Utilitarianism

Summary

Utilitarianism is a short defence of the ethical theory Mill inherited from Jeremy Bentham and his own father. It was first published in three instalments of Fraser's Magazine in 1861 and as a book in 1863. Mill writes less to build a system than to rescue one. His opening chapter observes that after two thousand years moralists still disagree about the first principle of right and wrong. Intuitionists and inductivists alike, he argues, quietly rely on consequences, and he cites Kant's universal law as an example. Chapter II states the creed: actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, understood as pleasure and the absence of pain. Mill then answers a series of objections. To the charge that this is 'a doctrine worthy only of swine', he replies that pleasures differ in quality as well as quantity. The verdict of 'competent judges' who have known both kinds places pleasures of intellect, feeling and moral sentiment above those of sensation; hence his line about Socrates dissatisfied and the fool satisfied. Against the claim that happiness is unattainable, he describes a realistic happiness of tranquillity and excitement. He argues that most of its obstacles, poverty and disease included, are removable by social reform and science. He insists that the standard is the general happiness, not the agent's own, and that the golden rule of Jesus expresses its spirit. He separates the rightness of an act from the worth of the motive behind it. He argues that inherited moral rules work like a ready-calculated Nautical Almanac, so no one need compute consequences afresh for every act. Chapter III asks what makes anyone feel bound by the principle. Mill's answer is the same as for any morality: external sanctions of reward and opinion, and the internal sanction of conscience. He grounds this in a cultivable 'feeling of unity' with others and cites Comte's religion of humanity. Chapter IV offers the much-criticised 'proof': the only evidence that something is desirable is that people desire it. Virtue, money, power and fame, first desired as means, become parts of happiness through association. Chapter V, the longest, takes up the strongest objection, that justice is independent of utility. Mill surveys the meanings of justice and traces the sentiment of justice to a natural impulse of retaliation, moralised by sympathy and widened to society. He concludes that justice names the most important class of social utilities: rights, which society ought to defend. The essay remains the standard introduction to consequentialist ethics, and its tensions still drive debates over welfare, rights and public policy.

Plot or Argument

• Chapter I: General Remarks

  Mill laments the lack of agreement on the foundation of morality, notes that both 'intuitive' and 'inductive' moralists need a first principle, and claims that Kant's categorical imperative only works by appeal to consequences no one would choose. Ultimate ends cannot be proved in the ordinary sense, but considerations can be presented that determine the intellect.

• Chapter II: What Utilitarianism Is

  The Greatest Happiness Principle is stated, then defended against a run of objections: that it is swinish (higher and lower pleasures), that happiness is impossible (tranquillity and excitement), that it is too demanding (rule versus motive), that it is cold, godless or mere expediency, and that there is no time to calculate (secondary rules as the sailor's almanac). Two footnotes claim the word 'utilitarian' and clarify motive versus intention.

• Chapter III: Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility

  Why should anyone feel obliged to promote the general happiness? Mill distinguishes external sanctions (hope of favour, fear of displeasure, from people or God) from the internal sanction of conscience, a feeling that can be cultivated. Moral feelings are acquired but natural, and the social feeling of unity with others gives utility a firm psychological foundation.

• Chapter IV: Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility Is Susceptible

  The proof by analogy (visible because seen, desirable because desired) and the move from each person's happiness to the general happiness. Mill then argues that virtue, like money, can become part of happiness through association, and that will, though it can detach from desire through habit, begins in desire.

• Chapter V: Of the Connexion between Justice and Utility

  Mill lists the things called just and unjust (legal rights, moral rights, desert, keeping faith, impartiality, equality), traces the word's etymology to law, and analyses the sentiment of justice as retaliation plus sympathy. He defines a right as something society ought to defend, shows that rival theories of punishment, wages and taxation each rest on a plausible maxim of justice that only utility can adjudicate, and concludes that justice is the 'most sacred and binding part' of morality because it guards the essentials of well-being.

Characters

• Jeremy Bentham, founder of the doctrine

  Philosopher and law reformer whose felicific calculus Mill revises; quoted in Chapter V for the dictum 'everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one'.

• Epicurus and the Epicureans, ancient precedent

  Mill's first defence against the 'swine' objection is the Epicurean reply that the accusers, not the hedonists, degrade human nature.

• Socrates, exemplar

  The emblem of a being of higher faculties who is less contented but happier than the satisfied fool.

• Immanuel Kant, opponent

  Cited in Chapters I and V; Mill argues that the categorical imperative tacitly appeals to the consequences of universal adoption.

• Thomas Carlyle, opponent

  Quoted for the sneer 'What right hast thou to be happy?' and associated with the doctrine of Entsagen, or renunciation.

• Auguste Comte, ally with reservations

  His Système de Politique Positive is recommended in Chapter III as proof that a religion of humanity could be as powerful as a theistic one, despite Mill's objections to the system.

• Robert Owen, foil

  Socialist reformer whose view that it is unjust to punish anyone, since character is formed by circumstance, illustrates Chapter V's conflicting maxims of justice.

Lessons

• Only those who know both can rank pleasures

  Mill refuses to count pleasures by intensity alone. Quality is settled by the preference of people experienced in both kinds, the same method we use to compare two pains. The test is powerful and unsettling: it gives authority to experience but risks letting the educated declare their own tastes superior.

  • Who counts as a 'competent judge' of the pleasures of someone with a severe illness or disability?
  • Is a person who chooses the 'lower' pleasure after knowing both simply mistaken, as Mill implies?
  • How does Mill's appeal to 'the general suffrage of those who are familiar with both' resemble modern patient-reported outcome measures?

• Right acts and good motives are different questions

  The rescuer who saves a drowning man for pay still does right; the motive bears on our view of the agent, not on the act. The distinction lets Mill answer the charge that utilitarianism demands saintly impartiality at every moment: most good actions concern a few particular people.

  • Is Mill right that ninety-nine hundredths of our actions need no thought of the general good?
  • Can the distinction between the act and the agent survive cases where the motive changes what the act is?

• Rules are the almanac of experience

  No sailor recalculates the stars at sea, and no one need test every act against the greatest happiness. Received moral rules record humanity's long experience of consequences and remain improvable. This passage is the seed of later rule-utilitarianism and of every clinical guideline that encodes outcomes into protocol.

  • When should a rule of thumb (always tell the truth, never break confidentiality) yield to a direct calculation?
  • What does Mill say about defining the exceptions to veracity, and is it enough?
  • How is a medical guideline like, and unlike, Mill's Nautical Almanac?

• Means harden into ends through habit

  Money is desired at first for what it buys and later for itself; virtue can follow the same path and become part of happiness. In Chapter IV Mill adds that will is 'the child of desire' but can pass under the dominion of habit. It is an associationist psychology that explains both the miser and the person of settled virtue.

  • Does Mill's account of habit fit compulsive behaviours that persist without pleasure?
  • If virtue is valued only because of association with happiness, is it still virtue in Aristotle's sense?

• Justice is utility at its most urgent

  Mill grants that justice feels different from expediency: sharper, more absolute, tied to retaliation. He explains that feeling instead of dismissing it. Rights protect the essentials of security, so they bind more strongly than other utilities, but not without limit. To save a life one may steal medicine or even compel the only doctor to act.

  • Does Mill's account of rights protect individuals against being sacrificed for the many, or merely explain why we feel it does?
  • What do you make of the example of compelling the only qualified medical practitioner to save a life?
  • How would Mill adjudicate between the three theories of punishment he describes?

Context

Utilitarianism was the moral philosophy of the British reform movement. Bentham's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), the Philosophic Radicals and James Mill applied it to law, prisons, Poor Law reform, sanitation and the franchise, and Edwin Chadwick's public-health campaigns grew from the same circle. By mid-century the doctrine had a reputation as cold, mechanical and godless: Dickens's Hard Times (1854) caricatured it, Carlyle denounced it, and Coleridgean and Christian intuitionists such as William Whewell opposed it. Mill's essay answers these critics and absorbs Romantic, Stoic and Christian elements into the theory.

Composition

Mill drafted the material in the mid-1850s and revised it after Harriet Taylor's death in Avignon in 1858; he describes her influence on all his later work. It appeared in Fraser's Magazine in October, November and December 1861 and as a book with Longmans in 1863; the stored text is the seventh edition (1879). In a footnote to Chapter II Mill claims to have been the first to bring the word 'utilitarian' into use, having adopted it from 'a passing expression' in John Galt's novel Annals of the Parish.

Reception

The essay became the standard statement of classical utilitarianism and a standard target. Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics (1874) systematised and corrected it; G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica (1903) made the 'proof' in Chapter IV the type case of the naturalistic fallacy; Nietzsche mocked English happiness-seekers. In the twentieth century it was revived in act- and rule-utilitarianism, and in health economics through quality-adjusted life years, cost-effectiveness thresholds and the ethics of triage.

Comparisons

• on-liberty

  Written in the same years, On Liberty (1859) rests its harm principle on 'utility in the largest sense'. Reading the two together tests whether Mill's defence of individuality and of medical self-determination can really be derived from the greatest happiness principle.

• groundwork-of-the-metaphysics-of-morals

  Mill attacks Kant by name in Chapters I and V, arguing that the categorical imperative needs consequences to yield any duties; Kant's insistence that the good will and treating persons as ends are not tradeable is the strongest reply to Chapter V.

• the-nicomachean-ethics

  Both make happiness the final end, but Aristotle's eudaimonia is activity in accordance with virtue, while Mill's is pleasure and freedom from pain; Mill's 'competent judges' echo Aristotle's appeal to the person of practical wisdom.

• on-the-nature-of-the-universe

  Lucretius gives the Epicurean ethics Mill invokes against the 'doctrine worthy only of swine' charge: pleasure as absence of pain and freedom from fear. Comparing them shows how far Mill's higher pleasures depart from Epicurean tranquillity.

• a-treatise-of-human-nature

  Hume grounded justice in its usefulness to society and morals in sentiment rather than reason; Mill's Chapter V analysis of justice as a sentiment shaped by social utility is close kin, with a reformer's optimism Hume lacked.

• beyond-good-and-evil

  Nietzsche's attack on English moralists and on the 'herd' morality of general welfare is the sharpest nineteenth-century rejection of Mill's premise that happiness for all is the measure of value.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Chapter I's complaint that after two thousand years philosophers still disagree about the foundation of morals, and Mill's claim that even Kant's categorical imperative secretly appeals to consequences.
• The swine objection in Chapter II and Mill's reply with higher and lower pleasures, settled by the verdict of competent judges who have known both, ending in the comparison of Socrates and the fool.
• Mill's answer to the charge that there is no time to calculate consequences, using the sailor who relies on the Nautical Almanack rather than working out the stars at sea.
• Chapter IV's proof, which argues from visible and audible to desirable, and the claim that virtue and money, first wanted as means, can become parts of happiness.
• Chapter V's long analysis of justice, ending in the hard example of stealing medicine or compelling the only qualified doctor to save a life.

Key terms and names

Greatest Happiness Principle

Mill's first principle of morals: actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, understood as pleasure and the absence of pain, for everyone affected.

Higher and lower pleasures

Mill's revision of Bentham: pleasures differ in quality as well as quantity, and those of the intellect, feelings, imagination, and moral sentiments rank above those of mere sensation.

Competent judges

People who have experienced both of two pleasures. Mill makes their preference the test of which pleasure is higher, just as the experienced alone can say which of two pains is worse.

Sanction

In Chapter III, the source of a moral rule's binding force. External sanctions are hope of reward and fear of displeasure from others or from God; the internal sanction is conscience.

Secondary principles

The ordinary moral rules, such as truthfulness and keeping promises, that record mankind's long experience of what tends to produce happiness. Mill compares them to the tables of a nautical almanac.

Right

Mill's definition in Chapter V: to have a right is to have something society ought to defend one in possessing. He grounds rights in the general utility of security.

The proof

Mill's argument in Chapter IV that the only evidence something is desirable is that people actually desire it. It became one of the most criticized passages in modern philosophy.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What exactly does the Greatest Happiness Principle claim in Chapter II, and how does Mill define happiness in the sentence that follows?
2. Comprehension How does Mill answer the objection that utilitarianism is a doctrine fit only for swine? Explain the role of the competent judges in his reply.
3. Comprehension In Chapter III, what does Mill mean by the internal sanction of duty, and why does he think utilitarians are no worse off than other moralists on this question?
4. Interpretation Mill says the man who saves someone from drowning does right whether his motive is duty or the hope of payment. What distinction is he drawing, and does it hold up when you consider the rescuer's character?
5. Interpretation Mill claims to find the complete spirit of utility in the golden rule of Jesus. Is the golden rule the same as the command to promote the greatest happiness? Look at what each asks of an individual person.
6. Interpretation In Chapter IV Mill argues that people can come to desire virtue for its own sake. Does this make his theory closer to Aristotle's, or does it reduce virtue to a habit of association?
7. Interpretation Chapter V explains the strong feeling of justice as retaliation widened by sympathy. Does explaining where a feeling comes from show whether it is right?
8. Big Question Is it ever right to sacrifice one innocent person for the happiness of many, and can Mill's account of rights as protections for security give a firm answer?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 7:12 and Matthew 22:36-40 (Scripture)

  Mill appeals to the golden rule as the spirit of utility. Reading it beside the two great commandments, where love of neighbor follows love of God, lets students ask whether Mill has kept the second commandment while removing the first that orders it.

• John 11:47-53 (Scripture)

  Caiaphas argues that it is expedient for one man to die for the people rather than the whole nation perish. This is the very case Chapter V must handle, where justice and general utility seem to collide over the life of an innocent person.

• Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II, q. 2-3 (Church Fathers)

  Aquinas examines whether happiness lies in wealth, honor, power, bodily goods, or pleasure, and concludes that perfect happiness lies only in the vision of God. His treatment shares Mill's question about the final end while rejecting the identification of happiness with pleasure.

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I and X (Great Conversation)

  Aristotle also makes happiness the highest good but defines it as activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, with pleasure as its completion rather than its essence. Mill's competent judges echo Aristotle's appeal to the person of good character as the measure of what is truly pleasant.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Every ethical theory needs a first principle. Happiness, meaning pleasure and the absence of pain, is the only thing desired for its own sake, since whatever else people desire, such as virtue or money, they desire as a part of happiness. What each person desires is his own happiness, so the general happiness is a good to the aggregate of all persons. Therefore actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness for all affected. Justice is not an exception but the name for the most important and binding class of social utilities, the rights that secure everyone's basic well-being.

Rhetorical device: antithesis. Chapter II's conclusion on higher pleasures balances two paired contrasts in a single sentence: It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. The parallel structure makes the qualitative distinction feel self-evident.

Debate: Resolved: Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures abandons the principle that pleasure alone is good.

Memory Work

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied

Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion of its parent only to come under that of habit

Writing Prompts

Essay: Mill's Chapter IV proof argues that the only evidence something is desirable is that people actually desire it. Reconstruct the argument from visible and audible to desirable, then evaluate whether the analogy holds and what it would mean for Mill's ethics if it fails.

Comparison with Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: Mill names Kant in Chapters I and V and argues that the categorical imperative depends on consequences. Compare Mill's drowning rescuer, who does right whatever his motive, with Kant's claim that only the good will is good without qualification, and argue which account better explains why we admire a moral act.

Medical Lens

Utilitarianism is the ancestor of modern health economics and much of public-health ethics. Its welfare calculus underlies quality-adjusted life years, cost-effectiveness thresholds, triage and resource allocation, and its tension with rights in Chapter V maps onto the clash between population benefit and individual consent. Mill's insistence that pains and pleasures can only be compared by those who have felt them anticipates patient-reported outcomes and the 'disability paradox', in which people with disabilities rate their lives higher than outsiders predict. The associationist psychology of Chapter IV, inherited from James Mill and David Hartley, explains how means become ends and will becomes habit; it is an early theory of conditioning relevant to addiction. The biography matters too: Mill's depression at twenty, which he attributed to an analytic education that had worn away his feelings, lies behind the essay's stress on cultivated feeling and mental culture. That reading draws on his Autobiography and is interpretive.

• Chapter II (higher and lower pleasures)

  The competent-judge test; the claim that pains, like pleasures, can only be ranked by the experienced; the 'tender plant' of the nobler feelings that dies for want of sustenance.

  PainMedical EthicsMelancholia Depression
• Chapter II (whether happiness is attainable)

  Tranquillity and excitement as the two constituents of a satisfied life; the 'need of excitement' as a disease; selfishness and lack of mental cultivation as the main causes of an unsatisfying life; a passing reference to Novalis's recommendation of suicide.

  AddictionMelancholia DepressionSuicidePhilosophy AS Therapy
• Chapter II (the removable evils)

  Poverty and disease presented as largely conquerable by education, social institutions, 'proper control of noxious influences' and science; those who care for others keep their interest in life on the eve of death.

  Public Health SanitationDeath Dying
• Chapter III

  Conscience analysed as a learned feeling of pain at violating duty, encrusted with associations from childhood, religion and self-esteem.

  Psychology Unconscious
• Chapter IV (will, desire and habit)

  Will as 'the child of desire' that can come under the dominion of habit; the example of those 'who have contracted habits of vicious or hurtful indulgence' acting against their own deliberate preference.

  AddictionPsychology Unconscious
• Chapter V (justice and expediency)

  A duty to steal medicine or compel the only qualified doctor to save a life; rights as protection of security; the injustice of sacrificing an individual without consent for others' benefit, raised in the discussion of punishment.

  Medical EthicsPhysicians Doctors

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Stage an exchange between Mill and the 'only qualified medical practitioner' he would compel to treat a dying patient. Let the doctor argue from rights and Mill from Chapter V.

• Essay

  Read the 'tender plant' passage alongside Mill's account of his own breakdown at twenty. Is Chapter II a theory of happiness or a description of recovery?

• Classroom

  Give students a fixed budget and three treatments with different QALY gains, then ask which of Mill's chapters (II on quality, V on justice) changes their allocation.

• Fiction

  Write a short story about a 'competent judge' who has known both the higher and lower pleasures and, against Mill's prediction, knowingly chooses the lower.

Further Reading

• Autobiography, John Stuart Mill

  Chapter V gives the account of his 1826 'crisis in my mental history' and recovery through Wordsworth.

• On Liberty, John Stuart Mill

• An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Jeremy Bentham

  The source of the hedonic calculus Mill revises.

• The Methods of Ethics, Henry Sidgwick

  The most rigorous Victorian development and critique of Mill's utilitarianism.

• Utilitarianism: For and Against, J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams

  The classic modern debate, including Williams's integrity objection.

• John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand, Richard Reeves