a utilitarianism that works

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A Utilitarianism That

WorksGeorge Dylan Boan



George Dylan Boan 1

Society is the basis of humanity in today‟s world. The intention of society is to preserve

the life of humans and prevent them from destroying one another. Beyond this, every society

varies in what it provides to its constituents. All humans desire to be happy. Happiness for

humans is much more complex than that of animals though. Each individual has their own

conceptions of what happiness might be and what actions can achieve it. The individual must

also factor in their place in society as a countermeasure, as the happiness of one person shouldn‟t

become the unhappiness of another. The complexities of happiness have confounded

philosophers for millennia as they have attempted to create some concrete conception of it that

applies to all humans and delineate theories as to maximizing it for the whole of society.

Utilitarianism has proven to be a noteworthy approach to providing the greatest good for the

greatest number. Jeremy Bentham first penned the theory of utilitarianism but it took the

contributions of John Stuart Mill to put humanity back into the theory.

Jeremy Bentham provided a solid attempt at rationalizing the greatest happiness principle

in his utilitarianism. For Bentham, happiness was a clear cut principle that could be applied to all

humans through objective, scientific means. Bentham‟s ideas on happiness revolved around what

a “good” action meant for human beings. The foundation of his utilitarianism was that the good

for a human being consists in a life of the maximum net balance of pleasure over pain.1 In his

exposition of creating the balance, Bentham stated “by utility is meant that property in any

object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, (all this in

the present case comes to the same thing) or (what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the

happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered”, that

party being the individual human making choices.2 In this model, the utility of an act is an

1 Elizabeth S. Anderson, “John Stuart Mill and Experiments in Living,” Ethics 102.1 (1991): 6.2 Martha C. Nussbaum, “Mill between Aristotle & Bentham,” Daedalus 133.2 (2004): 62.



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instinctual reaction by the individual to counter pain or provide pleasure to the furthest degree. In

this definition, pleasures are provided by objects or tangible sources of pleasure. The abstract

idea of pleasure through the non-physical is undescribed in this conception. The individual plays

into Bentham‟s utilitarianism and social utility as the choices they make should not hamper the

ability of others to make similar pleasure seeking choices. Here happiness and pleasure are

equated as one in the same in Bentham‟s conception. The happiness of the individual was

synonymous with contentment or satisfaction at the choices made, the result of pleasure gained.3

For Bentham, pleasure was a singular sensation with no qualitative difference, an area J.

S. Mill would end up greatly objecting to.

4

The only differentiable variable in Bentham‟s

pleasure was quantity, such as various levels of intensity, durations, certainty, and causal

properties, which are tendencies to produce more pleasure.5 While each of these pleasures may

be greater or lesser, the sources of these pleasures, in Bentham‟s mind, were relatively

synonymous across the spectrum of humanity. The whole driving force of human action revolved

around these sources. “The only goal of right action is to maximize the pleasure sensation, the

only good in the world.”6 One of the contradictions lying in this statement is the maximization of

pleasure for whom, the individual or the whole of society? With Bentham, if all sources of

pleasure were the same for humans, they would all equally pursue them without interfering with

one another.

While emphasizing the pursuit of pleasure, Bentham‟s utilitarianism strongly discouraged

the existence of emotions within the individual and it was here that threats to the whole society

were to be found. He believed that strong sentiments or emotions would lead individuals to make

3 Ibid., 61.4 Ibid., 63.5 Ibid.6 Ibid.



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selfish acts that were contrary to the maximization of total happiness for the collective peoples.7

But to ask humans not to feel is impossible. As humans, consciousness prevents individual‟s

from blindly accepting the way in which their lives play out but instead forces them to interpret

how they feel about things and what motivates them. Bentham‟s uniformity of pleasures also

fails to account for abnormalities in society. For instance, some sick individuals pursue evil

pleasures, or those gained from hurting others, which in turn contradicts the social utility of

action and the good of all.8 Within these individuals, the objects of pleasure become the pain of

others, a situation in which the societal balance spins on its head.

Bentham‟s utilitarianism sought to simplify humanity to the nth degree. Bentham

believed in empirical naturalism, in which for a value judgment to be objective, it must be

understood in empirical concepts.9 These empirical conclusions must be based on observable

reactions and decisions, not on logic. Therefore, his pleasures focused on objects which humans

found themselves fond of and found pleasure in. Unfortunately, this overly simplistic approach

severely undermines the complexity that raises humanity from the ranks of the common animal.

Humans do have emotions, do act for themselves, do have uniqueness, and are not so easily

understood. While the basic idea of pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain is true in relation to

most human action, much room is left to speculate, contradict, and improve upon, an opportunity

John Stuart Mill would seize, bringing the depth of the human experience into this theoretical

framework.

7 Anderson, 7.8 Nussbaum, 63.9 Anderson, 5.



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John Stuart Mill‟s early life would be rigorously molded under the conditions of

Bentham‟s utilitarianism. John Stuart Mill was born in 1806, son of James Mill.10

James Mill and

Bentham were the leading figures in the developing utilitarian thought. In 1824, the two would

lead to the establishment of The Westminster Review, an organ for utilitarian thought consisting

of writers and Cambridge undergraduates.11

James Mill would look to implement these

ideologies in the upbringing of John Stuart Mill and create the pure utilitarian. James Mill

submitted John Stuart to a rigorous education in pursuit of making him a genius.12

He was

brought up by his father to display mastery of intellectual skills and shame at powerful emotions,

with an emphasis on excellent activity at the exclusion of his own emotional satisfaction.

13

His

father saw sentiments as trainable that should not be cultivated but rather, trained to cling to the

right objects through conditioned reinforcement.14

One of the few glimmers of sentiment John

Stuart Mill did feel was on a tour of the Pyrenees he took with his father and Bentham at age 7,

in which he “experienced an elementary form of fondness for a „view‟”, an experience that

would be recalled as he transitioned his ideologies to come.15

As John Stuart Mill grew, he

became the “reasoning machine” of Benthamite ideology, who had a zeal for knowledge over

sympathy; he believed the regeneration of man would arise through an “educated intellect” and

by “enlightening the selfish feelings” rather than through “unselfish benevolence” and “love of

justice.”16

He refuted claims that utilitarians were cold calculators, responding that the accusers

were victims of “sentimentality” and “vague generalities”, statements his later ideologies would

yet again harken back to and with quite the opposite viewpoint.

10 Michael Behrent, “The Utilitarian Personality?,” Lecture, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC,

October 23, 2013.11 Ibid.12 Ibid.13 Nussbaum, 66.14 Anderson, 15.15 Anna J. Mill, “John Stuart Mill and the Picturesque,” Victorian Studies 14.2 (1970): 152.16 Behrent, 2013.



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It would turn out that the sentiments regarded as so frivolous would come to haunt even

John Stuart Mill. In the autumn of 1826 at the age of twenty, John Stuart Mill would pose a

question that would change the rest of his life.17

He asked himself that if all of the objects your

life were realized and all desired changes made right now, would that bring joy and happiness to

you?18

When he found that his answer was no, he fell into a deep depression. This would come to

be known as Mill‟s „Crises‟, a crises in which Bentham‟s theory both failed to explain its onset

as well as offer remedy.19

Engulfed in this despair through that dreary winter of 1826 and 1927,

Mill had to look for answers himself.

He would come to the conclusion that his depression was the result of tension between

his analytical skills and his sentiments stating his well-developed habits of analysis were a

“perpetual worm at the root both of the passions and the virtues.”20

The effect of so much

analysis is to burrow holes into our own being and feeling.21

This analysis “fearfully undermines

all desires and all pleasures which are the effects of association by enabling us mentally to

separate ideas which have only casually clung together.”22

Our desires and pleasures are easily

changed and too much analysis can not only change them but destroy their value to the

individual. Analysis tends to undermine sentiments born of artificial association as well, such as

our conception of the things that makes us happy.23

To escape these downward spirals of analysis, John Stuart Mill was forced to look

elsewhere for happiness. His father had taught him to ignore his feelings yet depression was a

feeling with no outlet of escape. His father‟s cold hearted approach to his upbringing inspired

17 Behrent, 2013.18 Ibid.19 Anderson, 16.20 J. S. Mill, Autobiography, Pennsylvania State University, 2004. Adobe PDF eBook.21 Behrent, 2013.22 Anderson, 16.23 Ibid., 17.



George Dylan Boan 6

angst and a void within him that he now had the opportunity to fill. This involved caring for

himself. His wish for care was fulfilled when he “became able to accept, care for, nourish, and

value the previously hidden aspects of himself”, these being the emotions and sentiments he had

been taught to suppress and feel shame at.24

Arising from depression, his embrace of his feelings led to new epiphanies in regards to

the utilitarian theory he would now reinvent and invigorate. New sentiments aroused recognition

within John Stuart Mill of values distinct from pleasure, or pleasure in the traditional Benthamite

sense; these values were cultivated through the imaginative arts and were resistant to the force of

analysis.

25

This embrace of the arts, a field which in purely analytic terms, would have little

importance, now enraptured John Stuart Mill. With art, there are no clear cut definitions allowing

for open interpretation, a deviation from the objectivity with which Bentham adamantly adhered

to. This subjectivity of experience, unquantifiable and questionable, is what makes the pleasure

received analysis proof. One knows art touches them in special ways but it satisfies in ways

animals could never understand.

Mill went on a trip with William Wordsworth exploring the riches Europe‟s nature had to

offer in 1830 and 1831.26

Wordsworth‟s poems were especially fruitful as medicine for Mill as

they “expressed not mere outward beauty but also states of feeling, and of thought colored by

feeling, under the excitement of beauty.”27

It was on this trip that Mill developed aesthetic

appreciations that break from Bentham‟s utilitarianism and sources of pleasure. Mill recognized

a need to cultivate and enrich the “passive sensibilities”; upon this trip he would cultivate a taste

24 Nussbaum, 68.25 Anderson, 19.26 Anna J. Mill, 153.27 Behrent, 2013.



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for painting and sculpture.28

Mill redefined what pleasure was upon this trip, his emergence from

crisis. One observation was that “a waterfall in itself gives me little pleasure…Rydal falls, the

finest specimen of its kind I ever saw…this character like the most brilliant passages of a fine

piece of music.”29

He later remarked towards the end of this journey that these endeavors had

offered an “ideal of natural beauty” that harkened back to his boyhood tour of the Pyrenees, a

time before he had been conditioned to disregard the inner workings of feeling and pleasure.30

Here, Mill realized the value of each individual‟s own conceptions and the power that lies behind

mere analysis.

Mill‟s own early life was an experiment of living by Bentham‟s model and would go to

support his conception of the good as superior to Bentham‟s due to experience.31

For Mill, what

is “good” should be determined by the competent judgment of an experienced individual who

must decide what manner of existence is most worth having.32

This judgment must be made in

planning for a whole life, which should be complete as such, inclusive of all the individual‟s

major sources of value.33

All this planning is meant to find the balance necessary for each

individual to attain happiness. Mill‟s happiness does not equate with pleasure but rather, is made

up of pleasures, some pains, and plenty of activity.34

“Happiness is not a life of rapture but

moments of such, in an existence made up of a few and transitory pains, many and various

pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive.”35

His finding of

happiness was based on the whole experience of life rather than focusing on happiness in itself.

“Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. Ask yourself whether you are

28 Anna J. Mill, 153.29 Ibid., 158.30 Ibid., 163.31 Anderson, 4.32 Nussbaum, 65.33 Ibid.34 Ibid., 66.35 Anderson, 11.



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happy and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness but something external

to it, as the purpose of life; this theory now became the basis of my philosophy of life.”36

The foundations of Mill‟s good, such as personal integrity, dignity, sensitivity, especially

individuality, and honor do not have a place in Bentham‟s utilitarian conception.37

Bentham‟s

severe constriction of good to mere pleasure left much to be answered and interpreted. Mill

understood that a hierarchy of good was inherent to the structure of human desire.38

Humans

innately want certain things more than others. Therefore, value is placed differently upon

different desires. Desire does not stop at mere objects; humans desire to feel certain ways. They

must experience a plethora of experiences to know what makes them feel as they do, and how to

go about attaining certain feelings. Animals have much more simplistic desires, stopping at mere

instinct while humans have consciousness to guide and construct desire.

If the sources of pleasure were precisely the same for humans as for pigs, the rule

of life that is good enough for them would be good enough for us. Thecomparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading precisely

because a beast‟s pleasures do not satisfy a human‟s conceptions of happiness.

Human beings have higher faculties than the animal appetites, and once they

become conscious of them they don‟t regard anything as happiness that doesn‟tinclude their gratification.39

Bentham‟s pleasure principle has been often criticized as beneath humanity, placing all of human

action along instinctual lines. Mill states that consciousness creates entirely new dimensions of

desire.

With consciousness of what a pleasure does for a human, this new dimension is the

qualitative dimension. Bentham‟s utilitarianism relies so exclusively on empirical reasoning that

36 J. S. Mill, Autobiography, 82.37 Anderson, 6.38 Ibid.39 J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, 5.



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it disregards the conscious role of the decision maker. Once a human is acquainted with what

they like and dislike, pleasure seeking becomes a new choice.

If those who are competently acquainted with both these pleasures place P1 so far

above P2 that they prefer it even when they know that a greater amount ofdiscontent will come with it, and wouldn‟t give it up in exchange for any amountof P2 that they are capable of having, we are justified in ascribing to P1 a

superiority in quality that so greatly outweighs quantity as to make quantity

comparatively negligible.40

The qualitative differences of pleasure are so strongly evident in decision making that it seems

impossible that Bentham could have disregarded them. There are also differing qualities of

mental pleasures as well as different qualities of physical pleasure.41

These qualitative

superiorities can best be explained by abstract concepts such as infinity.

Highly complex aesthetic pleasures are excited by things which have a natural

association with highly impressive and affecting ideas such as infinity and it is nomystery why anything that suggests vividly the idea of infinity, of magnitude or

power without limit, acquires a strange impressiveness to the feelings and

imagination. Since our experience presents us with no example of such limitlessmagnitude or power, the idea of infinity stimulates the active power of the

imagination to rise above known reality into a more attractive or a more majestic

world.42

Here one sees that aesthetic pleasures, those not bound to particular objects or observable

response, are qualitatively superior to all lower pleasures due to their sheer boundlessness, their

lack of ability to be concretely analyzed. Conscious individuals would choose these pleasures

without ends over animalistic pleasures any time once they have experienced them.

The individual is of the utmost importance to Mill. Good rests in the individual. “Only

freedom…that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to

deprive others of theirs. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems

40 J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, 6.41 Jonathan Riley, “Interpreting Mill's Qualitative Hedonism,” The Philosophical Quarterly 53.212 (2003):

413.42 Ibid., 414



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respect for one another is essential to preserving happiness. Without the preservation of rights

through justice, no happiness can be attained as all individuals must constantly worry about

security.

In Mill‟s experiences, he was personally failed by Bentham‟s theory of utilitarianism.

The dogged attachment to objectivity and simplicity just did not fit the mold of humanity.

Bentham was lodged in theory whereas Mill had the gut to stomach his own discontent and

struggles to form a utilitarianism that incorporates the humanity of feelings and consciousness,

characteristics that remove humans from the animal. To disregard aspects of the self to live a life

of objectivity is to sacrifice the experience of living. Pleasures change with time and every

individual is unique in what brings satisfaction and happiness to their lives. In Bentham‟s broad

approach to categorize all of humanity, he has missed the mark on humanity in any respect.

Mill‟s focus on the quality of experience, the steadfastness of the individual, and a society

revolving around justice and harmony forms a more realistic idea of utilitarianism. One could

say Mill is an “empiricist with experience.”49

While his life broke the method pioneered by

Bentham and his father, Mill‟s experience breathed life into a machination that was, left alone,

broken.

49 Nussbaum, 68.



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Works Cited

Anderson, Elizabeth S. “John Stuart Mill and Experiments in Living.” Ethics 102.1 (1991): 4-26.

Behrent, Michael. “The Utilitarian Personality?” Lecture, Appalachian State University, Boone,

NC, October 23, 2013.

Mill, J. S. Autobiography. Pennsylvania State University, 2004. Adobe PDF eBook.

Mill, J. S. On Liberty. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2006.

Mill, J. S. Utilitarianism. Bennett, Jonathan, 2008. Adobe PDF eBook.

Mill, Anna J. “John Stuart Mill and the Picturesque.” Victorian Studies 14.2 (1970): 151-163.

Nussbaum, Martha C. “Mill between Aristotle & Bentham.” Daedalus 133.2 (2004): 60-68.

Riley, Jonathan. “Interpreting Mill's Qualitative Hedonism.” The Philosophical Quarterly 53.212

(2003): 410-418.

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