Lecture
notes on John Stuart Mill's
Utilitarianism
(1863)
(A Teleological
Ethic)
I. Happiness
is what is desirable, and the only thing that is desirable
as an end in itself; it is the summum bonum
a. "Questions
about ends are, in other words, questions about what things are desirable.
The utilitarian
doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing
desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as
means to that end. What ought to be required of this doctrine
-- what conditions is it requisite that the doctrine should fulfil
- to make good its claim to be believed?
The only proof capable of being
given that an object is visible is that people actually see it.
The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it:
and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner,
I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that
anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it....
No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable,
except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable,
desires his own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have
not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which
it is possible to require, that happiness is a good: that each
person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general
happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons."
(461c-d)
II. The
Greatest Happiness Principle: Greatest Happiness for the Greatest
Number over the Longest Time
b. "The
creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest
Happiness principle, holds
that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote
happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by
unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure." (448a)
II. Definition of Happiness
: The Presence of Pleasure and the absence of pain
c. "...
pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends;
and that all desirable
things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other
scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves,
or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention
of pain." (448a)
IV. Quantity:
Degrees of Pleasure (within a kind);
Quality: Different Kinds of Pleasure
d. "...
The comparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading,
precisely because
a beast's pleasures do not satisfy [alone] a human being's conceptions
of happiness. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal
appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as
happiness which does not include their
gratification."
e. "...
utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures
chiefly in the greater permanancy, safety, uncostliness, etc.,
of the former - that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather
than in their intrinsic nature. And on all these points utilitarians
have fully proved their case, but they might have taken the other,
and as it may be called, higher ground, with entire consistency.
It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize
the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable
and more valuable than others."
V. How
to determine when a pleasure is "higher" than another?
If it is preferable to a person who is well acquainted with both
f. "If
I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what
makes one pleasure more valuable
than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater
in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures,
if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience
of both give a decided preference,... that is the more desirable
pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently
acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they
prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater
amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity
of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are
justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority
in quality." (448d)
g. "It
is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better
to be Socrates dissatisfied
than a fool satisfied."
VI. Nobility
of character promotes happiness in both self and society
h. "...
that standard is not the agent's own happiness, but the greatest amount
of happiness altogether;
and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is
always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that
it makes other people happier, and that the world in general
is immensely a gainer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could
only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of
character." (450b)
VII. Selfishness
makes life unhappy. For the selfish person and for others
i. "When
people who are tolerably fortunate in their outward lot do not find in
life sufficient enjoyment
to make it valuable to them, the cause generally is, caring for
nobody but themselves. To those who have neither public nor private
affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed....
...those who have also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective
interests of mankind, retain as lively an interest in life on
the eve of death as in the vigour of youth and health. Next
to selfishness , the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory
is want of mental cultivation." (451b-c)
(VIII. footnote. The capacity for nobler
feelings needs to be nourished
j. "Capacity for the nobler
feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed,
not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance;
and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if
the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them,
and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable
to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose their high
aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they
have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict
themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately
prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which
they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer
capable of enjoying." (449d)
IX. Motivation
is Not important
to the morality of the act (though it is important to the worth
of the agent)
k. "...utilitarian
moralists have gone beyond almost all others in affirming that the motive
has nothing
to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth
of the agent." (453c)
(Citations for
quotations are to the Great Books of the Western World
edition of Utilitarianism)
X. Conclusion:
#II above