Utilitarianism (book)

John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism is a classic defense of the ethical theory of the same name. The English philosopher and economist first released it as three separate articles in Fraser’s Magazine in 1861, then gathered and republished them as a single book in 1863. The work explains utilitarianism to a general audience and responds to the many objections it faced during Mill’s lifetime. Though heavily criticized when it first appeared, the book later became hugely popular and is often called the most influential philosophical statement of a liberal, humanistic morality from the nineteenth century.

Summary

Mill’s version of utilitarianism drew heavily on Jeremy Bentham, the great legal reformer who, along with William Paley, was the most important English utilitarian before Mill. Like Bentham, Mill held that happiness—which both equated with pleasure—is the only thing humans do and should desire for its own sake. Since happiness is the sole intrinsic good, and more of it is better than less, the goal of ethics is to maximize happiness.

This is the “principle of utility” or “greatest-happiness principle.” Both thinkers therefore endorsed a classical, hedonistic form of utilitarianism. But Mill also broke with Bentham on key points. He aimed to develop a more refined utilitarianism that fit better with ordinary morality and emphasized intellectual pleasures, self-development, high character ideals, and conventional moral rules.

Chapter 1

In Chapter 1, “General Remarks,” Mill observes that ethics has made little progress. Philosophers have debated the same basic issues since antiquity, with no resolution. Yet this hasn’t seriously damaged popular morality, he argues, because conventional morality is largely utilitarian at heart. He concludes by saying he won’t offer a strict proof of the greatest-happiness principle—ultimate ends can’t be demonstrated, since they underlie everything we know—but he will present considerations that can “determine the intellect,” amounting to something close to a proof.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 lays out the single ethical principle from which all utilitarian rules derive: actions are right in proportion as they promote happiness, wrong as they produce unhappiness. Happiness means pleasure and the absence of pain; unhappiness means pain and the privation of pleasure. Mill then spends most of the chapter answering common criticisms: that utilitarianism is a doctrine fit only for swine; that it’s overly permissive; that it’s unrealistic for societies full of pain; that sustained happiness is unattainable; that it’s too demanding; that it makes people cold and unsympathetic; that it’s godless; that it confuses goodness with expediency; that there’s no time to calculate long-term consequences; and that it tempts people to break ordinary moral rules.

To the “swine” charge, Mill abandons Bentham’s view that pleasures differ only in quantity. He notes that people who have experienced both physical and intellectual pleasures strongly prefer the latter—few would trade places with an animal, a fool, or an ignoramus for any amount of bodily pleasure.

Since “the sole evidence it is possible to produce that something is desirable, is that people do actually desire it,” intellectual pleasures (like friendship, art, reading, and conversation) are higher and more desirable than bodily ones. A rational pursuit of long-term happiness requires developing one’s higher faculties. To the objection that there’s rarely time to calculate an act’s long-term effects on general happiness, Mill sketches a two-tier approach: traditional moral rules like “Keep your promises” and “Tell the truth” have been shown by long experience to promote society’s welfare, and we normally should follow them.