty changes when conduct creates serious harm to others, rather than assuming freedom resolves every conflict.
Editorial connection: Mill offered a major later account of utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism · passage 1Original text · historical edition
UTILITARIANISM
BY
JOHN STUART MILL
REPRINTED FROM 'FRASER'S MAGAZINE'
SEVENTH EDITION
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1879
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. GENERAL REMARKS
CHAPTER II. WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS
CHAPTER III. OF THE ULTIMATE SANCTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY
CHAPTER IV. OF WHAT SORT OF PROOF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY IS SUSCEPTIBLE
CHAPTER V. OF THE CONNEXION BETWEEN JUSTICE AND UTILITY
UTILITARIANISM.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL REMARKS.
There are few circumstances among those which make up the present condition of human knowledge, more unlike what might have been expected, or more significant of the backward state in which speculation on the most important subjects still lingers, than the little progress which has been made in the decision of the controversy respecting the criterion of right and wrong. From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the _summum bonum_, or, what is the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem in speculative thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, and divided them into sects and schools, carrying on a vigorous warfare against one another. And after more than two thousand years the same discussions continue, philosophers are still ranged under the same contending banners, and neither thinkers nor mankind at large seem nearer to being unanimous on the subject, than when the youth Socrates listened to the old Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato's dialogue be grounded on a real conversation) the theory of utilitarianism against the popular morality of the so-called sophist.
Utilitarianism · passage 10Original text · historical edition
WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS.
A passing remark is all that needs be given to the ignorant blunder of supposing that those who stand up for utility as the test of right and wrong, use the term in that restricted and merely colloquial sense in which utility is opposed to pleasure. An apology is due to the philosophical opponents of utilitarianism, for even the momentary appearance of confounding them with any one capable of so absurd a misconception; which is the more extraordinary, inasmuch as the contrary accusation, of referring everything to pleasure, and that too in its grossest form, is another of the common charges against utilitarianism: and, as has been pointedly remarked by an able writer, the same sort of persons, and often the very same persons, denounce the theory "as impracticably dry when the word utility precedes the word pleasure, and as too practicably voluptuous when the word pleasure precedes the word utility." Those who know anything about the matter are aware that every writer, from Epicurus to Bentham, who maintained the theory of utility, meant by it, not something to be contradistinguished from pleasure, but pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain; and instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or the ornamental, have always declared that the useful means these, among other things. Yet the common herd, including the herd of writers, not only in newspapers and periodicals, but in books of weight and pretension, are perpetually falling into this shallow mistake. Having caught up the word utilitarian, while knowing nothing whatever about it but its sound, they