The Importance of the Moral Sentiments and Community in Mill’s Philosophy, As Seen In

His Criticisms of Jeremy Bentham

Mill adorns a famous tradition of thought and he cannot be seen in perspective until we stop regarding him as the man who tried and failed to spiritualize utilitarianism. He was not merely the heir of Bentham.[1]

Morality consists of two parts. One of these is self-education; the training by the human being himself, of his affections and will. That department is a blank in Bentham’s system.[2]

I. Introduction

Mill had a sophisticated view of the self, which saw sympathy and imagination as important in the process of cultivating socially-sympathetic sentiments through instrumental means such as religion. Mill’s view of the moral agent is social and communal rather than isolated and atomistic, and we can obtain ample historical support for this social view of his moral agent by pointing out exactly what Mill criticizes about Bentham’s view of moral agents and morality. We will understand more clearly Mill’s social view of the moral agent as we explore the following claims which he makes: a) Bentham’s view of self was too simple, b) Bentham neglected the value of cultivating imagination, c) Bentham failed to see the positive uses of sympathy as a positive means of generating important social moral sentiments, and d) Bentham undervalued the importance of the communal effect of religion. By examining these issues, we can gain a historically and systematically sensitive understanding of Mill’s concern with the social development of moral sentiments.

There are very important practical outcomes from this realization. What we see in Mill’s critique of Bentham is strong evidence against the common view that Mill’s moral agent is an isolated, atomistic self.[3] This should radically alter the way we present Mill and Bentham’s utilitarianism when we teach, and force us to take a second look at the way we think about Mill and his Utilitarian theory. Mill agrees with Bentham on the principle of utility as a standard, but his view of human nature-- the relationship between the individual and society, the role of imagination, sympathy and religion—are quite different than Bentham and many other utilitarians. Relatedly, Mill also has a much more developed understanding of moral development-- something akin to Aristotle’s. Unlike Bentham, Mill provides some understanding of how one might eventually develop sentiments by which one would actually associate one’s own happiness with the happiness of the many, and in that case, we can understand more clearly why one would want to follow the principle of utility in the case of self sacrifice. While these practical applications fall outside the sphere of this paper, they nevertheless provide the backdrop when raising this issue of Mill’s view of moral sentiments and his communal view of the moral agent.

II. Mill’s Break With Bentham’s Rationalistic Utilitarianism

It has often been said that Mill transformed Bentham’s utilitarianism beyond recognition, and it is thought that Mill’s “additions” to Benthamite utilitarianism are the elements of his philosophy which cause him problems of inconsistency. Mill himself saw his thought as being made up of a fourfold matrix of influences -- Bentham, Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Christianity. [4] F.E.L. Priestly, in his introduction to volume 10 of the Collected Works of J.S. Mill calls Mill a ‘heretic’ in the eyes of the Utilitarian tradition which preceded him because he so radically altered utilitarianism.[5] Yet, many are not aware of the non-utilitarian influences which shaped Mill’s ethics. Some typical readings of Mill portray him as simply having added ‘new things’ to Benthamism -- qualitative distinction and some other vaguely sentimental baggage -- but this reading generally neglects to note how important the classic Greek and Christian elements are in his philosophy, and it fails to understand his view of the socially influenced self.

Not all agree with this opinion that Mill added things to Bentham, but instead claim that, Mill’s problems arose when he tried to overlay a Benthamite-style ethics upon Mill’s earlier exposure to Aristotle, Plato, and the Greeks. Geriant Williams claims that “It was Benthamite Utility which caused Mill problems and not those elements up to now seen as new grafts on the older plant.”[6] Chronologically, Mill certainly was learning Greek and reading Greek classics earlier than he read Bentham. It is also known that in general he also read a great deal of Greek writings in his youth. But he was certainly influenced by Bentham and his father’s rationalistic or anti-sentimentalistic utilitarianism in his teens. Reflecting back upon those days he realizes how their rationalistic utilitarianism was seen by its critics:

Utility was denounced as cold calculation; political economy as hard-hearted; anti-population doctrines as repulsive to the natural feelings of mankind. We retorted by the word “sentimentality,” which, along with “declamation” and “vague generalities,” served us as common terms of opprobrium. Although we were generally in the right, as against those who were opposed to us, the effect was that the cultivation of feeling (except the feelings of public and private duty) was not in much esteem among us, and had very little place in the thoughts of most of us, myself in particular. What we principally thought of, was to alter peoples opinions; to make them believe according to evidence, and know what was their real interest, which when they once knew, they would, we thought, by the instrument of opinion, enforce a regard to it upon one another. While fully recognizing the superior excellence of unselfish benevolence and love of justice, we did not expect the regeneration of mankind from any direct action on those sentiments, but from the effect of educated intellect, enlightening the selfish feelings.[7]

Mill certainly counted himself as one of these anti-sentimentalist utilitarians in his earlier days. He says that this general disregard for the cultivation of proper feelings lead to a disdain for poetry and imagination, among other things:

From this neglect both in theory and in practice of the cultivation of feeling, naturally resulted among other things an undervaluing of poetry, and of Imagination generally as an element of human nature. It is, or was, part of the popular notion of Benthamites, that they are enemies of poetry: this was partly true of Bentham himself; he used to say that “all poetry is misrepresentation” but, in the sense in which he said it, the same might have been said of all impressive speech, of all representation or inculcation more oratorical in its character than a sum in arithmetic.[8]

Besides being taught by his father and influenced by Bentham, Mill was also drawn into thinking like Bentham in his younger days when he edited some of Bentham’s writings. Mill says that in his early days, “ . . . indeed I had never contemplated coming forward in my own person; and, as an anonymous editor of Bentham, I fell into the tone of my author, not thinking it unsuitable to him or to the subject, however it might be so to me.”[9] Because of this influence of his father and Bentham, Mill says that he became for a time quite critical of poetic or passionate writing: “Perhaps at that time poetical composition of any higher type than eloquent discussion in verse, might not have produced a similar effect on me; at all events I seldom gave it an opportunity. This, however was a mere passing state.” [10] But at the age of 20, Mill had a breakdown, and what brought him out of his depression was not arguments but literature and poetry. This was a turning point for Mill, and made a powerful impact on the direction of his ethical thought:

I ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to the ordering of outward circumstances, and the training of the individual for speculation and for action. I had now learnt by experience that the passive susceptibilities needed to be cultivated as well as the active capacities, and required to e nourished and enriched as well as guided. I did not, for an instant, lose sight of or undervalue, that part of the truth which I had seen before; I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition both of individual and of social improvement. . . . I now began to find meaning in the things which I had read or heard about the importance of poetry and art as instruments of human culture.[1]

Bentham died in 1832, and it is almost as though his death gave Mill feedom to express his differences with Bentham. From 1933-1940 --from his mid-twenties to mid-thirties-- Mill wrote a number of essays on poetry, and the relation to of poetry and philosophy.[11] This was of course long before he ever wrote Utilitarianism; and even at the end of his career he was still speaking of the importance of art in moral education, so we know that this was a longlasting substantial conviction.[12] So, having begun with a thoroughly classic education, then influenced strongly with his father’s and Bentham’s utilitarianism which neglected the importance of passions and sentiments, he eventually came to value the sentiments and see the importance of nurturing the nobler poetic feelings.

In his later critical writings on Bentham, Mill points out that Bentham’s particular dislike of poetry had led Bentham to say “somewhere in his works, that, ‘quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry;’”[13] Mill quickly points out that Bentham did love music and other arts, and perhaps thought they provided a greater quantity of pleasure in some cases, but still criticizes Bentham for his limited aesthetic abilities, saying, “Here is a philosopher who is happy within his narrow boundary as no man of indefinite range ever was; . . .”[14] Certainly in Mill’s opinion, Bentham’s primary failure was to neglect to distinguish between various qualities of pleasure-- higher and lower. But the reasons why Bentham failed to accentuate particular higher pleasures over others really have to do with the fundamental differences between Mill and Bentham on the importance of feelings and imagination. These differences are clearly brought out in Mill’s 1838 essay on Bentham.[15]

What is of special interest to us here is that Mill has a number of criticisms of Bentham’s philosophy which reflect to us some fundamental truths about the importance of social development of the sentiments in Mill’s own philosophy. Insofar as Mill is critical of Bentham’s simplistic view of self, it can be seen that a rich view of self which takes into account the passions and feelings is essential to Mill’s view of morality. Insofar as Mill is critical of Bentham’s glaring lack of development of the importance of imagination, one sees that imagination is central for Mill. Insofar as Mill is critical of Bentham’s distrust of sympathy and antipathy (and passions in general) one can see in the thought of Mill the importance of nurturing such feelings for moral behavior. And insofar as Mill is critical of Bentham’s anti-religious sentiments, one sees that Mill believes that the instrumental value of religion to help foster good feelings and habits towards others in general is very important.

1. Problem One: Bentham’s Simplistic Self

In Mill’s view, Bentham’s philosophy had a number of weaknesses which led to its inability to account for differences in kinds of pleasure, and ultimately unable to lead society toward true utility. First, Bentham’s view of the self is too simplistic. Mill says (speaking of Bentham’s position),

Man, that most complex being, is a very simple one in his [Bentham’s] eyes. Even under the head sympathy, his recognition does not extend to the more complex forms of the feeling-- . . . If he thought at all of any of the deeper feelings of human nature, it was but as idiosyncrasies of taste, with this the moralist no more than the legislator had any concern, further than to prohibit such as we mischievous among the actions to which they might chance to lead.[16]

Bentham does not take proper account of the complex feelings of human beings, their psychological habits, and the relation of these feelings and habits to morality and considerations of utility. “Knowing so little of human feelings, he [Bentham] knew still less of the influences by which those feelings are formed; all the more subtle workings both of the mind upon itself, and of external things upon the mind, escaped him.”[17] Bentham’s lack of insight into feelings led him to neglect the importance of habituation and education of the sentiments. Mill says that Bentham could not conceive of a human being “as a being capable of pursuing spiritual perfection as an end; of desiring, for its own sake, the conformity of his own character to his standard of excellence, without hope of good or fear of evil from other sources than his own inward consciousness.”[18] For Mill, this lack of Bentham’s concern for the power of conscience to direct behavior was astonishing: “Nothing is more curious than the absence of recognition in any of his writings of the existence of conscience, as a thing distinct from philanthropy, from affection for God or man, and from self-interest in this world or the next.”[19] This is strange to Mill because he himself thought that internal sanction of the conscience was the “ultimate sanction”.[20] While Bentham focused primarily on the sanction of governmental threats of punishment, Mill thought that the internal sanction of conscious was much more powerful, and could be built up through the nurturing work of society.

Chapter 3 of Mill’s Utilitarianism is about sanctions, or motivations, for moral behavior. He discusses external sanctions, the outward motivations we have to behave morally such as ‘hope of favour’, ‘fear of disppleasure’ etc. Bentham had spoken of four moral sanctions in chapter 3 of his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation-- the physical, political, moral (or popular), and the religious-- these are all essentially external influences. Mill, in contrast, finds the external sanctions to be of less importance and focuses on the power of internal sanctions. His mental crisis lead Mill to place more importance on the internal sanctions. What makes internal sanctions different from external sanctions is that they are disinterested and matters of duty-- but what that means for Mill is that they are done without concern for reward and punishment from external sources. One could say that the internal sanctions are those which arise not out of fear of punishment or reward from others, but rather, their power comes from our own conscience. Mill defines internal sanction as “a feeling in our own mind; a pain, more or less intense, attendant on violation of duty, which in properly cultivated moral natures rises, in the more serious cases, into shrinking from it as an impossibility.”[2] This type of feeling, says Mill, is the essence of Conscience. Going beyond mere external sanctions, Mill gained a newfound understanding of the very important role that ones inner consciousness and desires play in sponsoring moral behavior.