What it argues
Utilitarianism, first published in 1863 after appearing in Fraser's Magazine the previous year, is Mill's defense and refinement of the utilitarian moral theory he inherited from Jeremy Bentham. The core claim is that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse. Mill's task is to clarify this claim against objections, extend it in directions Bentham had not pursued, and show that it is compatible with ordinary moral convictions about justice, rights, and the intrinsic value of character.
The most important departure from Bentham is Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures. Bentham's utilitarianism was quantitative — more pleasure is simply better. Mill argues that pleasures differ in quality, not just quantity, and that the pleasures of intellect, sentiment, and moral feeling are superior in kind to bodily pleasures. His criterion is the preference of those who have experienced both: competent judges who have sampled both pushpin and poetry will prefer poetry. This move is designed to answer the "pig satisfied" objection — the worry that utilitarianism makes a happy animal preferable to a moderately happy human.
What it gets right
- 1.
The greatest happiness principle holds that the right action maximizes aggregate happiness across all affected parties, with each person counting for one and no one for more than one.
- 2.
Mill distinguishes higher from lower pleasures: intellectual and moral pleasures are superior in kind, not just quantity, to bodily pleasures — a departure from Bentham's purely quantitative account.
- 3.
The competent judge criterion — asking which pleasures those with experience of both prefer — is Mill's way of operationalizing the distinction between higher and lower pleasures.
What it covers
Who wrote it
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was a British philosopher, economist, and political reformer and the most important liberal thinker of the Victorian era. Educated rigorously from childhood by his father James Mill and the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, he went on to work for the East India Company for three decades while writing major works on logic, economics, ethics, and political philosophy. His other major works include On Liberty, A System of Logic, Principles of Political Economy, and The Subjection of Women. He served briefly in Parliament in the 1860s and advocated for women's suffrage.
