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John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism Essay

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John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism Essay
The 17th century philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) is greatly known for his description and defense of the classical utilitarianism theory, following the teachings of his father, James Mill, and philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Bentham based his utilitarianism philosophy on the principle that the object of morality is the promotion of the greatest happiness of the maximum number of members of society. He then added on that the happiness of any individual consists in favorable balance of pleasures over pains. The actions that tend to increase pleasure are essentially good, and those that increase pain are essentially bad. Although Mill was a strong defender of the utilitarianism theory, he went beyond Bentham’s contention that the essential …show more content…
The basic tenet of utilitarianism is that we should always act to bring about the greatest amount of good or the least amount of harm in the world as a whole. The good of society is the sum of the good of the individuals in it, including you. As humans we should evaluate our actions solely in terms of the consequences, because they are means to the end of promoting general welfare. What matters most are the consequences of actions. If an individual’s calculation of greatest happiness is a rational, deliberative process, then the result will be a basic agreement about the nature of happiness. This ideology created the notion that humans experience happiness in units. Since the happiness of any one individual counts the same as that of any other, the perspective is democratic in treating everyone’s welfare on an equal …show more content…
One weakness is that the principle of maximizing happiness is so general and vague, that it can be applied in completely opposite ways. We cannot in fact measure happiness, but we can understand what it feels like to be happy. Everyone’s ways of living and feeling are so different from each other, so we cannot set a standard scale of happiness. If a society determines that the greatest happiness lies elsewhere of a minority, there is no guarantee that it will be protected. In this case, it seems that the utilitarianism theory has built an injustice that runs counter to some of our deepest intuitive notions about
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