Summary Of John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism

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In the second chapter of John Stuart Mill’s essay, Utilitarianism, Mill responds to criticisms against utilitarianism. For one of these responses, he introduces the distinction of higher and lower pleasures to defend and more clearly define utilitarianism. This essay will further discuss this idea of higher and lower pleasures.

Before even beginning to examine the idea of higher and lower pleasures, Mill firstly gives a clear definition of what utilitarianism is. He does this at the beginning of the second chapter, stating the core principle, or the ‘Greatest Happiness Principle,’ of this moral philosophy. Specifically, it is for one to take actions such that they maximize the total good. He further clarifies that by good, he means specifically …show more content…

He says that the only reason for an intelligent human to want the life of a fool or an animal is if they are cases of extreme unhappiness. Mill admits that a being with lower capacities has a higher chance of them being fulfilled and a being of higher capacities has a higher chance of being disappointed, but he asserts that the second being will learn to accept its imperfections and will not envy the first being. Later on, Mill says that the only reason for humans preferring or becoming addicted to lower pleasures is if they do not have proper access to higher pleasures. I do not agree with these points, and I think they become less credible if we again look at the ‘personal preference’ factor. I do not think it is completely unreasonable for a person that is overall happy with their life to still prefer the life of their own pet dog that they treat very well. And what if this ‘life-trading’ thought experiment went the other way? Suppose there were an extremely intelligent creature with elevated faculties even greater than the ones of humans and had a lifespan of 200 years. They could spend all of that time and intelligence practicing philosophy or pursuing other great intellectual pleasures, but the catch is that they do not have access to animalistic pleasures; they do not eat, have sex, and have very limited motor skills. Therefore, this creature has much greater access to higher pleasures, but no access to lower pleasures. According to Mill, this would be the better life, right? Surely, Mill would trade off his lower pleasures for higher pleasures, especially when the higher pleasures would be in greater quantity and duration. However, I do not think many humans would trade their lives for this one, as I think that a happy life requires balance in many things, including lower pleasures. And so, I do not think Mill is completely justified in saying that it is always ‘better

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