Utilitarianism (book)
- This article is about John Stuart Mill's book-length essay, entitled Utilitarianism. For a general discussion of the ethical theory, see the article on utilitarianism.
John Stuart Mill's book Utilitarianism is one of the most influential and widely-read philosophical defenses of utilitarianism in ethics. The essay first appeared as a series of three articles published in Fraser's Magazine in 1861; the articles were collected and reprinted as a single book in 1863. It went through four editions during Mill's lifetime with minor additions and revisions.
Although Mill includes discussions of utilitarian ethical principles in other works such as On Liberty, The Subjection of Women, Utilitarianism contains Mill's only major discussion of the fundamental grounds for utilitarian ethical theory. The essay is divided into five chapters:
- General Remarks
- What Utilitarianism Is
- Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility
- Of what Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility is Susceptible
- Of the Connection between Justice and Utility
In the first two chapters, Mill aims to precisely define what utilitarianism claims (as against popular misunderstandings of the theory) and to defend those claims against common criticisms. He distinguishes ethical theories in terms of (1) the general moral principles from which they derive specific moral judgments, and (2) the sort of evidence that is supposed to be given for those principles (Ch. 1 ¶¶3-4). He positions utilitarianism as an ethical theory based on the evidence of experience rather than intuition, and formulates a single ethical principle from which all of utilitarianism's moral judgments are supposed to be derived:
- The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. (Ch. 2 ¶2).
Mill goes on to discuss what is meant by "pleasure" and "pain" in his formulation of the Greatest Happiness Principle, to argue that it encompasses intellectual as well as sensual pleasures, and to offer a defense of intellectual pleasures as preferable not only in degree, but also in kind, to sensible pleasures (Ch. 2 ¶¶3-8). (Throughout Utilitarianism, Mill mainly writes as if addressing opponents of utilitarianism, but here he is also trying to criticize, and refine, the understanding of the Greatest Happiness Principle offered by earlier utilitarians — Jeremy Bentham in particular.)
In the third chapter, Mill discusses questions concerning the motivation to follow utilitarian moral principles; Mill discusses ways in which both external and internal sanctions (that is, the incentives provided by others and the inner feelings of sympathy and duty) encourage people to act in such a way as to promote the general happiness.
The fourth chapter offers Mill's attempt at an inductive proof of the Greatest Happiness Principle, on the grounds that happiness and happiness alone is desired as an end in itself.
The fifth chapter concludes the essay with a discussion of problems concerning utilitarianism and the concept of justice. Critics of utilitarianism often claim that judging actions solely in terms of their consequences is incompatible with a foundational and universally binding concept of justice; Mill sees this criticism as the strongest objection to utilitarianism, and sets out to argue (1) that a binding concept of justice can be explained in strictly utilitarian terms, and (2) that the problems created by the utilitarian explanation are difficult problems for any concept of justice whatever, whether utilitarian or not.
Text
- Utilitarianism (1871 edition, transcribed by the Fair Use Repository)
- Utilitarianism (1863 edition, transcribed by the University of Adelaide Library)