Final paper

Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill

The doctrine that the basis of morals is utility, or the greatest happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong in proportion as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By ‘happiness’ is meant pleasure and the absence of pain; by ‘unhappiness’ is meant pain and the lack of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more needs to be said, especially about what things the doctrine includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure, and to what extent it leaves this as an open question. But these supplementary explanations don’t affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is based—namely the thesis that pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things that are desirable as ends, and that everything that is desirable at all is so either •for the pleasure inherent in it or •as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain. (The utilitarian system has as many things that are desirable, in one way or the other, as any other theory of morality.) Now, such a theory of life arouses utter dislike in many minds, including some that are among the most admirable in feeling and purpose. The view that life has (as they express it) no higher end —no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit—than pleasure they describe as utterly mean and grovelling, a doctrine worthy only of pigs. The followers of Epicurus were contemptuously compared with pigs, very early on, and modern holders of the utilitarian doctrine are occasionally subjected to equally polite comparisons by its German, French, and English opponents. ·Higher and Lower Pleasures· When attacked in this way, the Epicureans have always answered that it is not they but their accusers who represent human nature in a degrading light, because the accusation implies that human beings are capable only of pleasures that pigs are also capable of. If this were true, there’d be no defence against the charge, but then it wouldn’t be a charge; for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same for humans as for pigs, the rule of life that is good enough for them would be good enough for us. The comparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading precisely because a beast’s pleasures do not satisfy a human’s conceptions of happiness. Human beings have •higher faculties than the animal appetites, and once they become conscious of •them they don’t regard anything as happiness that doesn’t include •their gratification. Admittedly the Epicureans were far from faultless in drawing out the consequences of the utilitarian principle; to do this at all adequately one must include—·which they didn’t·—many Stoic and some Christian elements. But every Epicurean theory of life that we know of assigns to the •pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination and of the moral sentiments a much higher value as pleasures than to •those of mere sensation. But it must be admitted that when utilitarian writers have said that mental pleasures are better than bodily ones they have mainly based this on mental pleasures being more permanent, safer, less costly and so on—i.e. from their circumstantial advantages rather than from their intrinsic nature. And on all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but they could, quite consistently with their basic principle, have taken the other route—occupying the higher ground, as we might say. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. In estimating ·the value of· anything else, we take into account •quality as well as •quantity; it would be absurd if the value of pleasures were supposed to depend on •quantity alone. ‘What do you mean by “difference of quality in pleasures”? What, according to you, makes one pleasure •more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, if not its being •greater in amount?’ There is only one possible answer to this. Pleasure P1 is more desirable than pleasure P2 if: all or almost all people who have had experience of both give a decided preference to P1, irrespective of any feeling that they ought to prefer it. If those who are competently acquainted with both these pleasures place P1 so far above P2 that •they prefer it even when they know that a greater amount of discontent will come with it, and •wouldn’t give it up in exchange for any quantity of P2 that they are capable of having, we are justified in ascribing to P1 a superiority in quality that so greatly outweighs quantity as to make quantity comparatively negligible. Now, it is an unquestionable fact that the way of life that employs the higher faculties is strongly preferred ·to the way of life that caters only to the lower ones· by people who are equally acquainted with both and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying both. Few human creatures would agree to be changed into any of the lower animals in return for a promise of the fullest allowance of animal pleasures; •no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, •no educated person would prefer to be an ignoramus, •no person of feeling and conscience would rather be selfish and base, even if they were convinced that the fool, the dunce or the rascal is better satisfied with his life than they are with theirs. . . . If they ever think they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme that to escape from it they would exchange their situation for almost any other, however undesirable they may think the other to be. Someone with higher faculties •requires more to make him happy, •is probably capable of more acute suffering, and •is certainly vulnerable to suffering at more points, than someone of an inferior type; but in spite of these drawbacks he can’t ever really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence. Explain this unwillingness how you please! We may attribute it to •pride, a name that is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to some of the least admirable feelings of which human beings are capable; •the love of liberty and personal independence (for the Stoics, that was one of the most effective means for getting people to value the higher pleasures); or •the love of power, or the love of excitement, both of which really do play a part in it. But the most appropriate label is a sense of dignity. All human beings have this sense in one form or another, and how strongly a person has it is roughly proportional to how well endowed he is with the higher faculties. In those who have a strong sense of dignity, their dignity is so essential to their happiness that they couldn’t want, for more than a moment, anything that conflicts with it.

·Happiness as an Aim· According to the greatest happiness principle as I have explained it, the ultimate end. . . ., for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people) is an existence as free as possible from pain and as rich as possible in enjoyments. This means rich in •quantity and in •quality; the test of •quality, and the rule for measuring it against •quantity, being the preferences of those who are best equipped to make the comparison—equipped, that is, by the range of their experience and by their habits of self-consciousness and self-observation. If the greatest happiness of all is (as the utilitarian opinion says it is) •the end of human action, is must also be •the standard of morality; which can therefore be defined as: the rules and precepts for human conduct such that: the observance of them would provide the best possible guarantee of an existence such as has been described—for all mankind and, so far as the nature of things allows, for the whole sentient creation.

I must again repeat something that the opponents of utilitarianism are seldom fair enough to admit, namely that the happiness that forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct is not •the agent’s own happiness but •that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. [Here and everywhere Mill uses ‘disinterested’ in its still-correct meaning = ‘not self -interested’ = ‘not swayed by any consideration of how the outcome might affect one’s own welfare’.] In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the ·practical· way to get as close as possible to this ideal, ·the ethics of· utility would command two things. (1) First, laws and social arrangements should place the happiness (or what for practical purposes we may call the interest) of every individual as much as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole. (2) Education and opinion, which have such a vast power over human character, should use that power to establish in the mind of every individual an unbreakable link between •his own happiness and •the good of the whole; especially between •his own happiness and •the kinds of conduct (whether doing or allowing) that are conducive to universal happiness. If (2) is done properly, it will tend to have two results: (2a) The individual won’t be able to conceive the possibility of being personally happy while acting in ways opposed to the general good. (2b) In each individual a direct impulse to promote the general good will be one of the habitual motives of action, and the feelings connected with it will fill a large and prominent place in his sentient existence. This is the true character of the utilitarian morality. If those who attack utilitarianism see it as being like this, I don’t know •what good features of some other moralities they could possibly say that utilitarianism lacks, •what more beautiful or more elevated developments of human nature any other ethical systems can be supposed to encourage, or •what motivations for action that aren’t available to the utilitarian those other systems rely on for giving effect to their mandates.