He believes that the pleasure or pain a person feels is directly related to whether or not the action was right or wrong (Bentham, 39). This means that an action is right when it causes the greatest pleasure for the person or group of people who are involved. If there is a group of people and a certain action would benefit the majority of them for good, then it would be considered to be the right action. On the other hand, if the action does not benefit the majority and only benefits a few, then it would be considered to be wrong. The ultimate goal of this theory is to bring happiness to those involved and to also prevent evil and unhappiness within the group (Bentham, 39).
Essay 1 In the essay, “In Pursuit of Happiness,” Mark Kingwell presented the various definitions of happiness. He asserted that although happiness has been described and studied since the ancient Greeks, this philosophical concept remains unclear. Pursuing happiness as a personal quest has a caveat because sometimes it leads to unhappiness and frustration. He cited John Stuart Mill, a child prodigy, who learned the Greek language at a young age and had read Plato’s works at seven.
Whether it is at the dinner table or in my family’s group text message, the conversation about my brother’s custody battle with my mother’s side of the family seems to remain a bitter topic, especially when discussing my role in it. When my father physically harmed my brother to the extent to which he had to go to the emergency room, the custody trial over my brother and me began. After several sources provided the judge with accusations against my father, I was the final source that needed to assert or deny my father’s abuse; with heavy consideration, I decided to lie to the judge by denying my father’s abuse. Under the principle of utilitarianism, philosophers would infer that lying is permissible if the consequences of doing so are good.
John Stuart Mill was a pioneer in liberalism, combining his knowledge of 18th century concepts with the emerging 19th century romanticism concepts (1). Born in 1806, Mill was educated by his father, a disciplinarian who enforced his beliefs onto Mill. Along with philosopher Jeremy Bentham, they encouraged Mill in their liberal beliefs (3). He studied Latin and Greek from the early age of 8 which progressed to his studies in political economy, logic and calculus as a teenager (1). Mill eventually suffered a breakdown at a young age, making him reexamine his life purpose and the principles taught to him (2).
The higher pleasure engages the mind and the lower pleasure engages the senses and body. Mill argues that happiness is the higher pleasure where people exercise their higher faculty to achieve pleasure or happiness. However, utilitarianism does not say that it is moral for people simply to pursue what
Mill understands the concepts of ‘tranquility’ and ‘excitement’ by ‘tranquility’ meaning one can be “content with very little pleasure” (page 236) and ‘excitement’
The debate on whether tobacco companies should be required to sell their products in plain packaging is one that has been discussed worldwide since Australia introduced the legislation in December 2010. Mill’s “On Liberty” discusses the “nature and limits of the power that can legitimately be exercised by society over the individual.” The plain packaging has largely been applauded as a means of reducing the demand for cigarettes but when are we justified in interfering with the liberty of a competent, mature member of our own society? Firstly, through the harm principle which, according to Mill governments are entitled to restrict an adults liberty only when it is necessary to do so in order to prevent harm to someone else.
This is connected to the idea of happiness being an intrinsic good, also said to be the utilitarian end. Mill’s views also differed from Bentham’s in the way that intellectual pleasures are higher than sensual pleasures. We get more pleasure from something that is rewarding to us as human beings rather than
Introduction: John Stuart Mill essay on Consideration On representative Government, is an argument for representative government. The ideal form of government in Mill's opinion. One of the more notable ideas Mill is that the business of government representatives is not to make legislation. Instead Mill suggests that representative bodies such as parliaments and senates are best suited to be places of public debate on the various opinions held by the population and to act as watchdogs of the professionals who create and administer laws and policy.
“On Liberty” by John Stuart Mill This reading has to do with political and social freedoms. In Chapter II, Mill reflects on whether people, either by themselves or through their tyrannical government, should be allowed to pressure anyone else’s point of view or opinion. He states that by doing so, it is basically unlawful. This is because if everyone were to agree on something but there just happens to be an odd man out, that one person would be silenced because the majority are agreeing so they’re the powerful group. But if that odd man out had the power, he would be justified in silencing mankind.
I chose to review the fifth chapter of “New Ideas From Dead Economists” titled The Stormy Mind of John Stuart Mill. John Stuart Mill was born in 1806 in London to two strict parents who began to educate their son at a very young age. Mill’s father was James Mill, a famous historian and economist, who began to teach his son Greek at the age of three. The book reports that “by eight, the boy had read Plato, Xenophon, and Diogenes” and by twelve “Mill exhausted well-stocked libraries, reading Aristotle and Aristophanes and mastering calculus and geometry” (Buchholz 93). The vast amount of knowledge that Mill gained at a young age no doubt assisted him in becoming such a well-recognized philosopher and economist.
The book On Liberty, is one of philosophical and most famous work written by John Stuart Mill in 1859. In the book, J.S. Mill applies his utilitarian concept to the history and the state. There he attempts to exhibit the idea that the society advances from lower to higher places this advance comes full circle in the development of an arrangement of delegate democracy. This writing consists total of five chapters which consists of introduction, the liberty of thought and discussion, individuality, as one of the elements of well-being, the limits to the authority of society over the individual and multiple applications of the theory.
In a critique of both the works, the paper adopts the Aristotelian thought citing that actions of human aims to fulfill goodness, which arguably is the happiness, one that arises from virtues practiced out of habit. Both the philosophers weigh in heavily on the role of happiness in the day to day lifestyles of humans. Adopting a sharp critic to the conventional principles of utility, Mill recognizes that happiness, as opposed to pleasure has a wider space in human attainments. He goes in deeper to explore the levels of pleasure
John Stuart Mill, at the very beginning of chapter 2 entitled “what is utilitarianism”. starts off by explaining to the readers what utility is, Utility is defined as pleasure itself, and the absence of pain. This leads us to another name for utility which is the greatest happiness principle. Mill claims that “actions are right in proportions 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 happiness, pain and the privation of pleasure”.
Many activities are directed towards various virtues such as honor, a good reputation, wealth and pleasure, but are ultimately acted upon because it will bring about happiness. To be an ultimate end, an act must be self-sufficient and final, and happiness seems to be “that which is always desirable in itself, and never for the sake
