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John Stuart Mill's Code Of Happiness

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Mill starts his essay by stating that very little progress has been made in coming up with standards to judge what is wrong and right morally. This question has been asked for centuries but there is no general consensus. He goes on to talk about moral instinct and how if this instinct exists there would be no reason to determine morality’s foundation. He states that he does not think that moral sense exists and also that if it did exist, that it would not allow us to distinguish between right and wrong. Mill believes that it only gives us a set of general principles and those general laws set in place in the past make up what morality really is. He also notes that our moral beliefs have not deviated much over time and this can mean that there …show more content…

Mill takes on the criticism that about happiness stating that human pleasures are better than animalistic pleasures and that when people are made aware of their higher faculties, they do want to accomplish them or don’t want to leave them uncultivated. A high-quality pleasure would be one that people would choose, even one that included discomfort, and would not trade it for a greater amount of another pleasure.
A person who experiences higher faculties will often suffer more, but would not choose a lower existence, such as an animalistic one, as they would rather maintain their dignity. He writes, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fools, or the pig, are of a different opinions, it is because they only know their side of the question." This could relate to the belief that those that have experienced both the higher and lower pleasures are best able to judge the quality of a

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