Explain Mill S Utilitarianism

Explain Mill’s Utilitarianism [30]

John Stuart Mill, (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873) was a British philosopher who was principally famous for revising and expanding on Jeremy Bentham’s theory of Utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham said that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong. He then devised the hedonic calculus or the principle of utility as a measure of working out the usefulness of an action according to how much pleasure it creates for how many people. But Mill stated that it is the quality of this pleasure that matters not how much of this pleasure we have. Mill distinguished between higher and lower pleasures and the higher pleasures were qualitatively better and more important than lower pleasures. He argued that, ‘human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites and, once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification’ (Mill, 1979, chapter 1). This is basically saying that human beings appreciate higher pleasures more and gain greater pleasure from these rather than having an abundance of lower pleasures. He argues that some kinds of pleasures are more desirable than other kinds. It is not just that we should prefer the higher pleasures to the lower ones, but that a happiness which did not include a higher pleasure was not considered a happiness by human beings. He believes that a higher, qualitatively better, pleasure should be preferred over a lower, more quantitative pleasure. He said that, ‘it is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied’ (Mill 1979). This is him saying that as humans we need to have to reach these higher pleasures in life to really get the most out of it and fully appreciate it. Mill suggested that these higher pleasures were mental pleasures and that the lower pleasures were bodily physical pleasures. There is a link between the two, as to be able to enjoy poetry we have to eat or drink in order to survive. Nevertheless, Mill believed that to pursue purely bodily pleasures – food, drink, drugs and sex, was not as high an objective as those that are intellectually more demanding. When confronted with a choice between a pleasure of the body and the mind, Mill said that of the mind should be preferred. This is because he believes that we gain greater gratification out of these pleasures and therefore they are the right thing to do. So overall Mill maintained that the well-being of the individual was of greatest importance and that happiness is the most effectively gained when individuals are free to pursue their own ends, subject to sticking to rules that protect the common good for all. But this doesn’t mean that he doesn’t agree with the principle of utility and that it does gain the greatest good for the greatest number. He just believed that there were ways of gaining even greater pleasures and this would be by aiming for these higher mental pleasures.