Mill's Utilitarianism

The great American writer Robert Anton Wilson penned a quote in Nature’s God that is as relevant today as it was when it was recorded in 1991, which is saying nothing of how relevant it already was centuries after great philosophers raised the same manner of questions. What he wrote, which echoed the musings of so many before him, was, “’Is,’ ‘is,’ ‘is’—the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything ‘is’; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.” Essentially, he argued that no issue is black and white, neither when it is relevant in time nor when it is being reviewed in history. There is no good or bad, kindness or malice. Everything is relative and everything

It is not so simple, however, to label him. That particular belief system holds that the most moral of actions is the one that provides the most utility, or usefulness, for people in general. There has long been great debate over whether Mill himself can be considered a true utilitarian, as evidenced by the straightforward title of “Was Mill a Utilitarian?” by Christopher Miles Coope in a 1998 edition of Cambridge University’s journal, Utilitas. In it, Coope argued, “Mill was receptive to all sorts of ideas, both plausible and implausible, which did not fit well with utilitarianism. He was, for example, inclined to think of equality, not just pleasure, as ‘good in itself’.” Why Coope mentioned pleasure is simple: Mill’s understanding of rightness stemmed from his own principle of utility, which is, essentially, that people must act to promote the greatest pleasure in the greatest amount of other people. As mentioned by Coope, that pleasure, for Mill, extended beyond dancing or drinking or having sex or hearing a beautiful melody; that pleasure could come from being equal, being treated with respect, or being understood. To Mill, then, any action that promoted any type of pleasure in other people (or the perpetrator) was “right” as long as it brought the greatest happiness to

He believed that some actions were always bad, immoral, and wrong. Relativism only went so far with Kant, who respected that committing murder might bring about the greatest happiness in someone, but who still maintained that murder was never acceptable. Kant claimed that the rightness of an action could be determined by asking, “Can I rationally will that everyone act as I propose to act?” and “Does my action respect the goals of human beings rather than merely using them for my own purposes?” If the answer to either question was no, a person should not commit the act. Goodness followed rightness, to Kant, and by his logic, what is right can only be considered right when it is done after being reasoned through. He felt that all people were obligated to consider the most reasonable approach in every situation; he called this the Categorical Imperative. The duty to use reason to determine an action’s rightness was called “moral law.” Ironically, it was Mill who was actually involved in the implementation of laws as a Member of