John Stuart Mill Research Paper
Abstract
The paper presents the life of John Stuart Mill through his biography. A glimpse on his exceptional life as a child was also included in his biography. Likewise, his major contributions as a philosopher and economist were also discussed.
Since John Stuart Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, the paper focuses its discussion on Mill and utilitarianism. The views of John Stuart Mill on utilitarianism and how it differs from Bentham’s views were given much attention in the paper.
The history of utilitarianism was also presented to show how utilitarianism evolved. The confusions of many people, regarding who the real founder of utilitarianism, was clarified through the history of utilitarianism.
Introduction …show more content…
The best known, and most prolific, utilitarian philosophers were Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). In their time, utilitarianism was a significant philosophical movement in Britain, and the utilitarians were some of the leading social reformers of the time. John Stuart Mill, especially, is quite well known today. Many people seem to think, unfortunately, that utilitarianism began with Bentham and ended with Mill. This is quite wrong in two ways. First, Bentham was not the first utilitarian, although he did coin the word "utilitarianism". Various pre-Benthamite philosophers were advocating utilitarian positions several decades before Bentham was born. Also, utilitarianism has a lot in common with ancient non-utilitarian philosophers, such as Mo Tzu and Jesus. Both of these people advocated a doctrine of universal love. These doctrines were not precisely stated enough to compare directly with utilitarianism, but they were definitely universalist and egalitarian, and had strong currents of consequentialism, welfarism, and (at least in the case of Mo Tzu) maximization. The second problem with the popular misconception is that there has been a great deal of development in utilitarianism since Mill. Some people are aware, for example, of the later developments of Preference Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism. Mill is still usually regarded as the main …show more content…
Utilitarian perspectives have also been quietly adopted in domains ranging from economics, political science, and decision theory to cognitive science and artificial intelligence. This has given modern utilitarianism a powerful formulation like no other, and a strong applied tradition. The old questions of how to measure utility, and how to maximize it most effectively in practice, have been extensively researched outside of philosophy. The result of this is that while other philosophies often talk in general terms of how they should be applied, and have problems in resolving conflicts between various principles, utilitarianism is at the cutting edge of rigorously applicable principles. Which is still, it should be mentioned, far from
The paper presents the life of John Stuart Mill through his biography. A glimpse on his exceptional life as a child was also included in his biography. Likewise, his major contributions as a philosopher and economist were also discussed.
Since John Stuart Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, the paper focuses its discussion on Mill and utilitarianism. The views of John Stuart Mill on utilitarianism and how it differs from Bentham’s views were given much attention in the paper.
The history of utilitarianism was also presented to show how utilitarianism evolved. The confusions of many people, regarding who the real founder of utilitarianism, was clarified through the history of utilitarianism.
Introduction …show more content…
The best known, and most prolific, utilitarian philosophers were Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). In their time, utilitarianism was a significant philosophical movement in Britain, and the utilitarians were some of the leading social reformers of the time. John Stuart Mill, especially, is quite well known today. Many people seem to think, unfortunately, that utilitarianism began with Bentham and ended with Mill. This is quite wrong in two ways. First, Bentham was not the first utilitarian, although he did coin the word "utilitarianism". Various pre-Benthamite philosophers were advocating utilitarian positions several decades before Bentham was born. Also, utilitarianism has a lot in common with ancient non-utilitarian philosophers, such as Mo Tzu and Jesus. Both of these people advocated a doctrine of universal love. These doctrines were not precisely stated enough to compare directly with utilitarianism, but they were definitely universalist and egalitarian, and had strong currents of consequentialism, welfarism, and (at least in the case of Mo Tzu) maximization. The second problem with the popular misconception is that there has been a great deal of development in utilitarianism since Mill. Some people are aware, for example, of the later developments of Preference Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism. Mill is still usually regarded as the main …show more content…
Utilitarian perspectives have also been quietly adopted in domains ranging from economics, political science, and decision theory to cognitive science and artificial intelligence. This has given modern utilitarianism a powerful formulation like no other, and a strong applied tradition. The old questions of how to measure utility, and how to maximize it most effectively in practice, have been extensively researched outside of philosophy. The result of this is that while other philosophies often talk in general terms of how they should be applied, and have problems in resolving conflicts between various principles, utilitarianism is at the cutting edge of rigorously applicable principles. Which is still, it should be mentioned, far from