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John Stuart Mill's Idea Of Utilitarianism

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I am writing on John Stuart Mill’s idea of Utilitarianism. This is Mills concept of how to determine what is right and what is wrong based on consequences. Utilitarianism is the idea that the consequence of an action is happiness then the action is therefore considered justified. Mills claims that “each person’s happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness” (McCloskey, pg 61). When he says this he means that if one specific thing benefits one person then that same thing should be beneficial to everyone else as well. Mill makes this conclusion by saying that people enter into different lifestyles in order to better themselves, and that the driving force behind this is how happy they will be. This carried over to Mill’s social and political Philosophy as well. A quote from Mill is that “all human thought, feeling, and action are subject to fixed laws and therefore society has to accept and conform to the consequence of those free laws” (Mill Logic, pg 56). He believed that people have their own liberty of action. He was against restricting actions even if they are harmful to people. Is Mill’s idea on what is right and what is wrong valuable to know? Mill’s idea on what is right and what is wrong is not …show more content…

One must be aware of what led up to something happening in order to improve or adapt their approach, there cannot be just one end point. There are always going to be multiple different outcomes that can occur. While focusing on the consequence of those outcomes could allow there to be a faster recovery from a negative outcome, by perfecting the process we can essentially choose the outcome that we want. This would in turn save the trouble of having to do any damage control at all. Just because there are specific outcomes does not mean that you cannot control how you get to them or shape them along the

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In Defense of Utilitarianism, J.S. Mill In the excerpt from John Stuart Mill’s book, Utilitarianism, Mill defends the utilitarian theory against three different objections. The first, and strongest opposition to utilitarianism was the accusation that the emphasis on the pursuit of pleasure makes utilitarianism “a doctrine worthy of swine.” This was my favorite argument because Mill defended it so well stating that there are varying degrees of pleasure. He refers to them as “high” and “low” pleasures, which I do agree with.

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In other words, ideas of the inherently flawed human can be compared to the importance of the human heart, and why it cannot be underestimated in The Scarlet Letter. Its function is to connect the individual to the world of nature and to common humanity. Hawthorne suggests that by fully accepting and honoring the human heart, man can find a balance between nature and society. “When man can live an existence which will allow nature and society to be in concord rather than conflict”.

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Overall, the book acts as a lesson to the Puritan society of Hawthorne’s time, as he criticizes them for their judgmental and self-righteous nature over others. However, the message still applies to different eras, as evident when Jesus preaches the same message to the Pharisees and scribes several centuries earlier. The lesson still applies in the world of social media as people criticize others far more on the internet, without considering their own faults. To act more accepting, compassionate, and empathetic towards sinners, society needs to create a more welcoming environment in today’s world, where people stop trying to have moral superiority over others and replace judgment with restorative justice. Helping people to learn from their mistakes and reconciling with them will eventually yield positive results, bettering society

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Hawthorne reveals that although something may not be morally right or “good” in society, it is justified

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Mill describes utilitarianism like a hypothesis depend on the basis that if people tend to behave like promoting happiness, it would be a true

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Mill said that if there is one person that disagrees with the majority of people, it is not justified to silence that one person. An example is the formation of democratic socialism in which people tried to combine socialism with liberal democracy; people did not like this idea. Many of the ideas during this time would be censored and laughed at. An example of this is when women tried to have the right to education. When Mill thought about those ideas, he believed that the most important principle is to think about freedom of thought.

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Mill’s political protection of the right to freedom of thought could combine with Nietzsche’s perpetual self-overcoming: one’s evolving struggle to gain more personal clarity and power in one’s individual essence and beliefs. So, Mill could be viewed as a departure or starting point, from which Nietzsche can strive toward self-actualizing. In order for Nietzsche to have his say, there would need to be a political structure that allows for it. While Nietzsche might argue that value systems in political structures are part of the problem, no one would be reading his arguments if they were banned. “Genius can only breathe free in an 'atmosphere' of freedom,” according to Mill.

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The varieties of the good are: moral pleasure, intellectual pleasure, and physical pleasure(Mill, 1863). The greatest good for the community is freedom. The people of Birmingham are being deprived of their rights and they want to be able to pursue their own good with no harm. King and Mill both have the same ideas of well being. They believe it is important for everyone to be happy and the individuals will achieve happiness when they are free, which is the greatest

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His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant” (P.9). The need for humans to progress morally comes down to the ability for that individual to have freedom over their thoughts and expressions. However, Mill argues that this can be infringed upon she the scope of words and actions of one individual begins to interfere with the rights of others. It must contain three elements, one it must be other-regarding meaning that the harm must only apply to others and not yourself. Second, there needs to be tangibility that comes not just from words, but from actions.

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These alternative ways of living are ways that you want to live, so when you get to pick how you want to conduct yourself in everyday life you are true to yourself or in this case your “nature”, but when society does not want us to indulge in the alternative ways of living then you have to do what society wants you to do and that is what is what everyone else is doing, not what you want to do. Mill articulates this well by saying “conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds… they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. Now is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human nature?” (Page 70). Mill’s is saying that when society does not let us have these alternative ways of living we are not in our nature and uses a rhetorical question to prove his point.

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Therefore, Mill’s point is some or all higher pleasures exceed some or all lower pleasure and we all know that is a higher pleasure as a result to that some normal or reasonable person would choose it over the lower pleasure, even if that means having to be

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This is not to say, if he were alive today, he would not advocate for state intervention to preserve some rights and advocate for the limitations of the state in other places but rather to suggest that Mill would see the world in 2018 as the by product of the natural man at

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Historians refer to the climate of thought in eighteenth-century as the Enlightenment. It is a movement happened in the United Kingdom, and developed in France. Rationality was characterized as the main characteristic in the Age of Enlightenment, the philosophers during the enlightenment ages always stressed the ideas that traditional authority like theocracy and royal power is not always correct, therefore humans could and should improve themselves through reason. They also viewed that the natural world was governed by mathematical and scientific laws, which could be understood by humankind through doing researches themselves rather than depend on traditional authority wielded by established religion. Rationalism played an important role in directing human thought and actions, improving science and making political changes in Europe and North America as well as

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1. Utilitarianism Philosopher View (Jeremy Bentham & John Mill) Utilitarianism theory was founded by Jeremy Bentham and then got expanded by John Mill who came up with the 2 types or forms of Utilitarianism which are Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism says an action is right if it tends to promote happiness, and wrong if it tends to produce the reverse of happiness and doesn’t just involve the happiness of the performer of the action but also that of everyone affected by it.

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(Mill, utilitarianism, p.697) To put this into simpler terms, Mill is essentially saying events or experiences are desirable only when it is a source for pleasure, so actions are good when they lead to higher levels of general happiness and they are deemed as bad when it lowers your general level of happiness. However, it is important to note utilitarianism doesn’t say it is morally right for everyone to purse what make them alone happy but instead morality is dictated by what increases the total amount of utility in the world. Pursuing your own happiness at the expense of the majority of social happiness would be viewed as wrong by utilitarian’s. Mill then proceeded to say that morality requires impartial consideration of the interest of everyone involved, its not just about your own happiness.

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