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Utilitarianism In John Stuart Mill

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Utilitarianism is the theory that invokes the greatest, and least amount of pain and pleasure for the more vast amount of individuals (majority). Utilitarianism is rather a mechanism to find the ‘common ground’ between individuals of different mindsets, and, therefore, make a mutualistic agreement that will either bring great joy, or cause the least destruction. Two philosophers, Jeremy Bentham, the first philosopher to having thought of this concept, and John Stuart Mill, the philosopher who emphasized certain extent of a pleasure are considered great influences to the concept of Utilitarianism. The purpose of this essay is to consider the extent of John Stuart Mill’s influence on Jeremy Bentham’s theory.

Jeremy Bentham’s theory is the generalization …show more content…

For instance, in war the reason so many casualties come present is that when fighting a greater amount of individuals sending a mere hundred troopers to fight a thousand is superfluous, meaningless because the greater amount of individuals will always defeat the least. And as the number of troopers spans, from a hundred to a thousand from a thousand to a million, the individuals within this great bulk of troops are valued considerably lesser and lesser. The point is I believe that Mill emphasizes the worth of an individual within Bentham’s original theory. But they both fall short to a certain extent. The idea is to generate a theory that can generalize the best option for any situation but these theories do not necessarily generate the best outcome in every …show more content…

But the comparison of individual worth and the majority’s worth is placed on opposite ends of extremities. Take example from Bentham’s theory misappropriated. Our current world is divided into countries each with vast amounts of individuals but if a certain country were to agree to go to war for a certain gain of ‘pleasure’, say the pleasure of wealth, which Bentham did not classify which pleasures are morally preferred collective selfishness; the point is Utilitarianism works on a global scale if there is one existing classification of

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It was not until Mill’s late teens that he began to study Jeremy Bentham and his utilitarianism theory. “Reading Bentham satisfied Mill’s cravings for scientific precision and gave him a new way of looking at social intercourse” (Buchholz 97). Mill became so intrigued with Bentham that he decided to preach the Benthamite gospel in the Westminster Review, a publication started by his father and Jeremy Bentham. Mill’s views soon changed as he grew older. It is said that Mill had a mid-life crisis at the age of twenty because he took the Bentamite precision too far and actually forgot the ultimate goal of Utilitarianism in the first place, happiness.

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