Some of Mill’s Key Assertions in Utilitarianism 3
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)
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)
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)