Download Mill - Key Statements in Utiltarianism

SOME OF MILL’S KEY ASSERTIONS IN UTILITARIANISM
1. Happiness is what the mass of mankind desires (234,3).
2. Happiness is not “a continuity of highly pleasurable excitement” (215, 1), but a mixture
of periods of tranquility and excitement (215, 2).
3. Ninety-five% of human beings involuntarily do without happiness (217, 2). This is
because of “the present wretched social arrangements…” Nevertheless, “[M]ost of the
great positive evils of the world are in themselves removable, and will, if human affairs
continue to improve, be in the end reduced within narrow limits. Poverty…may be
completely extinguished by the wisdom of society…” (216, 2)
4. “The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which one
custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social
existence, has passed into the rank of an universally stigmatized injustice and tyranny. So
it has been with the distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians and
plebeians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with the aristocracies of colour, race,
and sex.” (259, 1)
5. When people “who are tolerably fortunate in their outward lot” are unhappy, the two
main reasons are selfishness and lack of mental cultivation (215, 2).
6. “The desire of virtue is not as universal, but it is as authentic a fact, as the desire of
happiness…” (235,1) “…[T]he utilitarian doctrine…maintains not only that virtue is to
be desired, but that it is to be desired disinterestedly, for itself….[T]he mind is not in a
right state, not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state most conducive to the
general happiness, unless it does love virtue…as a thing desirable in itself….This opinion
is not, in the smallest degree, a departure from the Happiness principle. The ingredients
of happiness are very various, and each of them is desirable in itself…They are desired
and desirable in and for themselves; besides being means, they are part of the end.” (235,
2)
7. Virtue is “above all things important to the general happiness” (236, 3—237, 1)
8. Human pleasures are on a much higher level than those of the pigs or other animals
(210,3). Pleasures must be measured by quality as well as quantity. “[T]he pleasures of
the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments” have “a much
higher value as pleasures” than “those of mere sensation.” (211, 1)
9. “A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of
more acute suffering, and is certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an
inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he
feels to be a lower grade of existence. We may give what explanation we please of this
unwillingness…but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all
human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means exact,
proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of
those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than
momentarily, an object of desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes
place at a sacrifice of happiness—that the superior being, in anything like equal
circumstances, is not happier than the inferior—confounds the two very different ideas,
happiness and content.” (212,1)
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10. “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better Socrates
dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” And this is—by and large—the consensus of mankind
(212, 1).
11. TEST: But how are we to decide which kinds of pleasures are higher and which are
lower? Ask the people who are familiar with both kinds. This is an ongoing test. The
more evidence we can pile up, the better. This test also applies to deciding between
values and behavior of different cultures that seem to conflict (211, 2). See also 214, 2
(note his wording): “…the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against
quantity, being the preference felt by those who, in their opportunities of experience, to
which must be added their habits of self-consciousness and self-observation, are best
furnished with the means of comparison.”
12. Human society has built up at least a modest store of practical moral wisdom.
Utilitarianism draws on this and develops its own intermediate rules based on it, and
thereby provides a clearer explanation of traditional rules (224, 1—225, 1).
13. From pages 241, 3 to 244, 1, he lists under six headings the traditional views of justice:
first, that it is based on legality and legal rights; second, since there can be unjust laws,
“law…is not the ultimate criterion of justice,” (242, 2); third, justice is everybody
receiving what they deserve; fourth, that injustice is breaking promises or disappointing
expectations; fifth, that justice is impartiality; sixth, that justice entails equality before the
law and equal protection of rights.
14. The natural basis of Utilitarianism is the social feelings of mankind, which tend to be
democratic (231, 2—232,1): “Now, society between human beings, except in the relation
of master and slave, is manifestly impossible on any other footing than that the interests
of all are to be consulted. Society between equals can only exist on the understanding that
the interests of all are to be regarded equally…. [I]n all states of civilization, every
person, except an absolute monarch, has equals, everyone is obliged to live on these
terms with somebody…So long as [people] are cooperating, their ends are identified with
those of others; there is at least a temporary feeling that the interests of others are their
own interests….This mode of conceiving ourselves and human life, as civilization goes
on, is felt to be more and more natural.” (231, 2—232,1).
15. On p. 248, 6, he says: “By virtue of his superior intelligence…a human being is capable
of apprehending a community of interest between himself and the human society of
which he forms a part…The same superiority of intelligence, joined to the power of
sympathizing with human beings generally, enables him to attach himself to the
collective idea of his tribe, his country, or mankind…”
16. Note what Mill says about duty: “It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our
duties…but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a
feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions are done from
other motives, and rightly so done, if the rule of duty does not condemn them.” (219, 2).
17. “We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be
punished in some way or other for doing it; if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow
creatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience. This seems to be
the real turning point of the distinction between morality and simple expediency. It is a
part of the notion of Duty in every one of its forms, that a person may be rightly
compelled to fulfill it.” (246, 2)
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18. “Now it is known that ethical writers divide moral duties into two classes, denoted by the
ill-chosen expression, duties of perfect and of imperfect obligation [i.e. Kant]; the latter
being those in which, though the act is obligatory, the particular occasions of performing
it are left to our choice; as in the case of charity or beneficence, which we are indeed
bound to practice, but not towards any definite person, nor at any prescribed time….I
think it will be found that this distinction exactly coincides with that which exists
between justice and the other obligations of morality….Justice implies something which
it is not only right to do, and wrong not to do, but which some individual person can
claim from us as his moral right. No one has a moral right to our generosity or
beneficence, because we are not morally bound to practise those virtues towards any
given individual.” (247, 1)